For those who use to watch Bullwinkle and Rocky let me add an extra part to this title, As I Saw It or Dave Swallows Some Humble Pie. See now all of a sudden you are interested in this blog, shame on you. So this was my first cPanel Conference and I was pleasantly surprised.

You can tell a lot about a conference from the atmosphere found within the first hours. Will it be a power play? Will it be overly commercial? Will it be casual? Will it be unorganized? Will the sponsors work hard to support the attendees or will they act like its the attendees privilege to attend? Essentially from the moment you step within the boundaries of a convention the wee hourglass starts, ticking away with in your mind and it braces you for what mindset you need to be in.

Unfortunately, overly formal events and those that have plenty of marketing end up making people closed off. And that leads to less opportunities for networking, or asking questions during sessions, or to having less openness period on the exhibit floor. Conversely, if the atmosphere is overly casual it could lead to attendees not taking it seriously, which inevitably leads to them leaving and having a mini-vacation. Lastly, those who put on the conference need to have an eye for detail. We, as attendees, might not understand the lack of certain things or we might not be able to say what is wrong with something but we can always tell when a conference lacks polish. Its like listening to music that is missing a good bass line; you might not be able to identify it as missing the bass line, but you will definitely notice something is missing.

Now after this extremely long intro lets talk about cPanel’s conference. I arrived early and was able to watch cPanel set up and it was very telling. Everybody was looking for perfection. It wasn’t just one person wanting others to work at the highest of quality everyone desired to work at the highest level they could. Employees were asking questions and many of the spouses signed up to help out in any capacity they could. But the atmosphere was not rushed our stressful; there was still a good supply of humor. The conference wasn’t seen as a chore, but an opportunity.

The networking events were fun. I enjoyed myself immensely and that feeling didn’t stop throughout the entirety of the conference. Another thing I found interesting was I learned something, a lot of somethings really. I am not one to brag, but most conferences I attend rehash material I learned months sometimes years prior. At this conference though I spent more time taking notes on the subject matter than I did on writing up articles. I had less time to observe my fellow attendees and that is also telling.

Ok, now for the second title of this article. I dislike control panels. I have used almost everyone and I found them to be unwieldy and archaic. Often times they carry for more things than I need or care for. For the most part, if I have a problem I go into Apache or IIS and solve them myself the “manual” way. Now this is not to say that I don’t see a point to control panels, quite the contrary I believe the software can help those who manage a great deal of accounts, but for someone like myself who only has about 20 or so to worry about, manual works.

After the sessions, and a good portion of my mead notebook being filled, I have been wanting to get cracking at my cPanel box and unleash a wee bit of my newly acquired know how (or lack thereof).