Two weeks ago I attended the Kentico Connection 2011 conference in Denver. This was Kentico’s second year for the conference, and their first in North America. Like most business conferences, the time leading up to this event was filled with chaos, expectations, excitement and uncertainty.
While this was not my first software vendor conference (I was a Sage and Microsoft partner for many years in a prior career), this was my first Kentico Software conference. It was not the largest or most extravagant conference I have been to in my years of working with software companies, but it was, without question, one of the most memorable. Why? Simple – the people at the conference put a real face on the Kentico brand for me.
Kentico’s CEO Petr Palas set the stage for the conference in his opening remarks when he stated that the purpose of the conference was not just for learning about Kentico’s products, but it was also an opportunity for people to connect face to face. For Kentico’s staff this was a chance to meet the many partners and end users they communicate with via the web. And for the partners and end users it was a chance to ask candid questions and seek expert advice.
As the conference concluded, the new face of Kentico Software emerged to look something like this:
In the end, I got to see and test drive the new features and functions of both Kentico CMS 6.0 and Kentico EMS (future blog posts), but better than that, I met some amazing people, made new friends and discovered how transparent and approachable Kentico was as an organization and a community. That is something I truly appreciate as a solution partner for Kentico CMS and believe many of you will as well.