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Liferay East Coast Symposium 2011

Liferay's third annual East Coast Symposium (ECS) will be held in beautiful Leesburg, Virginia on May 10-11, 2011.

ECS 2011 will be a great opportunity for learning, knowledge sharing and networking with blah, blah, and more blah.  Let's talk about how this impacts the community and why you should attend.

Why Should I Attend?
As a community member, you are probably wondering "Is this for me?  Why should I spend the time and money to attend a Liferay Symposium?"  Well, you know all those forum posts, and JIRA issues, and community contributions, and innovative solutions and technologies that swirl around in the Liferay Community?  Those are all backed by real people, just like you, with a passion for excellence and desire to achieve something useful.  What's even more exciting is that everyone has different interests, skills, backgrounds, and roots in various cultures.

Throw all of those people together, entwined with a common thread (Liferay), and amazing things can happen.  Individuals are guaranteed to learn something new, or create the Big New Idea, or even just get to know their fellow community members in way that's not possible over a virtual link.  Companies in attendance will (re-)discover the benefits of using open source for their mission critical apps, and see firsthand how Liferay and its community blend together to make a great product.  When you go back to your desks after the symposium, you will have a newfound respect for the individuals you interact with, along with the knowledge gained by being in a high-bandwidth environment (i.e. face-to-face) for a couple of days.

For those that want to give a little back, this year, for the first time, we are asking the wider community to present their ideas, give their talks, and host their workshops.  This is your chance to showcase your World of Liferay to a dedicated, captivated audience (though we cannot lock the doors for fire safety ). Visit the call for papers site to learn more about this unique opportunity.

Finally, if ECS is too far to travel, or your schedule doesn't permit your attendance, keep in mind that we have many other events throughout the year where you can get together with fellow Liferay'ers.  Check out the events page for more details.  And if you are brave enough, why not host your own Liferay event?  We can help with coordination, and you can get lots of interested people in the same room (your room) to showcase your technology.

Thanks for reading, and hope to see you in May at ECS!