DNN OpenForce 07 Day 3

Posted by Tom on Thursday, November 08, 2007 to DNN News, OpenForce 07

Here we are for the final day of OpenForce 2007. There are a total of 6 sessions running today plus a panel discussion that wraps up the conference for this year.

8:20 am - Menu Controls for DNN Skins (Peter Schotman)

• Peter opens with an overview of menu controls currently available for DNN
• he goes briefly into "good old" Solpart and argues that for 70% of his projects Solpart is "just fine"
• next up, Snapsis CSS NavMenu, which fully supports ML and comes close to "ideal menu" according to Peter, top-notch support from John Mitchel
• dnn:NAV - new and improved standard DNN menu, but still lots to be desired in version 1, version 2 is in the works though and looks very promising (get the alpha from Jon Henning)
• Telerik Panelbar & RAD Menu - an abundance of properties, very versatile, and good documentation and support, but rather restrictive license

9:45 am - Panel Discussion: .NET Open Source Architectural Models (Joe Brinkman, Phil Haack, Jay Flowers, Jon Galloway and Rob Connery)

• I think Joe picks up the DNN DAL again and everyone agrees that just because there is a provider model in place for the DAL does not mean people will readily contribute (do you know of a module that supports anything else but SQL server?)
• panel points out that a regular release schedule and an active community are cornerstones for successful open source projects
• since most open source projects are born from and maintained by rather technical minds, conventional marketing and branding is often overlooked, but plays critical role to ensure future growth and widespread adoption of open source projects
• "... community colors architectural process ..." (not sure who coined the phrase, but I love it!)
• Rob Connery experiences acts of "driven inspiration" (just drop everything you are doing right now and write down that piece of code!)
• panel turns to the common question on when and how to listen and implement new product features and Shaun Walker (in the audience) quickly touches on the newly implemented community voting system on dotnetnuke.com
• but even though a feature request may clearly emerge as number 1 as voted by the community, it does not mean it can be implemented "right away," mostly do to overall complexity of particular feature requests
• best of all, Rob Connery "volunteers" to rewrite DNN in C# :)-

2:30 pm - Panel Discussion: DNN - The Road Ahead (Shaun Walker, Nik Kalyani, Scott Willhite, and Joe Brinkman)

• as announced a few weeks ago, Carl Franklin and Richard Campbell of  .NET Rocks! fame are up on stage as well to record this session
• Shaun starts off by reiterating a few slides from his opening keynote, but the DNR guys lighten things up considerably
• as the discussion turns to the DNN Projects (aka core modules), Mitchel Sellers seizes the opportunity and gets in front of the mic in hopes of answers in regards to stale projects
•  we hear from a representative of a rural coop who actually won an award for a solution based on DNN ... well done! (maybe fill in the core team earlier next time? :)-
• an enthusiastic crowd and DNN Corp on stage made for a fun-packed hour, which closes a conference that can only be described as very well received, and which marks another milestone in the evolution of DotNetNuke

Believe it or not, but this is it for the inaugural DNN OpenForce. Thanks for coming out and showing face and thanks also for reading along here ... hope to see you next year!

Oh, and thanks to the gentlemen (sorry, I missed to get his name) who I met in the Mandalay Tram on the way out ... just minutes ago he was reading this very blog ... small world.

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