A big thank you to everyone who came out to Atlanta for our second annual Cascade Server User's Conference! We had over eighty attendees from forty-five different organizations.
We did a few things different this year to encourage participation and interaction between attendees early on, including a new "Birds of a Feather" session where people could ask questions, answer questions, and brainstorm in a small group setting. Breaking up into different groups early helped get people talking and sparked some conversations that are probably still going on right now.
Special thanks to David Wisniewski from Brandeis University for facilitating a CMS Show and Tell session, as well as Eric Palmer from University of Richmond, and Nathan Glass and Stephanie Kern, both from Texas A& M Health Science Center, for leading sessions and sharing their amazing Cascade Server implementations.
Of course we had excellent speakers from Hannon Hill too: Bradley Wagner demonstrated the new Cascade Server 5.0, and Collin VanDyck offered a tutorial in load balancing – something new for 5.0. David Klanac showed how Cascade Server can be used quite effectively in Rapid Application Development, and Amy Liu explained how to manage a site redesign effectively. Anyone who sat in on Syl Turner's presentation should have a much clearer understanding of workflows, and if you were lucky enough to catch Sean Sawyer's, you'll be able to do some really cool things with XSL. Videos of the presentations will be available shortly, so watch this space.
Monday night was especially fun for us at Hannon Hill; our Open House gave us all a chance to relax, get to know our clients a bit better, and share a little of our "corporate culture." We look forward to the conference every year because our clients are so much fun – especially when you get a few of them together!
And thanks to everyone for sticking in there with us despite a few setbacks – a power outage at our host hotel for starters. The good news is, I think we may have found a slogan for next year's conference: "2008 – bigger, better, and this time with Air Conditioning!"
Hope to see you all again next year!