I have seen a few posts recently about other conferences (Adobe Max and Community Server Developer Conference) that made me think hard about how we have positioned the OpenForce conferences this year.  I remember in past years that events like JavaOne developed a reputation for being nothing more than giant sales and marketing event put on by Sun.  This is a trap that I hope we never fall into with the OpenForce conference.  Our goal from the very beginning has been to create an event where the community could come together and share our experiences and learn from other experts in the community. 

While I know that the community is interested in where we are going with the DotNetNuke...

As part of getting ready for my PowerShell session at OpenForce '07, I am creating a set of helper functions for working with SMO to manipulate and query the database server.  A common need when working with the database is to pass the username and password to various SMO methods.  When I first started coding my examples, I just passed a username and password as parameters into my functions.  This works, but does not exactly look professional when you are sitting in a presentation and typing out passwords in plaintext.

I decided that it would be better to use Get-Credential in this case since it would provide a professional dialog and keep the password hidden throughout the process.  Since I wanted to support both scenarios, I came up with the below function. 

function global:get-sqluser($username="", $password="") { # We are creating an object to which we'll add custom properties $user...

For the past couple of months I have been playing with PowerShell and it has been a real pleasure to dig-in and get my hands dirty in a command-line interface again.  Not since my early days with the Amiga and ARexx have I enjoyed learning about a new CLI and an associated scripting language.  The PowerShell team has done a great job of bringing windows scripting and the CLI into the 21st century.  Not only has Microsoft been putting in a lot of effort into PowerShell, but you are also seeing an explosion of third-parties who have also jumped onboard to push the new language and hosting environment.  Companies like Sapien, Quest, /n Software, and ShellTools are creating great tools and sponsoring...

Last week DotNetNuke OpenForce Europe '07 kicked off our first round of officially sponsored conferences for the DotNetNuke community.  We have been planning for the OpenForce conferences for over a year and it was great just to get the first one out of the way.  Since we have never put together a conference before, we were not always sure what to expect.  The European conference was added in the early summer to our conference lineup, and we did not have as much time as we wanted to get all of the desired marketing pieces in place,...

The DotNetNuke OpenForce '07 Conferences are getting closer and we need your help.  Did he just say "conferences"?  Yes he did.  I am happy to confirm that we are working with the Software Developer Network to co-host the DotNetNuke OpenForce Europe '07 conference.  This conference will expand on the DotNetNuke track for the Software Developer Conference which began with last years SDC event.  We think that this extra conference will help serve those European developers who will not be able to attend the OpenForce '07 conference in Las Vegas.

In order to help make both of these events a success and to ensure that we will be able to continue hosting these events, we need you to help get the word out. Below are the badges Nik Kalyani created for the conferences. While you're adding the badges to your blogs and websites, checkout the OpenForce website....

Having worked with DotNetNuke for more than 4 years now, I have performed literally hundreds of installations.  While the installation process has gotten easier over the years as we have beefed up the installation routines, it is still not automatic. Even though I can install DNN in under a couple minutes, I often cut corners.  I usually just give the Asp.Net process account full control of the web application folder and use an sa account in the DB.  Neither of these are great practices, but setting up the correct permissions is a little more tedious...

The official list of Speakers and Sessions have been posted on the DotNetNuke OpenForce '07 website.  We are really excited about the list of speakers for the conference.  We have a few additional special guests that we are still finalizing and we'll keep you posted once we have confirmed their attendance.

As we started putting the conference together, we thought that it would be a good idea to include the broader .Net Open Source community in the conference.  This first conference still primarily focuses on DotNetNuke, but assuming we are succesful with this first event,...