Kentico Connection: Denver 2019 - My Expectations

The Conference

Kentico Connection 🧡

Every year, Kentico puts on a conference called Connection in several places around the world.

This year the conference was scheduled for:

• Brno, Czech Republic
• Denver, Colorado, USA
• Melbourne, Australia

The Brno conference has already taken place, and you can read more about it in Matt Nield's blog post - Kentico Connection 2019 (Brno) Review:

Connection is an event that promotes the products that come from Kentico - Kentico EMS and Kentico Kontent (previously Kentico Cloud).

The attendees are Kentico's partners, web development and marketing agencies who leverage Kentico's products to build solutions for clients, and those using Kentico's products for their own businesses 🧐.

There are two tracks of speakers - a marketing track and a development track - so, there are benefits and motivations for attending beyond technical discussions and education 😉.

At the end of the conference there is a Partner's Summit. Here, leaders of the businesses using Kentico discuss changes and strategies in the CMS and Digital Experience Platform (DXP) space 🤠.

Kentico Connection: Denver

I will be attending the Denver, Colorado, USA conference this week, and in addition to attending, I will be speaking about Kentico 12 MVC in a talk titled From the Ground Up: Kentico 12 MVC Design Patterns 😎.

Much of the content of the presentation will be either sourced or inspired by the content I've been writing here on DEV this summer. That said, my messaging is more focused in my presentation, and I cover a couple of topics I haven't written about in-depth 🤓.

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What I Hope To Experience

First-Time Attendee

Two of WiredViews' employees, Michael and Nick, attended Kentico Connection in Boston, MA several years ago and they came back to the office excited to try all the new things they learned at the conference 🔥.

I've never attended a Kentico Connection before, but I have attended NG-Conf 5 times in a row, so I do have a conference experience to compare Connection to.

The Community

The thing I'm looking forward to, more than any other, is meeting all the other developers in the Kentico community 🤝.

Before actively writing about Kentico with this blog, I never felt very connected to the rest of the Kentico community, and honestly, I didn't really know if one existed.

This past summer I've been able to have great conversations with other Kentico developers on Twitter and in the community Slack channel. Everyone has been very supportive of my blogging and I've gotten some great feedback 🙏.

I want to turn these digital conversations into real ones and I believe Kentico Connection is the best place to do this.

The City

I've been to Denver several times before on business (either attending the Craft Brewers Conference or the Great American Beer Festival for the company and website I helped co-found - Craft Brewing Business 🍻).

I 💕 Denver, the craft beer scene there is amazing, and the city has great food and things to see or explore, so I'm definitely looking forward to getting out and roaming the city some.

The Company

I'm also looking forward to conversations with the development team at Kentico that build Kentico EMS and Kentico Kontent.

Not only do I hope to learn more about the future directions of Kentico's products, but I also want to get feedback about my contributions to the Kentico development community and learn any ways I can contribute more, with or beyond my blog 📝.

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What I Hope To Learn

ASP.NET Core

I'm very excited for Kentico's transition to ASP.NET Core for Kentico EMS (I've been looking forward to it since way back in May of 2015 📅!!)

The conversion of the "content delivery" side of Kentico EMS to ASP.NET Core puts Kentico in a great position in the .NET CMS ecosystem and opens up the opportunity for overhauling and re-implementing the "content management" side of the application in ASP.NET Core in the future (tentatively planned for 2022) 👍.

I want to learn about all the changes being made in Kentico and what new possibilities are opened up for us developers. I want to know where we should look for pain points and what we can start doing now to prepare for a world of Kentico and .NET Core 🤯.

The MVC 5 Transition

I also want to learn about how Kentico's partners are currently handling the transition to MVC 5 - specifically, what are the benefits they are seeing and where the pain points have been 🤔.

I'd love to get additional thoughts and feedback on my blogging to see if there are topics I could cover to help the community make the transition from Portal Engine to MVC easier 🧐.

Kentico Kontent

Finally, I'd love to learn more about Kentico Kontent and "content-as-a-service" CMS development. I've been exploring Kentico Kontent through the Vue.js based static site generator, Gridsome. Chris Meagher 🥇 has built a very helpful Kentico Kontent plugin for Gridsome and I've been leveraging it to get a feel for what "headless CMS" work is really all about.

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What I Hope To Bring Back

After the conference is over and I'm flying back to Akron, OH, what exactly do I hope I can bring back 🤷‍♀️?

I would love to represent WiredViews as an agency and Kentico partner that has something to contribute to the larger Kentico community, so I'd like to return having built relationships with other developers, business owners, and Kentico employees 🤘.

I also would like to return with insight into the direction of Kentico EMS, through the update of it's technology stack, and where Kentico Kontent fits into the more traditional CMS space 🤓.

I feel that with all the presentations I will see, and all the conversations I'll have, I will bring back a huge wealth of Kentico-related blog post ideas - so stay on the lookout for those in the future 😎.

Unrelated to the products, the technologies, and the people, I'd like to bring home with me a re-charged inspiration for writing and developing, and a clear mental state going into the fall and winter of 2019 🤗.

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Wrap Up

I'll be writing about my thoughts on Kentico Connection: Denver after I get home 🏡.

I still plan on writing more in my Kentico Quick Tips, and Kentico 12: Design Patterns post series, but since there is still 1 more Kentico Connection conference in Melbourne, Australia, I feel anything about write about the Denver conference is very timely.

If anyone reading this will be attending Kentico Connection in Denver, I look forward to seeing you there and hope we can have a conversation about all the cool things Kentico-related, which are being featured at the conference 🎉.

See ya in a couple of days 👋!

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If you are looking for additional Kentico content, checkout the Kentico tag here on DEV:

Or my Kentico blog series:

• Kentico 12: Design Patterns
• Kentico CMS Quick Tips