I was truly amazed by the turnout at last night’s Toronto Area DotNetNuke User Group (TADUG). The reason I was amazed was the competition – let me explain.
As most people are aware, Canada is first and foremost a hockey crazy country and currently the NHL’s Stanley Cup Playoffs are on. Last night’s scheduled game was going to be the most interesting game of the entire NHL playoffs so far. The under-dog Montreal Canadians were playing the current Stanley Cup champions Pittsburgh Penguins in Game 7 of a 7 Game playoff series! It doesn’t get any better. It was the topic of discussion on every media outlet in Canada.
Having planned the meeting over a month ago, I had hoped that I would not be up against a significant playoff game. I knew there would be a game, as 2 games were being played every night currently, but a game 7 with the only remaining Canadian team –Yikes! I was concerned that the turn-out would be weak. Remember this was only the second meeting of the User Group.
We were lucky to have Chris Hammond from DNN Corporation as the night’s presenter, so I was hoping for a good turn-out for Chris’s sake. But it seems that the hockey gods were playing hardball.
Chris and I arrived at the venue about 15 minutes before the start time, to find only one person waiting. Not Good… Once I got the meeting room opened, a few others arrived. And slowly over the next 30 minutes the number slowly grew -- and grew.
Once the Chris started his presentation we had 14 attendees and several others joined after that. The meeting room was nicely filled. Chris’s presentation on Administering DotNetNuke was very informative and very well received. Great Stuff!
Another indication of a great meeting was the number of people who stay after the presentation to network and speak with the presenter. I finally had to ask people to clear out of the meeting room when the cleaner arrived about 20 minutes after the presentation finished. The conversations continue at a local water hole.
The main conclusion I can draw from the turn-out is that DotNetNuke has made a powerful impact into the attendee’s world that overtakes even the hockey play-offs. Also, the turn-out shows that there is a need for DotNetNuke information exchange in the Toronto area which I hope TADUG will help fill.
Again, I would like to thank everyone that turn-out given the competition …
Paul.
PS. In-case you didn’t hear, the Montreal Canadians beat the Pittsburgh Penguins by a score of 5 to 2. Montreal went wild!