SBTUG Web Content Management System Smackdown Presentations (UPDATED)

Here’s the presentations from our annual SBTUG smackdown event held tonight. Most of the presenters have sent me their presentations, only a few left to add.

I wanted to say a big thank you to Nick Ellery (@nickellery) from Microsoft for looking after us on the night. Not only did Microsoft supply the venue (which they do every month) and free parking, but they also sponsored the night and supplied pizza and drinks for all the attendees (approx 60 people). Thanks!

As an aside: Without launching into a fanboi speech too much, I have to say how impressed I’ve been with Microsoft and their support of the developer community. I’ve been running user groups and events since 2004 and Microsoft has always been there to help with the venue, sponsorship and even prizes. Interestingly, not once have they tried to influence the content of the meetings – they simply provide resources, and then get out of the way to let you get on with it.

And now onto the nights presentations:

I kicked off the night with the following agenda (I’ve included it below because it includes a few links people may be interested in).

Then I gave a brief introduction to Content Management Systems.

And then dived into an overview of WordPress.

Next up was Aaron Powell who presented on Umbraco (Aaron is on the core team). An excellent overview of the benefits of Umbraco, especially for developers.

Ryan Cross was back for another year, to discuss the improvements in Drupal. His presentation will be available soon.

Ali Mohammed from Waratah Web gave us the lowdown on Business Catalyst with this presentation.

Next, Anthony Milner from Elcom, with a slick presentation covering the 3 main benefits of the Elcom CMS – Community Manager. See also Anthony’s blog post about the event.

Daren Hawes from Web Design Magic covered Kentico.

After a brief break, John-Paul Syriatowicz from Squiz gave us a look at the slick new interface in the Squiz CMS. He was kind enough to record his presentation – it is embedded below:

Finally, we ended the formal presentations with a minor miracle – Adam Cogan presented in 10 minutes – on SharePoint!.