You may have heard about an upcoming DNN event in Europe: DNN Connect 2017. And you may even have heard of our association that is in charge of this event. If you haven’t you really need to come out from under your rock and consider travelling over to Spain later this month for the coziest DNN event of the year.

This year we’re going to try something new called the DNN Championships. The idea was borne out of several ideas and observations which I will elaborate on here:

1. On Facebook someone recently asked “why doesn’t DNN Connect award MVPs?”. Interesting idea. But …
2. One of the weaknesses IMHO of the existing DNN MVP program is that it doesn’t “auto-expire” meaning that we used to have a process where some were forced to leave to make room for new ones, but this was done by internal vote and external metrics. It has led to some hard feelings and this is not what this should be about.
3. There are many who do great things with DNN, but not all have the ambition or wish to be an MVP. Or they simply don’t bubble up through the system to get noticed.
4. Before DNN Connect we had yearly meetings under the banner DNN Europe. And these meetings were largely devoted to showing each other what projects we were working on and what (commercial) modules we had developed. This served an important purpose. With DNN Connect we attempted to “up our game” and become a more classical tech conference with sessions largely devoted to new tech. This meant that product/project sessions were largely eliminated from 2015 onwards.
5. In an attempt to provide our members to showcase what they were working on we introduced the concept of “posters” in 2015. Attendees could add one or more projects/modules/etc they were working on and we’d print those out on A3 and pin them up at the event. This allows attendees to stroll the venue and see other’s work. I don’t think it’s an overwhelming success but it was great to see the 30 odd posters lining the wall at the event last year.
6. Last year we extended the posters to be a lead-in to what was called a “glory minute”. Every entrant was allowed a minute “elevator pitch” of their poster before the full audience of the conference on the Friday night.

So this is where we are at now. And the idea we had was to combine all of this into a single competition. So instead of awarding an MVP ship we’ll have a DNN Champion of the year meaning you only keep that title for a year. How will this work in practice?

1. Submission of projects/modules/etc is open to *anyone* (even those not attending the event)
2. Submission is done by entering a poster on the Posters page of this year’s event
3. Note the competition is between projects/extensions and not people. So if you cooperate with others this is fine, too, and you’ll need to share the prize between yourselves.
4. You can enter multiple posters
5. Any poster has to have (significant) relevance to DNN. We reserve the right to refuse posters we deem too far off or you’re abusing the competition.
6. If you happen to be at the DNN Connect event you get a minute or two to do your elevator pitch on the Friday evening. If not your poster will still be shown as we scroll through all of them.
7. The attendees of DNN Connect will vote. So the vote is not open/online. It is closed and will be held at the venue the Friday evening..
8. The winner is awarded a substantial prize. This year 500 USD kindly supplied by Managed.com.

To enter submit your poster here: Posters

Posters have to be in by Sunday-night 21 May 2017 for this year’s competition. Let us know if you have any questions.

Best of luck,

DNN Connect Team