About four weeks ago, we held our annual DNN Connect event in Girona, Spain. A new venue, but not a new destination. We have been to this region a number of times, and Catalonia has never disappointed. The food and wine are delicious, the climate is friendly, and the people are welcoming. This year was no different.

This time, we were in a hotel that was larger than we are used to, with a very lush green garden around it. Detached from the hotel, we had a covered outside space with our very own NVQuickBar, which we could use to socialize in the evenings. At the lower level of the hotel, we had access to two fairly large conference rooms. Despite the fact that we couldn't possibly fill this venue, it never felt too big.

We kicked things off on Thursday afternoon with the Bond for Web welcome drink and subsequent tapas dinner. It strikes me how naturally we all slot into our roles—both my team and our audience. For over a decade, we've been putting these events together and forging a real community. And the reward for our work organizing this event is seeing each other again in May. Cathy’s welcoming everyone in the hotel lobby, handing each participant their bag, a big smile on her face. Declan, Timo, and Stefan are lounging behind her and complete the welcoming committee. Hugs and laughter abound. Vicenc is still running around arranging some last-minute affairs with hotel staff (my Spanish and Catalan are non-existent). He's trying to make sure we have mountain bikes for the next day so those who want to can ride the hills behind the venue. We've made the schedule such that we have a good gap in the afternoon between sessions and dinner so people can do something together.

Friday morning, we began our sessions with a series of much-anticipated presentations. In the past few months, one of our community members had been working on a proof of concept for DNN that he wanted to share with us. You may have read about this elsewhere. I am referring to Sacha Trauwaen’s work on creating an MVC pipeline for DNN and a more experimental project to create a .NET Core platform based on DNN. The thrust of his argument is that these two platforms provide a path for DNN to one day run on .NET Core. Our audience was eagerly awaiting what he had come up with, and they weren’t disappointed.

For those who have never come to our events, I should note here that the DNN Connect audience is mostly made up of developers. We are passionate about the DNN Platform, programming extensions for it, and cobbling together solutions for our clients. It should also be noted that we evolved from “let’s get together for a weekend and show each other what we’ve done with DNN” to a more professional conference over the past years. So there’s not just a lot of room for experimental stuff—we actively encourage it!

From the outset, it was clear that having a presentation about a potential "path to .NET Core" was going to raise some eyebrows. It can easily divide opinions in a room full of DNN enthusiasts. The .NET Core proponents will point out that it’s where Microsoft wants everyone to go, having pivoted away from .NET Framework for some time now. But others have pointed out that there are plenty of pitfalls, and the envisioned gains may not be worth it. .NET Framework versions have a longer lifecycle, and this is more friendly for serious business applications, as you're not devoting a substantial part of your time keeping your application running on the latest version. I am not going to rehash the arguments for or against, but suffice to say, it is a lively debate that will not go away any time soon. Having someone explore potential avenues to modernize the DNN Platform is always interesting—and it was highly stimulating.

Of course, this wasn’t the only show at the event. There was really top-notch content on new releases of modules such as 2sxc, Rocket Suite, DNN Tokens, and Open Content. And stuff on SEO and AI. Too much to absorb. As always, we rounded off with a brown paper session where our audience defined their priorities in a collaborative fashion. And after we wrapped up the sessions, we concluded the event with (again) a fantastic dinner and after-dinner drinks outside. I think I stumbled back to my room at 3 in the morning. My head spinning from... well, from everything really. The inspirational sessions, the many, many conversations into the night, and the fantastic Spanish wines we were served.

I want to sign off by thanking my team. Vicenc (who lives in the Girona region, scouted this venue, and did all the "venue work"), Timo (graphics, website), Stefan (taking care of sponsors), Declan (invoicing, website, and more), and Cathy (swag, T-shirts, badges, rooming, registration). And finally, I'd like to thank our generous sponsors. We pride ourselves on offering a 3-day event for an unbeatable price, and it is in large part thanks to our sponsors that we can do this. So a big thank you to our main sponsor, 2Sic, as well as NVisionative, Intelequia, Bond for Web, and Tjep's.