Month: June 2013

Who would you most like to meet at Alfresco Summit and why?

Every year I create a list of “community stars” and I send them a free pass to our annual conference. Some of the things I use to create my list include things like forum helpfulness, #alfresco IRC presence, mailing list activity, meetup hosts, participation in contests, wiki edits, blog and book authors, open source add-ons, contributions to the product (bug reports ,fixes, new features), and activity on stackoverflow.com.

But a key ingredient that has always been missing is you. Of course, you’ve given me your input indirectly–when you award someone points in the forum or you link to one of their blog posts you are boosting that person’s standing in our community. But now I want to ask the question explicitly: Who from our community would you most like to meet in-person at Alfresco Summit and why?

Note that my definition of the Alfresco community is always all-inclusive: employees, partners, customers, and other community contributors, regardless of which specific product they use, all participate in our ecosystem. For this, I’m looking for non-Alfresco employees. Most likely, if you can name an Alfresco employee, they will be at Alfresco Summit.

If you want to name someone publicly you can comment on this post or send a tweet and cc @jeffpotts01. If you’d rather nominate someone privately, feel free to send me an email. My Alfresco address is jeff dot potts at alfresco dot com.

Be sure to specify Boston or Barcelona.

 

End-User How-To Videos for Alfresco Community Edition

I’ve started creating some how-to videos for performing common end-user tasks on Alfresco Community Edition. You can get to them all on this YouTube Playlist or take a look at the ones created so far, below…

The playlist currently includes:

  • Reviewing the sample site
  • Adding users (one at-a-time and by importing a CSV)
  • Creating groups
  • Create a new site
  • Five ways to create content
  • Versioning a document
  • Starting a workflow
  • Updating your profile
  • Exploring social features
  • Configuring user and site dashboards
  • Adding new features to your site

In the very near future I’d like to add some technical how-to’s for Community Edition, including LDAP configuration, CIFS/WebDAV/FTP/IMAP configuration, installing the SharePoint Protocol, installing the Google Docs Integration, configuring inbound and outbound SMTP, basic content model extensions, and basic dashlet development.

If you have ideas for Alfresco Community Edition videos you’d like to see that would help make your Alfresco Community Edition rollout more successful, let me know.

Alfresco Summit 2013 Registration Now Open

Alfresco Summit LogoIt looks like some of you have already taken advantage of the fact that registration for Alfresco Summit 2013 went live yesterday. I guess our “Can’t Wait!” rate is aptly-named!

We’ve updated the web site with a high-level agenda, training course descriptions, hotel and venue information, detailed pricing, and, of course, the registration form (Barcelona, Boston).

Regarding pricing, note that we are doing something a little different this year. Instead of having a single early-bird period we’re having multiple price breaks leading up to the event. The biggest savings happens now through mid-July and then the prices start to go up until we eventually reach the full-price rates.

Networking with others in the community, talking to industry visionaries and Alfresco Engineers, and taking some time to look at your ECM implementation from a new angle are all great reasons to come to Alfresco Summit. But I think the biggest benefit that justifies the cost of the conference, travel, and time away from work is the great content.

If you’ve been to past DevCons you know that this is an information-dense event. That will be the case again this year. To help make that happen, we rely on our passionate community of customers, partners, employees, and other members of the ecosystem to come to the conference and share their story with the rest of us, whether that’s a full-length session or a lightning talk. If you would like to speak, there is still time. You have until June 15 to get your proposal turned in.

Alfresco Summit is the must-attend event for anyone doing anything with our software. Do not wait to register because I want to see you there, have a chance to shake your hand, and thank you for helping make Alfresco the last true innovator in the ECM industry.