Two years ago, NI abruptly cancelled the CLD Summit and NI Days Events in Denver. These had been an ongoing yearly occurrence. They had both been quite well attended, and were very popular. At the time I was quite disappointed.
About the same time I started hearing rumors of this independent LabVIEW Conference called GDevCon going on in Europe. So I signed up to give a presentation. The conference was such a hit that they repeated it again this year. I was so excited and believed so much in what they were doing that I decided to sponsor it this year through my company.
In Denver there is a small group of LabVIEW Developers who get together every couple weeks for coffee. One day we were sitting around lamenting the loss of the CLD Summit, when the thought suddenly hit me.
Why not replace the CLD Summit with something even better, something like GDevCon?
I immediately reached out to Steve Watts (one of the founders of GDevCon) and we began a dialog. Steve was enthusiastic at first, but it didn’t go too far. It was still just an idea. It really picked up steam at NI week this year. Nancy knew that I was interested in getting something started, so she started sending people my way. We finally picked up some critical mass.
Our coffee meetings transformed into Zoom meetings with Steve and various other interested power users. We did a lot of brainstorming and planning. I was inspired by Chris’ GCentral movement, and Olli’s GCommunity booth at NI Days in Munich. It just seemed like the timing was right. We finally got the ball rolling and recently created a nonprofit here in Colorado. We’ve got a venue and a few sponsors. We are going to put on an amazing conference. I am very excited to see you all in Boulder this summer!
Sam