Every year the speaker selection committee for DotNetNuke Connections (formerly known as DotNetNuke OpenForce Connections) has the difficult task of reviewing hundreds of submissions and finding the two dozen sessions that we feel will provide a good mix of topics for the conference.  It is not an easy task as we always face the difficult decision to exclude some great speakers and equally great topics.  We have concluded our selections for this years conference and I am pleased to announce that the following speakers were selected to present at DotNetNuke Connections:

• Beatriz Oliveira
• Brandon Haynes
• Bruce Chapman
• Cathal Connolly
• Chad Nash
• Charles Nurse
• Cuong Dang
• Ian Robinson
• Jenni Merrifield
• Joe Brinkman
• Keivan Beigi
• Kristian Ranstrom
• Mitchel Sellers
• Navin Nagiah
• Nick Christy
• Rob Chartier
• Scott Willhite
• Shaun Walker
• Will Strohl
  

For more information on the Conference and the Sessions which were selected, please visit the DotNetNuke Connections section of DotNetNuke.com.

As I indicated last week, I am pleased to announce the Call for Speakers for the 2010 DotNetNuke Connections conference.  Once again, this years conference will be held at the Mandalay Bay in Las Vegas from November 1st through the 4th with pre and post-conference training available as well. 

We could not do this show without our speakers and we have been fortunate in the past to have had some great session proposals by many well respected speakers.  Some of those speakers have been selected to present their sessions and unfortunately some of them have not been.  Such is the nature of any conference.  As usual we will continue to look for new speakers to bring fresh new topics to the conference.  So if you have submitted sessions in the past then I would encourage you to submit again.  If you have public speaking experience and some great ideas for sessions then I would invite you to submit your sessions as well.

Remember that all speakers will be required to present at least two sessions.  So make sure you submit plenty of session abstracts to improve your odds of getting selected.

Speaker Benefits

Every speaker at the DotNetNuke Connections conference will receive 4 nights of lodging at the Mandalay Bay Casino and Hotel along with free conference registration. Conference registration will allow every attendee full access to the expo hall, and all sessions at the DevConnections and DotNetNuke Connections conferences. (Pre and Post conference training days are not covered in the complimentary registration).

We are once again in the heart of the planning season for the DotNetNuke DevConnections and SDC conferences. It is that time of year when we ask all of you to submit your session abstracts for this years DotNetNuke North American conference.  Later this week we’ll be opening up the official Call for Speakers on DotNetNuke.com, but I wanted to take the opportunity to give speakers a heads up so they could start preparing their abstracts so that they are ready once we open the submission form.  Like the last three years, we are accepting  session submissions in 4 different topic areas:  Development, Design, Administration and Open Source.

Development – These are basically session dealing with code.  Whether it is topic on module development or building custom providers or dissecting the internals of DotNetNuke, anything that would appeal to the software coders is fair game.

Design – This topic area is targeted at the web designers.  This goes beyond just talking about skins.  It also includes topics like SEO, and accessibility and can even include Localization.  These sessions should focus more on the aesthetic and usability aspects of building a DotNetNuke website.

Administration – This topic area is where speakers present sessions that address the needs of the end user.  How do they install DotNetNuke, how do they configure it for a Web Farm or to run in the cloud(this is different that writing a module that uses cloud services), how can they improve site performance.  These sessions really focus on the day to day use and administration of running a DotNetNuke website.  This topic area is also a catchall for any business related topics.

Open Source – This final topic area is designed to show attendees how they can incorporate other Open Source tools into their development, design and administration tasks.  It might be a topic on using Watin for testing or using GIMP and Paint.Net for creating your skin elements.  The idea here is to expand the attendees view of the Open Source community and to bring in fresh and complimentary ideas from other Open Source projects.  These sessions should still be relevant to DotNetNuke in a very meaningful way.  A topic showing all the wonders of using Wordpress for blogging is not appropriate.

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Yesterday, announcements went out to speakers who submitted sessions for DotNetNuke OpenForce North America.  During the call for speakers we received almost 200 entries and 70 speakers.  Obviously, everyone cannot speak and making the selections was extremely difficult.  We appreciate all of the input we received which made our task both easier and more difficult.  Easier in that there were lots of great topics to choose from so getting good coverage across all the tracks was relatively simple, and more difficult in that we knew that we would have to eliminate many great topics and speakers.

The selection committee members each assigned a ranking of 1 to 5 to each of the submitted sessions and the highest ranking sessions were then reviewed and discussed to come up with the final list of sessions.  During this process we had to do a little balancing to make sure we had a good mix of sessions across all the tracks, but given the great list of sessions, that was a relatively painless exercise.

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Once again the DotNetNuke community will be heading off to Las Vegas in November for the annual DotNetNuke OpenForce North America conference.  We are looking for a handful of people who want free hotel accommodations and conference admission.  All you have to do is get selected to be a speaker.  You know you have a lot of great insight and knowledge of DotNetNuke and would love to share it with the DotNetNuke community.  Well today is your last chance to turn in your speaker submissions for the North American conference.  Just go to the OpenForce homepage at http://www.openforce09.com and follow the directions but you better hurry before time runs out.

We are once again in the heart of the planning season for DotNetNuke OpenForce. It is that time of year when we ask all of you to submit your session abstracts for this years OpenForce North America conference.  I know that the last 2 years, we have had great response from our community and I expect that this year will be no different.

Like the last two years, we are accepting  session submissions in 4 different topic areas:  Development, Design, Administration and Open Source.

Development – These are basically session dealing with code.  Whether it is topic on module development or building custom providers or dissecting the internals of DotNetNuke, anything that would appeal to the software coders is fair game.

Design – This topic area is targeted at the web designers.  This goes beyond just talking about skins.  It also includes topics like SEO, and accessibility and can even include Localization.  These sessions should focus more on the aesthetic and usability aspects of building a DotNetNuke website.

Administration – This topic area is where speakers present sessions that address the needs of the end user.  How do they install DotNetNuke, how do they configure it for a Web Farm or to run in the cloud(this is different that writing a module that uses cloud services), how can they improve site performance.  These sessions really focus on the day to day use and administration of running a DotNetNuke website.  This topic area is also a catchall for any business related topics.

Open Source – This final topic area is designed to show attendees how they can incorporate other Open Source tools into their development, design and administration tasks.  It might be a topic on using XUnit for testing or using GIMP and Paint.Net for creating your skin elements.  The idea here is to expand the attendees view of the Open Source community and to bring in fresh and complimentary ideas from other Open Source projects.  These sessions should still be relevant to DotNetNuke in a very meaningful way.  A topic showing all the wonders of using Wordpress for blogging is not appropriate.

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It doesn’t seem like it was all that long ago that I was walking down the halls at the Mandalay Bay convention center and seeing the DotNetNuke OpenForce registration booth for the first time.  Last year was definitely an exciting time to be at OpenForce.  It was our first conference so no-one was quite certain what to expect.  The one thing I can say for sure is that it everyone who I spoke with, came away with a renewed sense of excitement and energy.

We are once again in the final stretch for the OpenForce conference.  Speakers are making the final tweaks to what I am certain will be another set of outstanding presentations. Exhibitors are busy making last minute updates to their booths.  Most of the planning is complete and we are just wrapping up the last little details.

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