France Symposium 2011 Recap

June 15th was our first-ever Liferay France Symposium held in Paris. We had a healthy turnout of over 100 community members, customers, and partners, who came together to learn about what's new in Liferay 6.1, hear customer case studies, and get connected with each other. 
 

Juan Fernandez presents en français at the Liferay France Symposium 2011.

 

We wanted to make the event especially relevant for our local community, so two of our leading engineers, Ray Augé and Juan Fernandez, gave their presentations in French. We also had great case studies from Barclay's and the French Ministry of Defense, who are both using Liferay for partner portals with further plans to expand their usage for other applications. Apologies to those of you who didn't understand the presentations! Our EU Symposium in Frankfurt in October will have all content in English. :) 
 

 

Liferay-based partner portals from Barclay's France and the French Ministry of Defense.

 

We met a lot of great people, including a couple of members from our Community Advisory Board, Boubker Tagnaouti and Yousri Bendiabdallah. I also got to catch up with our partners and customers. We had many interesting conversations about how switching from Websphere or other proprietary portals was challenging (due to conservative corporate environments) but ultimately generated dramatic increases in productivity and reductions in operating costs. Many of our customers have advocated for Liferay against the odds and have been proven wise in their decision. 
 

One of the networking breaks at the event. 

 

People were also very excited to hear about our upcoming Marketplace, which will give them a place to showcase the plug-ins and extensions they're already built for the Liferay platform. After a full day of sessions, we closed the event with a casual mixer along the Seine in front of the Eiffel Tower. 

Special thanks to our partner sponsors of the event: Altendis, Alyotech, GFI, Ippon, Smile, and SQLi! And if you want more in-depth coverage of the content (in French), check out these blogs from one of the attendees: 

We are planning to have another event next year so stay tuned for more details!