Blogs

Over the last year, over 1,000 people have attended Liferay's Symposiums.  We have held Symposiums worldwide to simplify attendance and each has been filled with both technical and business leaders looking for indepth knowledge and collaboration on Liferay technologies.  Last week, our largest audience ever, attended the Liferay West Coast Symposium to witness the launch of Liferay 6 EE.  The launch itself was broadcast on Liferay LIVE to even more attendees. 

We announced a great deal at this event and several within the press picked up on the directions we are headed. Here are a few samples:

• CMSCritic: Mike Johnston
  • " Take a look at the recent release of Liferay 6EE for instance.. in my mind, it somewhat speaks to what true content management is, which is why I’ve been so pleased with its release and the advancements that it brings."
• DZone:
  • “Liferay is serious about beating its competitors like eXo platform and Jive.  The “Design with Liferay” program gives major discounts (first year free) to certain converts from other enterprise portal products.  Today's Liferay 6EE release is available in a free 30-day trial as well.”
• FierceContent:
  • “Liferay, an open source portal framework, released Liferay Portal 6 Enterprise Edition. The new package is loaded and includes social collaboration functionality, along with built-in web content management and tools to help developers create customized applications."
• CMSWire
  • “Recently Gartner placed Liferay in their 2010 leader/visionary portion of the Horizontal Portals Magic Quadrant, making the company the only focused, open source, independent portal vendor in that portion of the quadrant among larger players who sprawl across numerous technologies."
• TheServerSide
  • “Liferay 6EE touts a number of new features, but it's the social interaction facilities that I think are the most promising.”
• Michael Cote/RedMonk blog:
  • “As with much of the Java world now, the ideas of an application server, a portal, a container, and a general platform have run together nicely for Liferay.... Clearly, in the portal space, Liferay is looking to pick up migrate-to-cheap portal projects. At the same time, they’re hoping to offer a harbor for Java developers, most of which are casting about for the platform to standardize on."

The Symposium opened with the official Liferay 6EE launch announcement which focused on how the tools which developers have used to build web applications have progressed through several major transitions over the last 20 years - Liferay 6EE launch is significant and a culmimation of years of efforts and represents that next transition.  Brian Chan followed this opening with a team of our lead engineers detailing only a few of the many new features.  Here he is with Ray.

The symposiums are designed to allow individuals throughout the two days to listen and learn but also to collaborate with others.  Here Bryan shows his marketing prowess by engaging in deep discussions with community members,  with the Liferay First Year Free banner next to him.  Liferay's First Year Free offer allows customers to easily start learning how to Design With Liferay. 

Liferay Symposiums are also a way for Liferay's Certified Partners to engage with the community and customers.  These companies have tremendous skill and  have designed an amazing breadth of Liferay solutions worldwide.   Spend 20 minutes with these guys and you'll benefit from years of tips and tricks and expertise.

 Our team even benefits with our discussions with partners like Rivet here who defined several key trends for Liferay.

 And Liferay's partners have specialization in many areas.  Triton here lead putting Liferay on the GSA schedule while also leading many government and non-government initiatives.

Many customers have questions about their projects and at the Symposium they are able to ask: how do I start, what can I build, what are others doing, how much will it cost, and more.   

Expect more and more emphasis on partner and community interaction and leadership in future Symposiums.

Proving socialization leads to enterprise productivity gains.....

Additionally - Web Applications can be a major representation of brand and LEVEL leverages Liferay as a tool for enabling the concepts they design for customers.

 Many community members were able to learn much more about what Liferay can do for them than just how you can build a portal, a website or a collaboration site.  They learned how to leverage all those aspects to build or enhance  a brand.

As intense as the meeting schedule was, there was always time to collaborate. 

What could Chris and Ray be discussing?  And why is Ray using that ancient technology - spreading colored liquid on compressed tree pulp?

Brian Kim also awarded CIGNEX with Partner of the Year while additionally recognizing all our partners. 

CIGNEX  continually drives success for customers while collaborating on ideas for Liferay to better service it's growing worldwide customer base and community.

But while we work hard at these symposiums we also have fun.  So, we decided to have a Saturday Night On the Town party. 

We had beers, hamburgers, pool, darts, donkey kong, skee ball, basketball and Avatar - plus a lot of awesome door prizes followed by some fun marketing puns.

Competitive Basketball as partners and customers interact.  Two new portals projects were actually designed during this session.....

Finally, with all the education, fun and collaboration, we also wanted to give a glimpse at the future.  

Here, if you were there, is where Ray showed Liferay, OSGi, and more!  

Join us for future events (our EU Symposium is already sold out!).  Also attend a roadshow, many of which are quickly filling to capacity!