Hear about our experience at the CMS Expo and beyond! The only place you can speak to over 17 specialists in the field (in person!), take various courses ranging in skill levels, and meet hundreds of small business owners, freelancers and hobbyists. Find out what made this event so special for us!

We arrived on Tuesday morning, and on Tuesday evening we met with Kevin Hayne, one of our programmers. He started programming at the age of 13. We’ve worked with him but we’ve never met him in person – it was a great experience! Later on, I (Steven) met with Barrie North and Brian Teeman and had a good chat with them. By the time that ended, it was so late I couldn’t keep my eyes open!

On Wednesday, Barrie, Rafael, and I went to Loveland to ski and snowboard. This was my second time snowboarding ever. (The first time was a few days before, when I learned to snowboard in Michigan!) It was a challenge – the hills where bigger then the ones I’d practiced on (of course!). It was awesome…but MAN was I sore by the end of the day.

Later that evening we attended a speakers dinner to go over the itinerary for the next few days. It was great to see people again, and meet all the new faces.

Thursday was the first day of the expo – and boy, was it busy! There were a lot of booths at the event and a ton of people. The setup was fantastic and easy to navigate. The venue at the Brown Palace was absolutely amazing and the staff was prompt with everyone’s needs. We met many interesting folks including small business owners, freelancers and hobbyists. It’s amazing how diverse the Joomla! is!

At dinner we had a pleasant surprise. Speaker Anthony Ferrara showed up. (Hho’d had a standing ovation after speaking only 10 minutes!) We had an interesting talk – it was great to hear his point of view, even though we didn’t always agree.

After talking from 8AM to 10PM we set off to bed to prepare for Friday. Of course, before we went to bed we had to answer our emails. Before you knew it, it was 2AM. Bring it on, Friday, lets see what you got!

On Thursday, so many people wanted to talk to us that we didn’t have time for them all, so they dropped by the booth on Friday. In the afternoon I did my presentation on Usability and Accessibility. It was good to see that even some seasoned users in the class learned new tricks!

About an hour later Rafael and I did a joint lecture with Azrul on blogging materials and how to blog. We discussed the various techniques and differences between available software. We also featured WordPress for Joomla! 1.5 during the presentation alongside Azrul’s MyBlog.

The evening ended just like the event started – fast-paced and furious! We had a fantastic time seeing the new faces and getting in touch with the people we knew. It’s always amazing to watch one great product bring hundreds of people together under one roof.

Thank you John and Linda for yet another great time!

Tags: Accessibility, denver, expo, Rafael Corral, Steven Pignataro, usability, WordPress

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 10th, 2008 at 11:07 am by Steven and is filed under Expos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.