Many of the attendees showed up for the informal welcome dinner on Wednesday evening in a restaurant in Neuchatel. It was a great opportunity to meet old friends as well as getting to know the new attendees. 

The real work started next morning with a general assembly where everyone presented himself and his activities with DotNetNuke. Next we collected expectations for the meeting and discussed the setup of the workgroups. After Lunch and Friday Morning, each attendee took part in a workshop of his own interest. Three groups were formed focusing on the following themes: Localization, Ecommerce and Marketing.

Localization

In comparison with North America (the "homeland" of DNN), Europe has specific additional requirements regarding localization: web sites needs to target a multilingual audience, which requires localization of static elements AND content (just FYI: Europe Union has ~20 official languages, Switzerlandalone has 4). We were lucky to have most of the core team members involved in localization as well as a number of developers of ML modules in this group: Vicenç Masanas (DNN localization lead), Erik van Ballegoij (Apollo localization modules), Peter Donker (Document Exchange, a ML module), Benjamin Hermann (EALO), Philipp Becker (MagicContent), Daniel Mettler (2sic’s ML solution) and Jean-Sylvain Boige (Aricie’s ML solution). We were also blessed with the presence of integrators that had vast experience in rolling out ML sites based on DNN. The localization workshop focused on determining a solid roadmap for content localization in DNN core framework. The group set up a list of requirements and lined out a possible approach. Determined requirements include not impacting performance of monolingual portals, providing a solution for both ML capable and non-ML capable modules, and elegance of course. The roadmap that came out of this work includes implementing a language selector on tabs and modules, implementing a mutualised table, as a general "property bag", with a compound key composed of entity type, entity id, entity field name and locale, and text type content columns. The UI and API have been further discussed, details of which will be presented by this work group separately.

Ecommerce

In Europe we face different requirements for ecommerce than there are in the United Stated. The ecommerce workshop focuses, how to improve the Store module to target both markets. Co-team lead Benoit Sarton made it clear that the Store module team wants to provide a solid base for general needs with options for customisations, including its provider based architecture for payment processors, shipping, pricing, etc.

Marketing

The marketing group discussed ways to improve the options of each of the professionals (focusing on the DNN service providers) to address their audience and provide them with materials suitable for European customers.

It was decided to create joint marketing material, starting with a general DNN facts sheets, targeting decision makers of small and medium sized enterprises (SME) in Europe. Other facts sheets covering specific aspects, target groups or vertical markets shall follow as well as videos. This material needs to be translated by network members and will display the network logo as well as a blank space for each member to co-brand it with his company logo and address. We expect this to be of great value for every network member.

There will be a new logo of the network with a strong identity and references to both DNN and Europe. This is nearing completion.

The network will provide a web site to demonstrate using DotNetNuke inEurope (including ML) and the options to extend. This web site will be branded with DotNetNuke and dnn-Europe.net.

We’d also like to extend our web site in the future with services not covered by dotnetnuke.com, e.g. provide an easy to browse and searchable directory of free downloads e.g. for modules, skins, providers and tutorials.

Summary

In the closing session the outcome of the workgroups was presented to the general assembly and discussed. This mostly confirmed the results of the groups. 

A short discussion ensued about the benefits of attending Open Force Europe. Attendees from last year named networking as the main reason for attending and the ability to promote themselves. A number of meeting participants, who did not attend before, are thinking of attending this year to meet again with the guys they got to know at this meeting. However, costs were mentioned as an inhibiting factor a number of times and the lack of really groundbreaking technical details (i.e. they found the content of the conference was more targeted at non DNN experts). Nearly all participants agreed that this meeting was much more effective and preferable to a large conference.

How to proceed with DNN-Europe.net?

Finally, we had a discussion on how to proceed with DNN-Europe.Net.

There was a joint desire to persist and strengthen the network of European DotNetNuke professionals as a DNN stakeholder with high visibility. A strong common brand allows us to present our joint efforts for improved business as well as support the DotNetNuke project and community.

To ensure the commitment of participating members, we decided that there will be a paid membership with a starting fee of 100 € per person, open to all currently registered members. The money shall be used for common activities like design and print of marketing material, pre-finance events, etc. based on joint decisions. We are currently setting up the easiest solution to collect the money, which shall be used for creating marketing material and necessary organization.

Paid membership offers:

-          Access to marketing material

-          Access to private discussions in forums and chat

-          Allows to use the DNN-Europe.Net logo on website and in forums / email signature to demonstrate being part of a large network

-          All paying members will be listed on dnn-Europe.net with company name and logo, proving their status.

There will be still a free membership (to convince new paying members), which

-          provides access to general discussions

-          provides access to internal membership directory

-          provides with 1st hand information from members 

We have all been impressed with the results. We’d like to keep the momentum and therefore we plan the next meeting already this summer, preferable in June (before vacations start) probably in Spain. Details will follow soon. At this meeting, we also have to decide, whether DNN-Europe.Net will present itself and its members with a booth in October at Open Force'09 Europe and how to use the conference for a third meeting as well. As an intermitting option to keep in touch, there are the public and private forums and we are also looking for options and dates to do Live Chat.

Leisure Time!

Besides the work, we had a lot of fun, mainly based on the atmosphere of the conference venue, an Alpine Guesthouse within the snow. The highlight was a nightly walk on Snow shoes to an inn a few kilometres away, where we enjoyed a real Swiss Fondue. Sadly the days passed by much too quickly. A number of participants enjoyed the weekend together skiing the slopes of Portes-du-Soleil. Everyone appeared to have really enjoyed this event.

In our modest opinion this was a great start for our new network within the DotNetNuke community.

[Benjamin Herrmann, Peter Donker, Philipp Becker and Sebastian Leupold]