2013 Liferay Community Pulse Awards

As 2013 comes to a close, I'd like to once again thank each and every one of you who have done your part to improve our community through valued participation and contribution. I know I sound like a broken record when I say this, but it's absolutely true that Liferay would not enjoy the success it has enjoyed nor be anywhere close to the same level of worldwide usefulness if it wasn't for our open source community.

One of the things I strongly believe in is recognizing those that give back, especially those that do so more than others. I believe peer recognition of achievements is of great value to the entire community, not just to those that receive it. So, as we close out this year, I'd like to once again recognize those individuals and companies that contributed more than most to our community over the last year, and hope that by doing so it not only encourages them to continue to give value to the community, but also sets a good example for others to follow in the future!

This year, Liferay re-branded all of the awards as Liferay Pulse Awards, and so what follows is a list and description of the community awards I was honored to be able to reveal and present at a few of the Liferay Conferences that took place this year. So.. on with the show!

Liferay Pulse Award: Community Contributor of the Year

This award is given to individuals (not employed by Liferay or its partners) that volunteer their time and effort to make Liferay and its community better. This year, extra marks were given for well-rounded participation and contribution in different areas, as well as for value given through non-liferay.com venues (e.g. personal blogs, stackoverflow.com, and others).

In no particular order, I present to you our Liferay Community Contributors of the Year for 2013!

Aniceto P. Madrid

Aniceto Pérez y Madrid is CEO and founder of Innovasoft Proyectos y Servicios, based in Madrid, Spain. Aniceto actively contributed to Liferay in Community Verifier and other programs, and is involved with the Liferay developer community and participates in the Liferay Forums.

 

David Kubitza

Based in Germany, David's main contributions have been in Liferay core technology, and he's done a great job in BugSquad, finding and/or fixing almost 40 non-trivial fixes and improvements for Liferay projects. David is a regular IRC user and regularly visits the #liferay IRC channel to discuss bugs, features etc., get some help, and give some help back to other users.

Luis Mas

Another of our valued Spanish community members, Luis had probably the most well-rounded participation out of the bunch, singlehandedly translating all of Liferay Portal into Catalan, but also active on the forums and finding bugs in BugSquad. Luis is also an active member of the Spain User Group.
 
 

Gnaniyar Zubair

Gnaniyar is a Liferay consultant in Saudi Arabia and also has a very well-rounded profile in our community. He is very helpful on our forums (he had one of the highest answer-to-post ratio in the community), fixed several 6.2 bugs, and spreads his knowledge via his personal blog Recently, Gnaniyar contributed a WCM feature in Liferay for publishing any versions of the article and has been involved many R&D process which will be available soon in the Liferay Marketplace.
 

David Nebinger

A repeat winner from the USA, David is extremely helpful to newcomers and experts alike on our forums, with the highest total of posts and answers (over 1700 high quality forum posts in the last year), contributions to our wiki, an active blogger, and contributions to Liferay Portal core as well.

 

If you see these folks in our community, be sure to congratulate them on a job very well done this year!

 

Liferay Pulse Award: Community Excellence

The Community Excellence award is given to those worldwide companies in our Liferay Partner community who demonstrate a unique and valuable dedication to our open source community. Companies here have spent their own time and resources to make our community better, which of course benefits everyone, so we recognize them here and thank them for their dedication to growing Liferay and its community.

EmDev (Russia)

EmDev continued their unique track record this year with a team of highly dedicated and smart community members that were active on our Russian and English forums, and were one of the first to contribute to the Liferay Marketplace (and was a runner-up in the Marketplace App Contest), along with ensuring that the Liferay Portal Russian translation was 100% complete and of super-high quality.

 

Permeance (Australia)

Permeance had yet another stellar year in our community, super-active in both Community Verifier and in our 6.2 Beta program. In addition, Permeance helps to organize and contribute to the Australia user group, contributed over 7 apps to the Marketplace (and was a runner-up Marketplace App Contest winner).

 

 

Cignex Datamatics (Worldwide)

Cignex Datamatics has always been a hugely valuable member of our partner and open source communities, and this year is no different. They are again recipients of this Community Excellence award through their contributions in many areas including our forums, wiki curation, the Marketplace (where their app Mercado was a runner-up prize winner), and heavily contributed to BugSquad and Community Verifier.

 

Componence (Netherlands)

Again this year, Componence demonstrated their value through their tireless and well-rounded community activity on the forums, Marketplace, bugfixing, website contributions, and at local events for the Netherlands User Group and Liferay Conferences. Componence also ensured the Dutch translation was 100% complete and correct, and was active in BugSquad and our Community Leadership Team as well. We're very lucky to have them in our community!

 

Savoir-faire Linux (Canada)

Savoir-faire Linux is a long time contributor to open source (like the Montreal Python community) and Liferay. They lead the Montreal Liferay User Group as well, and have contributed major features in the past, and continue to do so this year. In addition, they are active on the Liferay forums, and actively maintain the French Canadian translation for Liferay Portal.

 

 

SMC Treviso (Italy)

SMC was one of the first partners of Liferay (and the first in Italy), and this year continued its tradition of supporting our community through contributions to our forums, several Marketplace apps, and is active in BugSquad and founded and continues to build the Italy User Group. They also help coordinate and contribute to our Italian translations (now at 100%), and even translated this year's mobile app for our Liferay Events.

 

 

Dunn Solutions (USA)

Dunn stepped up their game quite a bit this year, and firmly planted their flag in our community through high quality blogging of technical issues in Liferay, several Marketplace apps, and helping our community on the forums. Dunn also participates in and presented at the Chicago User Group.

 

 

Rookies of the Year

The final two awards went to relative newcomers to the partner ecosystem in the last year, and are quickly building their community chops by volunteering their time and energy to give back to the community in various ways. We want to welcome them and recognize their achievements using this award and hope they continue to build on their work done this year in the months and years to come, and set a great example of how our community can grow through consistent and quality participation and contribution.

DCCS (Austria)

Since becoming a Liferay partner in late 2012, DCCS used their prior Liferay expertise to immediately jump into the community and help out those in need on our forums. Looking beyond the dates considered for this award, DCCS looks to be continuing to participate and contribute, and I look forward to seeing them in 2014!

 

 

Solea Solutions (USA)

Solea Solutions, based in Portland, has displayed the kind of passion and willingness to contribute that makes our community great. Since becoming a partner in 2012, they have revived the Portland User Group with a number of outreach community events, contributed a handful of Marketplace apps, and even painted their ride for the North America Symposium.
 

Please join me in congratulating all of these individual contributors and partners. They, along with the rest of our community, are what make my job so rewarding and what I believe makes Liferay stand out above all as an example of open source and community at its best. Great job everyone! I am very happy to see all the enthusiasm and passion for open source and for Liferay, and I look forward to seeing what we can accomplish in 2014.

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