Conference

You're rebuilding your website and you don't want to make the same mistakes as the last one. This time around it needs to be different. This time you realize that building a website is a lot easier than maintaining a website. You're in luck. The second annual Now What? Conference — the conference that gives you the know-how to manage your website post-launch — has finalized its lineup and looks to expand upon last year's successful event with bigger names and a full day of workshops.

The Jahia Solutions Group recently sent us a message through our good friend Anne de Forsan. They wanted to let us know that Jahia 7 will be unveiled during JahiaOne. JahiaOne is Jahia's first international user conference which will be held in Paris for two days, February 6-7, 2014. The open source vendor is presenting this new generation Java CMS solutions at the conference. They're also focused on their own vision of "Digital Industrialization".

At the 2013 CMS Expo Learning & Business Conference I have the privilege of moderating a panel focused on the Cloud. That's actually a broad topic, but I think it's a topic that is increasingly becoming well understood by the CMS community. Last year, I moderated a similar panel and, in my opinion, we spent way too much time trying to define the Cloud.

Thanks to Blend Interactive's Corey Vilhauer, I was reminded via an email blast that this is the last day to register for the Now What? Conference at the "early bird" price. This one-day conference is designed to help anyone who works with a website post-launch answer the question, “How do we keep our website useful and relevant?” The conference was created to help bring together web and marketing professionals from across the region to hear from some of today’s leaders in web project management, web governance, and content strategy while talking shop with colleagues and speakers.

Attendees from diverse industries gather to leverage open source platform for innovation, participation and efficiency

For a second year in a row, I along with CMS Report was invited to cover Liferay's North America Symposium which is being held this year in San Francisco. During this morning's keynote speech by Bryan Cheung, Liferay CEO and founder, I couldn't walk away from the presentation without recognizing the difference a year can make for one company. Something has changed for Liferay and the many partners and associated vendors that are represented here at this conference. Liferay has grown up, people are ready to talk business, and they're once again ready to talk about the importance of open source and community which makes this all happen.

The folks over at Netgen (Zagreb, Croatia) wanted me to make mention of the upcoming eZ Publish Summer Camp being held in Bol, Croatia from September 5th to 8th this year. Besides being supportive of almost any conference that promotes CMSs, I thought if my Croatian grandmother was still alive today she would be quite pleased I was talking about Croatia. This three day conference promises to address a number of needs for eZ Publish developers while also giving you a chance to also spend some vacation time in boat and wine country.

One of the benefits of conferences such as last week's CMS Expo are the opportunities to come across content management systems you know nothing about. Such was the case for me when I was introduced to Wondercode, a content management and e-commerce solution developed by a Norwegian company. My introduction to Wondercode was in a showcase session with Sven-Erik Knoff as the presenter. 

Hundreds of corporate and commercial websites run Wondercode, each with their own unique twist and functionality. This panel will go in depth in showing you just how flexible, customizable and powerful Wondercode is

Although, I like to consider myself unbiased when I blog about content management systems, it is no secret that Drupal holds a special place in my heart. Drupal was one of the first CMSs I used that didn't "dead-end" me on a project I was required to support. Over the years, the Drupal community has treated me well, even during those times when I was very wrong in my judgment of Drupal. If Drupal was not a part of my world, I'm not sure I would even be blogging about content management systems. Drupal is the open source standard for which I judge other CMSs.

Dana Blakenhorn is one of the keynote speakers here at Liferay West Coast Symposium. He's probably one of the most non-Liferay speakers at this symposium giving him the perfect opportunity to express new ideas to this community of Liferay developers, partners, and users. I love these "strength of weak-ties" guests in conferences as it allows for some people in this crowd to "get it" and run with it.

The description for his talk: