dnnGLOBAL 2020 took place on the last weekend of October and we have some thoughts on the event to share.

dnnGLOBAL 2020 was a three-day event held over a Friday through Sunday -- and Saturday was Halloween. Not sure if the holiday impacted attendance, but it would be helpful to know more about attendance trends on a week day vs. a weekend day. Gifford Watkins of Atlantic Webfitters hosted the conference on a platform called Hopin and there were a lot of interesting features offered. Attendees were able to experience many of them and there were still others to explore in the future.

Hopin processed over 150 tickets to the event which included 30 hours of live presentations, training sessions and networking opportunities. Just like at an in-person event, some presentations had more attendees than others, but Gifford noted 72 folks all online at the same time at one point on Friday, the highest number all weekend. 

The con opened with a couple of keynote addresses. Ash Prasad of DNN Corp talked about the status of a new DNN Store and Mitchell Sellers gave us a "State of the DNN Union." Attendees then moved into separate virtual spaces where a variety of speakers gave presentations or provided DNN training, about 20 presenters in all. 

In addition to the speakers and trainers, about 20 companies served as dnnGLOBAL 2020 sponsors. There were also virtual "booths" as well as virtual social venues for networking. As a fun wrap-up, Ryan Moore of Moore Creative ran an online Jeopardy game of DNN trivia. You'll never guess who won!

Because of the nature of website platforms, not having a conference for a long period of time means folks have trouble learning the latest and greatest technology. As Mark Buelsing of Let It Shine said: “I was pleased to attend the sessions at the conference. I picked up some information that would have been difficult to find on my own.” 

An advantage of the virtual conference is that no one had to foot travel expenses, as Cassidi Peterson of 10 Pound Gorilla noted. “Online added the extra value of connecting more of us from around the world.”

This may not be the conference we wanted, but everyone rolled with it and it seems to have been successful. Congrats to Gifford for pulling it off and best of luck to DNN Summit who is now planning the next virtual con. And if you have any experiences from dnnGLOBAL that you'd like to share that will help DNN Summit's plans, please share!