It is a social event

Ironically, the last FOWA conference I attended was about all aspects of social web apps however no social interaction went on!  After the main speakers gave their lectures everyone went to the four corners of the auditorium and digressed to the great social past-time of glaring at a computer screen.  There was very little human interaction or stimulation.  Contrast that with the CMS Expo, people interacted with each other all day long (and all night long too).  At one point, Kyle Ledbetter, from JoomlaPraise came over to a group of us and said “Alright guys let’s talk about something cool.  Forget this technical talk…we do that on Skype…”.

The point is, CMSX is not just a great place for a technical conference but a haven for all those that need assurance there is life outside of geekdom.

Actual business goes on

At previous conferences I’ve attended, very little business went on and if it did it was one-sided.  To be fair, it’s probably because most the attendees at other conferences were not business people.  I venture to say that the majority of the CMSX attendees are business owners or people with drive to start a business.  The multi-faceted purpose of the expo really lends itself to not just small breakout meetings regarding the latest technology or development standards but engaging debates and conversations on running a web business, or selling software, or how to scale your business (not just your server).  I learned just as much about business as I did anything technical.

The small sessions are the strong point

In other conferences I’ve attended, the main events were the large keynotes.  The CMSX had a handful of general talks, such as Dries Buytaert’s inspiring rally for the Open Source community.  However, the real gem of the expo is in it’s small sessions.  The sessions are not an after thought like many conferences but rather the focus.  It offered a wide range of sessions for it’s attendees.  For coders that need to sharpen their business wit, there was a business tract.  For those looking to broaden their services to another CMS, they had opportunity to get good training in CMSs such as Drupal, Joomla, Plone, and WordPress.   There were even some good overview sessions for lesser known CMSs such as EZPublish.

As someone who typically is skeptical at the value of conferences, I can highly recommend the CMS Expo to anyone.  Plan on attending next year!

More info on the sessions:

http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/288-joomla-sitebuilder-1.html
http://www.cmsexpo.net/sessions/289-joomla-sitebuilder-2.html