ForumCon 2012 Pictures

The morning of ForumCon hit a snag of it's own on my part. Just getting here took two hours to do so, due to family disagreements. So I apologize to anyone that expects me to bring you the full details of vBulletin 5's impending launch. I saw the first glimpse of "vB5" in a brochure. And they had sort-of a graphics demo of "vB5." So, whether I arrived early or not is irrelevant.

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[Here it is!]​

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[It was a nice find when I saw this on the projector. Funny stuff, Brandon!]​

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[This was taken during the break. This gives you an idea of how the event seems.]​

As embarrassing as it sounds, I woke up early as hell. I was ready, I was raring to go. Even later in the day, people thought I didn't have that energy to answer questions and whatnot. I was ready, like a roman empire soldier.

I got there a little late, so I had to stand in the back because I'm in there with nobody that I know. Nobody. Of course, I know Murray from here, but other than that, I'm not a commodity name there yet. Not until the Internet Brands panel. The minute they sat. My heart was racing, I was trying not to laugh. I was trying my best. Even the lead developer that took over Kier's posititon was there! It's like god telling me "Do something! DO SOMETHING!" Until I asked for the microphone.

I asked what they thought of Kier. I had to ask the question, but in a different way. Twice. I'm not sure I remember what he said, but I'm sure it's recorded. I have been told that I embarrassed either John or Joe, because my question was addressed to them. Why? Because either one of them could have been the person who either: a.) Argued back to Kier about a complete rewrite. b.) Employed tactics to run Kier off out of the building. His vague response is far telling especially in public. I walked in ForumCon with no [ahem] stature, I walked out memorable. My company may already have been in the minds of people who didn't know me before.

Everyone was looking at me, there wasn't a single person that didn't. That became the highlight of the convention, I feel. The rest of the convention was good, but less than what I expected it to be.

This year, I only had to verbalize what my company is, and what it does. But next time we have a ForumCon here, I will make sure I have business cards armed and ready. I will even bring my cousin who's currently helping my company.

In the PostRelease panel, I asked what's the difference between PostRelease and Google [adsense], and Viglink. He answered simply that curation is the keyword here. The reason why I asked is because a lot of forum owners use ad placements as sponsored spots.

The only sad thing is that Tapatalk wasn't on-hand to compete with ForumRunner's presence at the event. I understand it completely, because I turned on tapatalk on a few of my forums already and I hit a snag adding CODForums to the Tapatalk Network, and one of the programmers had to manually add it himself. In this panel, I asked what are Internet Brands' plans with support with other forum software, his answer makes it seem like their idea was to force ForumRunner in-house, and exclusive to vBulletin as most people think. Though, I can't be sure.

The fun part wasn't during the event itself, rather, it's the post-event cocktails.

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[Forum Administrators, Owners, and businessmen network, network, and network!]​

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[More business networking by forum owners.]​

Yes, that's @Murray Newlands, and yes, I've met him. In fact, we recorded a video. This was hard for me to do since it's my first time appearing on any influential vlog in any shape or form. I tried my best to be really confident, but it's still nerve wracking. No matter how you slice it.

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[More networking, a surprise appearance by vBSEO's Juan Carlos.]​

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I've met: ​

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Both the founder and C.E.O. at Enthusify, a new startup that develops a "middleman" plugin for forum/payment authenticator.​

Ambassador for ubokia. I'll do more research tomorrow and report back.​

A bunch of viglink's staff members. ​

Employee at URLJet hosting.​

Alright, any questions so far? It's 3:50am here in California, and I'm #@^&ing tired.

 

Thanks for the review and outline, I wish I could of gone
Next year I'll do my best to clear my schedule and get plane tickets for the event.
I was talking to several of the attendees via Twitter early in the day, the afternoon got away from me so I'm not sure what those panels were about.

I've attached your images to this post if for some unknown reason the flickr images vanish. (let me know if this is ok)
Can't wait to see the videos from the event, I'll see if I can find anything on youtube already.

Nothing new on the forumcon youtube page so far
http://www.youtube.com/user/ForumConTV

 

Nice work @Carlos, did you get the chance to test vBulletin 5's demo?

 

There's a reason why I haven't talked about that. There was a vBulletin "booth" (eh. if that even applies to this event.), but it was empty, meaning there was none. The only thing the booth does is to talk about vBulletin 5, and show it off via graphic mockups. At least that's what I got. With the stunt I pulled at IB's panel, I didn't bother.

What's worse is that everytime IB takes the stage, you can hear a lot of crickets. It was that quiet. The fact that they cut the first IB panel short tells you that they were embarrassed to even be at ForumCon.

I didn't even have a laptop, so I didn't know the vBulletin site was encountering a lot of database errors. I should've known since there's a lot of people trying to get the scoop on vB5.

Anyhow, this is how ForumCon was after the lunch break.... It was packed at first but it became smaller, and smaller by the hour.

Jealous, eh? I saw your jealous comment on the twitter feed.

Sure, it's quite alright! I watermarked the images, so I have nothing to worry about. Thanks for the thought, btw!

Hopefully they come out good!