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For those in the DNN community who don’t already know you, can you tell us who you are and what you do?
I'm the CEO and Chief Software Architect of Inspector IT Inc, a .net and DotNetNuke solutions provider based in the Washington DC Metro Area. Inspector IT’s primary core competencies range from large scale e-commerce applications architecture and development to mash-ups, social networking components and Web 2.0 solutions.
Furthermore, I am co-founder and president of the Capital DotNetNuke User Group, which brings Washington metro area DotNetNuke enthusiasts together once a month to discuss a wide range of topics as well share ideas, knowledge and experience on the platform. I am a member of the DotNetNuke Core team of developers and lead the development of the Blog module.
I lived and traveled extensively in Europe, Africa and the Middle-East prior to settling in the Washington DC area in 1999. Besides English, I’m proficient in Italian, French, Spanish, Portuguese and Arabic. I blog at cto20.com and have been known to frequent Twitter a little more than I'd like to admit.
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When and how did you get involved with DotNetNuke?
My involvement with DotNetNuke began in the IBuySpy days. As Microsoft announced the .net Framework, it released a few sample applications to be used as learning blocks for those old classic ASP developers such as myself. IBuySpy was the app I chose to learn ASP.NET. Shortly thereafter, I came across a fellow developer by the name of Shawn Walker who had taken IBuySpy, a C# based application, and along with a few other brave men, re-wrote it in VB.NET, which ultimately gave birth to DotNetNuke. VB was my "first language" at the time, and therefore, my gravitation to DNN was quite natural.
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What draws you to open source software and to DNN in particular?
The reason I became involved with DotNetNuke was not necessarily because it was open source, but more so because it gave me a head start while getting up to speed with .net. In many ways DNN has helped me grow as a professional, something that wouldn’t have been possible had it not been open source software. Along the way I embraced open source in the more traditional sense by contributing to the development and supporting the community at large by leading the development effort of the Blog module for DNN as well as initiating other small open source projects.
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How did you become the DNN blog project lead and what can we expect from the module in the future?
In 2006 Nik Kalyani and I co-founded the Capital DotNetNuke User Group (CDUG). Shortly thereafter the Blog module lost its project lead and Nik asked if I would take over the management and development of the module as well as build a solid support team for the project and its users. I accepted. Today, we have a team of 6 committed members, including myself, who maintain the product and shape its roadmap.
Although the Blog module has evolved by leaps and bounds in recent months, we still have lots of room for improvement in order to me considered a competitor to other blog engines, such as Wordpress, BlogEngine.net, SubText etc. To give you a hint, key features of the next major version (4.0) include taxonomy/categorization, tagging, tag cloud, multi-author capability, full templating capabilities, smarter data caching, and a few other enhancements that will surely please the community.
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Tell us about the Capital DNN User Group (CDUG) and your experience with getting other people involved in the community.
As I mentioned, Nik and I co-founded the group almost 3 years ago. Since then, Nik has moved to the west coast and there have been times when I felt I was way in over my head, but we pulled through and persisted until we reached a critical mass. This experience has definitely made me appreciate the hard work that other community organizers put forth month in and month out to help educate their fellow professionals.
>Like most user groups, CDUG had to overcome many challenges such as recruiting speakers. Since there weren't many DotNetNuke "experts" in the area, and those who were interested in presenting were out-of-state and could not always afford the costs of the travel, I found myself being a "serial" speaker, in addition to organizing the event. This required that I not only perform my duties as organizer, such as recruiting meetings sponsors etc, but also that I prepare (almost monthly) new material for my presentations.
Thankfully, CDUG was able to gain INETA's attention, and through several rounds of negotiations, as well as help by the DotNetNuke core team leadership, we were the first "product-specific" user group to become an INETA member. The INETA membership enables CDUG to request speakers from their bureau, helping diversify the offerings of the group and bring new ideas to our members.
The DotNetNuke commercial ecosystem has also grown exponentially since we first started. DNN ISVs now see user group speaking engagements as a marketing vehicle for their business and therefore are willing to make the investment to come and speak at our events.
The next challenge was acquiring sponsorship. I am pleased to say that since inviting Hal Hayes to become CDUG's VP for Marketing, we have been able to attract and acquire sponsors who provide full product licenses as raffle give-aways to our members. Our sponsors include Red Gate, Infragistics, Telerik, Nevron, and of course CodeZone.com, which supplies user groups packages that include books, software and even hardware. Give-aways are a great way to grow membership and improve attendance, and it is always great to see people leave with a big smile on their faces.
Leading and cultivating CDUG has been one of the most difficult things I have done in my life and to this day it requires dedication, passion and of course sacrifices, but at the same time it has been one of the most rewarding experiences of my life.
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You've recently been awarded Microsoft MVP. What does this recognition mean to you?
I have been privileged to serve the DotNetNuke community, to be a speaker at technical conferences, code camps and user groups. Receiving the Microsoft MVP award was the ultimate validation of my efforts. Even though I really enjoy everything I do within the DNN and .net community, it feels terrific to know that what I have done and continue to do for the community has not gone unnoticed, and that I have somehow been able to make a difference to others’ professional careers.
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If you could change 3 things in the DNN web application framework, the community, or anything else related to DNN, what would they be?
This is an interesting question and much could be said here, but I rather give you sentiments expressed by real-life users, my customers:
- Improve User Experience
In recent releases, DotNetNuke's primary focus has been placed on building a solid underlying framework. Module developers are empowered with many out-of-box features that they can use to build powerful applications with little architectural knowledge and effort. Unfortunately, the user experience (not to be confused with user interface or UI) has paid a price. Other CMS' have overtaken DotNetNuke in this area by applying the now well known Web 2.0 concepts. It’s time to catch up!
- Introduce Content Work-flow and Versioning
DotNetNuke, like it or not, is a content management system (CMS). However, once again, the focus on improving the underlying framework has rendered its "edit-in-place" functionalities stagnant, stale, and out of date. Work-flow (although, admittedly, mostly needed in the enterprise) and content versioning are sore spots that, in my professional opinion, need to be mitigated sooner rather than later.
- Develop Folksonomy APIs (Categories, Content Tagging, Ratings, Comments and Content Syndication)
These functions lack or fail to meet expectations in both the framework, user interface and user experience. Categorization, tagging, rating, commenting, and sharing of content is now an expected feature of any content-centric web sites such as those built on top of DotNetNuke.