As a Kentico Gold partner, Bit-Wizards strives to be heavily involved in the Kentico development community. Since the inaugural conference in 2010, Bit-Wizards has attended every Kentico Connection, both in Prague and Denver. This year's Denver conference proved to be a great event that Bit-Wizards was proud to be a part of.
Kentico Connection is the official Kentico CMS developer conference held annually in Europe and US. Providing content for developers and business users, the event is a very poplar conference with attendees from around the world. Kentico Connection 2012 Denver had nearly 120 attendees from the US, Canada, and Europe. Also in attendance were several members of the Kentico development team who provided valuable and insightful guidance to conference attendees with informative sessions and meetings. Focusing on the newly released Kentico CMS v7, the conference included several deep dives into specific technologies, expert guidance on selling and winning on the Kentico CMS platform, and the future of the platform and the CMS industry.
The conference had several sessions for every level of developer or marketer. Kentico CEO Petr Palas started off the event with an engaging and inspiring keystone speech, highlighting many of the new features in version 7. Martin Hejtmanek, Kentico’s CTO, discussed the Kentico API and offered guidance on leveraging new functionality. Kentico’s President of Sales and Operations, Eric Webb, presented on Kentico CMS in the enterprise industry and what new capabilities the platform contains. Several other Kentico developers and marketers filled the agenda with technology deep dives, development guidance, multilingual marketing, and Kentico Enterprise Marketing Suite (EMS). The two- day conference concluded with Petr Palas reviewing the product roadmap and new features coming in Kentico CMS version 8.
Bit-Wizards was honored to present at two different sessions during the Partner Showcase, a special section of the event featuring case studies, project reviews, and developer-lead experiences on a variety of projects. Vince Mayfield, Bit Wizards CEO, administered an in depth look at “Transitioning a Kentico Practice to Windows Azure” with insightful statistics and guidance from an executive point of view. Bit-Wizards’ Director of Technology, Bryan Soltis, discussed migrating an existing web site to Kentico CMS and covered several topics including data migration, Kentico tools, and new functionality in Kentico CMS v7. Both sessions engaged the audience and sparked numerous discussions as attendees learned more about the topics.
Another new session this year was the “Product Planning” session for Ecommerce and on-line marketing. Both Vince and Bryan attended these sessions offering guidance and feedback to help improve the Kentico CMS product. These events will help shape the future of the Kentico CMS and Bit-Wizards was honored to be included.
As in previous years, Kentico conducted the "Ask the Experts" social event where attendees have the opportunity to meet with Kentico experts and discuss real-life issues and concepts. As a Kentico MVP, Bryan was once again selected as an "expert" and enjoyed several discussions with participants while providing in-depth knowledge of Windows Azure and leveraging all the functionality of Kentico CMS on Microsoft's cloud platform.
The interaction and connections partners made with the Kentico team and other partners proved to be one of the best parts of the conference. Geared at sparking creativity and collaboration, the Kentico Connection Conference offered attendees several opportunities to meet and interact with Kentico experts. From the one-on-one sessions to impromptu discussions over a beer at the social event, connecting with others and exchanging information was definitely the theme of the event. Even the laser tag battle ignited the camaraderie as warriors battled it out on the darkened battlefield!
Kentico Connection Denver 2012 was truly a great conference filled with great information and people. Showcasing new features and discussing real-life scenarios, Kentico delivered an excellent event that everyone enjoyed.