It was an interesting night at the Vermont .NET User's Group tonight for me in several ways. First, I got to give a short presentation on Community Server, so those Telligent endorphines are still kicking in hours later.
Only local boys were behind the podium tonight to engage in Julie Lerman's "Battle of the Portals." Me with Community Server, Paul Swider on SharePoint Portal Server and Jon Limmer on DotNetNuke. We even had bonus appearances by Tom Cooley, who tag-teamed with Jon on DotNetNuke, and Rob Hale, who did a "newbie" session on The Observer Pattern. (Observer Pattern / newbie / Observer Pattern / newbie...mmm. Vermont obviously has really smart Newbies! At least that's what I've observed.)
We also crossed another threshold tonight: the meeting actually went on after Julie Lerman left to head home to bed to get an early start to TechEd at Beantown tomorrow. Apparently she's booked for one continuous series of geek parties and will need her rest. But the fact that a Vermont .NET meeting continued without Julie in attendance meant that maybe we were there for the content after all? Of course, if Julie were to move to Montana or some such place, VTDotNet would fold in about a week, but it's nice to think we could actually do something without her in the center of it, if for only an hour.
Okay, enough of the chit-chat. Let's get to my Community Server presentation. My goal was to introduce the folks to Community Server, not dig into the framework, demonstrate skinning or explain the Provider Model like I've done at Code Camps in the past. I'm seeing that developers don't seem to understand what Community Server DOES or how it could benefit them. They simply don't get Community Server. Community Server, for many, simply isn't very approachable. It's one of my goals to change that.
As for what Community Server does, I simply went to communityserver.org. "This is Community Server. What you see here is what Community Server does." Early on I shared something Rob Howard said once, that Community Server isn't trying to build the next digg.com; Community Server provides a framework for
its users to build the next digg.com. I think people seemed to get that.
There was also a real interest in the room to understand the role of
Open Source in Community Server, considering that it was also a
commercial product, and understand what was free and what wasn't. I think I was able to clarify that for them by covering the Add-ons and various enterprise capabilities of Community Server. It would have been helpful
to touch on the Server Licensing chart, which does a great job distinguishing the various commerical components of Community Server from the free framework source. But I didn't think of it at the time.
My goal was to take only 30 minutes, though technically I was scheduled to take an hour. I did go over by 10 minutes, but only to answer questions. I think we left them with a hunger for more that only a visit to
communityserver.org can satisfy. Come to the table and drink from the sacred cs.org chalice, my Vermont brothers and sisters.
Every presentation (for guys like me who don't do it all of the time) is a valuable learning experience. In thinking back on tonight's presentation, I am happy with my delivery in that it was not as deliberate and premeditative as I think it's been in the past. Much better flow. Nor do I think I was talking too quickly or overly excited about the material. I felt relaxed and motivated by the simple desire to share my knowledge, experience and passion for Community Server with others in a way they could understand and perhaps share my enthusiasm. I had a great time, in other words. Thanks, Julie!
I also want to say that each of the other presenters were really terrific. Rob Hale was so good in demonstrating the Observer Pattern that there's a good chance he'll be doing a Pattern Series for us. Paul Swider is so very knowledgeable about SharePoint. And Jon Limmer is a super presenter, who along with Tom Cooley, made me really appreciate DotNetNuke again.
[tags: VTDotNet, .NET, Community Server, Julie Lerman]