Toronto Open Source Week 2010
After a long train ride the night before @toddburry and I opened Toronto Open Source Week with our Vanilla workshop at the Yorville Media Center. It was a great experience for us, we’ve done many demos and presentations, but never a workshop, and for our first run, it went off without a hitch!
We had a great venue supplied to us by the bnotions crew. They were very friendly and accommodating with setting up equipment, chairs, and signage. I would highly recommend their space if you are running any kind of workshop or seminar in Toronto. They also offer a wide range of FREE courses on the weekend.
What we covered
- Getting Started with Vanilla
- Setup and Configuration
- The Dashboard
- Custom Logo
- Custom Theme
- Vanilla Connect and SSO
- Import Tool
- Creating Themes
- Creating Plugins
It was unfortunate that the whole Vanilla crew could not make it out to Toronto, but we were lucky enough to have a guest appearance by Tim, our senior developer, via skype to demo ProxyConnect and SSO.
We had a great time and hope to run more workshops soon.
Vanilla Mobile Launches at AndroidTO
@toddburry and I attended the inaugural AndroidTO conference to promote Vanilla Mobile. Vanilla Mobile automatically transforms your community forum into a mobile application experience when viewed from popular touch-based smartphones like iPhoneTM, iPod touchTM, AndroidTM, PalmTM Pre/Pixi, and BlackBerry StormTM. Check it out on your forum by visiting it from your mobile device!
Vanilla TweetUp at the Fox and Firkin
With so many developers, designers, and social media types in town for Toronto Open Source Week we decided to host a TweetUp! This was an informal TweetUp, no speakers, just a bunch of geeks out for drinks! We had a lot of fun mingling with the various communities in Toronto and few out-of-towners in for the BIG event.
Vanilla Presentation at FSOSS
After Spending Day 3 and 4 catching up on email, tweets, facebook, work, and putting the final touches on my presentation, it was time for the long awaited FSOSS (Free Software and Open Source Symposium). I have attended FSOSS 4 years in row and presented at 3 of them. This is by far one of my favorite Open Source conferences in Canada, I would highly recommend it!
As you may know, recently we’ve been ‘On the Road with Vanilla‘ spreading the good word from one conference or event to another. It’s been a busy few weeks for us. We’ve launched 2 new major features: Embed Vanilla and Vanilla Mobile. That being said, Toronto Open Source Week kept us very busy with workshops and events. Our presentation at FSOSS was a major success and garnered a ton of feedback. We are very excited to keep the Vanilla train rolling as we continue to help communities grow.
You can view the presentation here.
FSOSS was a huge success, in my eyes! It was great to connect with some old colleagues, friends, and followers, and a pleasure to meet so many new people.
FSOSS was the perfect end to a fabulous week of geek events in Toronto. We will definitely be back next year!
