Announcing the 2015 Kentico Developer Roadshow!
In my first few months as Kentico’s Technical Evangelist, I’ve had the chance to speak to a lot of developers and produce several blogs to help the community. Working with other coders is one of the best parts of my job, and I really enjoy presenting to a group of developers interested in Kentico. What I have noticed is a lack of events focused on the platform within the community in several large cities. For this reason, I am delighted to introduce the Kentico Developer Roadshow! Think of it as a mini-Kentico Connection, with less karaoke. Well, probably less.
The Idea
We have some great partner-hosted user groups around the world, but there are plenty of areas where developers are having a hard time getting good Kentico information. To help with that, I am creating the Kentico Developer Roadshow (KDR) where I will be coming to a city (hopefully) near you to present a user group for the evening. Much like other user groups, the KDR will be a 1-2 hour meeting where we will dig into a few technical topics and discuss them. The main goal is to bring a user group to the area, educate them on some features / best practices, and promote collaboration in the community. I’m really hoping we get a few new user groups from the event, and the developers in the area continue with the collaboration.
The Details
For the first round, we will be focusing on two major cities in North America where there are a lot of Kentico partners: Toronto and Boston. Each of these locations have great partners in the region, and I think I can reach a lot of developers there. The meetings will be held in the evening (6PM-8PM) at a central location to make it as easy as possible. Kentico will supply the food, drinks, and speaker (me) so all you will need to do is show up!
The format for the event is a presentation with discussion. Everyone is ecnouraged to particapte and discusss their thoughts, problems, and challenges. The event will be very casual and comfortable (i.e. the guy from Florida will be in shorts). And who knows, there may even be a giveaway or two.
Topics
For the topics, there is a voting option during the registration process. Be sure to vote for you favorite option!
- Kentico & Azure
- E-commerce Customization
- Performance / Scalability
- Web Farms / Development Scenarios
- Kentico 9 Roadmap
Dates / Locations
We have selected venues central to each city to make it easy as possible for partners to attend. With the events being in the evening (6PM-8PM), it shoudln't conflict too much with normal business hours.
While the event is free, it will help us to plan the event if attendees register beforehand. Use the links below to let us know you will be there. I am planning on 30-40 at each location, however, having more than 40 at the event means a lot of developers are interested, which is a very good thing! And remember to vote for your favorite topic during registration!
Moving Forward
If I find that there is a lot of interest in the events, I will be continuing to other cities later this year. Some possible locations are Chicago and Denver, but that round is still to be planned fully. The target timeframe would be August / September 2015, so I’ll be sure to keep you updated! And we might even take this idea overseas to UK and Europe, if the response is good.
So what do you think? I’d love to hear your thoughts on the KDR idea and if you think you would be able to attend. And for future events, let me know if you think your city would be a good location!