Blogs

Guess what?  It's time for another Community Roundup!  I know it's been a while since the last roundup.  It's been quite a busy last few months in the Liferay Community.  We saw the release of several Liferay product updates, the soft opening of the Liferay Marketplace, and several new initiatives in the community.  I'll try to cover as much as I can, filtering only the best for you, with lots of links to keep you informed and up to date.  On with the show!

• The fall event season is heating up.  I don't get out much, so it's nice to be able to connect an online identity to a real person every once in a while.  Liferay is active in community meetups and industry events -- you may have seen us at this year's OSCON, and read below for details on local community meetups happening around the world.  Many events are free to attend (like our community meetups), so don't hesitate to come say hi if you can! We will also be at Gartner's PCC in London, the Jenkins User Conference in San Francisco, JavaOne (also in SF), the AFCEA Fort Knox Industry Day, and then the entire month of October (and some of November) you'll find 4 Liferay Symposiums in a row - San Francisco, Frankfurt, Madrid, and Milan.
• Speaking of symposiums, last year we began to accept topic submissions from our community.  Last year, at the US symposiums, I believe we got around 5 submissions.  This year, it was close to 30.  I'm guessing the European symposiums are seeing a similar increase!  I was shocked and awed at this.  And they weren't run of the mill sales pitches, these were real technology and community discussions, which I'm sure made it tough on the organizers to choose.  You can see the program listings: [North America, Europe, Spain] and I highly encourage you to attend at least one.  The Spain and Europe CFPs are still open, so be sure to submit if you've got a topic you wish to present.
• The much anticiated opening of the Liferay Marketplace finally arrived in late July.  The Liferay Marketplace is the new place for our community to share, browse, and download Liferay-compatible apps.  You can find all of Liferay's supported plugins, and in the near future you will be able to upload your own applications, and make them available on the Marketplace.  Next week (August 27-31), Liferay will host several live sessions in multiple languages and timezones to discuss how you can use the Marketplace and what you can do with it today, and what's coming up.  I highly recommend you attend at least one!
• Also on the release front, we saw the release of Liferay Social Office 2.0 CE.  A much needed refresh of the Social Office product, this new release has too many new features to go over here.  It looks really great, so give it a go!
• July also saw the release of Liferay Portal 6.1 CE GA2 and EE GA2.  This update brought several important updates to the platform, including support for the aforementioned Marketplace, and important security updates.
• Security is very important to anyone who uses Liferay, and the newly-formed Community Security Team has taken on the task to educate developers on security, and help to find, fix, and notify the community about security issues in Liferay.  If you are interested in learning more or joining this effort, contact the team today!
• As you know, last year we began the Community Verifier team, to help verify existing issues in Liferay, and clean up our JIRA database of backlogged issues.  The team has donated a huge amount of their time, and has verified/triaged over 370 issues since January.  Well done!
• Juan Gonzalez (aka juangon) is a very active in our community and is always willing to contribute, whether it's on the forums, the Community Security Team, or even on other open source projects.  Most recently, he collaborated with the fine folks on the XMLPortletFactory to integrate it with Liferay's built-in workflow engine.  Check out Liferay XMLPortletFactory Workflows!
• Participation in our community is one of the best ways to get to know the technology.  Contributions, no matter how small, should be treated as a gift to the community, and we have not done a great job to date of shepharding those contributions into the project.  In an effort to improve this, Drew Blessing has kicked off a new effort in the Community Verifier program to pair up contributors, community verifiers, and Liferay core engineers, and get those contributions flowing once again.  But we need your help!  If interested in joining the CV program, please join this thread and get involved!
• Shout-out to our 2012 Q2 Top Contributors: Jelmer, Tejas, and Amit have been kicking butt in their own special ways in our community, and I want to personally thank them for their efforts.  Of course everyone who contributes should be commended, and so I look forward to Q3 and beyond.
• Olaf continues to provide visibility into our community, through his regular podcast.  Most recently, Radio Liferay has featured Jim Hinkey on Javadocs, Bruno Farache (aka Bruno Admin), Juan Fernández (Core Engineer and active Community guy), Michael Young (One of Liferay's Founders), Jeffrey Handa (Training), Greg Amerson (of IDE fame), and a host of others.
• More Liferay User Groups are popping up!  We welcome new groups in Denver (US), New York/New Jersey (US), Dortmund (DE), and Twin Cities (US).
• User Group activity is picking up across the world.  India held their first and second meetups in Pune and Ahmedabad, and plans for Bangalore later this year.  The UK is lighting up as well, with meetups planned for September.  Spain, Netherlands, Dortmund, Austin, Denver, Twin Cities, and Belgium also have (or recently had) events - check their pages for details, and get to know your local Liferay community!
• CMSWire recently held a discussion: "Does Open Source Encourage and Support Innovation?".  This is of course very important to understand when considering Open Source for your business.  We in the community of course believe in it, but it's nice to see an external perspective.  Of course, the only vendors consulted were open source, but the arguments made are sound in this blogger's opinion!
• Our Liferay Community is but one of many in the software industry.  Roland (from Nuxeo) recently talked with community managers from several open source communities (including ours!), and wrote a nice 4-part piece on the practice of community management. [Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4].