The Learning Curve, Chapter 1 - A basic overview

Are you new to Liferay? Found Liferay and want to know what it can do for you? Or are you with Liferay and still remember the time when you were new and unexperienced? Where did you come from and what was the biggest problem you faced? Can you ever learn enough? And how do you keep up with the current trends and new features?

A platform as big as Liferay spans several technologies and areas of best practices that are beneficial to know of. Nobody can know everything - there's always a learning curve. At the beginning, it's quite steep. Some argue that it's flattening the more you know. Some argue that it gets steeper: The more you know, the more you know what you don't know.

I'd like to give you pointers to resources that are available to you, in order to learn about Liferay, resources that help you avoid steep detours, when there are flatter direct connections. This is meant to be (eventually) comprehensive but I'm sure that it will never be complete. It's just what I remember while I write this article and the follow ups (yes, there are more, already drafted)

Today's Target Audience: All, this is providing an overview and basic information

Quick reads

A very quick overview over the aspects of the Liferay Platform are the Whitepapers found in the "Business Whitepapers" section. I recommend them even for technically oriented folks, as they show off some aspects that you otherwise wouldn't necessary get in contact with, and they're really quick to read.

Continuing on the quick reads, you might be interested in case studies, e.g. matching your industry, your usecase or your location. All of them are easy to filter.

Events





To get in contact with people that are actually using Liferay, a good opportunity is to visit the events that are happening all over the world. Starting with half-day roadshows that are conducted in cooperation with our service partners. These typically feature some customer case study and - most important - bring you face to face with experienced Liferay-, Partner- and Customer-Staff. You'll get real experience & answers to the questions that you bring.

On with other events: All over the world, you'll find either "Symposiums" or "Liferay Portal Solutions Forum" or LPSF. These are typically single- or two-day events. Some are in the language local to the country they take place in, others are in english, or mixed. About the content, LPSF is focussing on the business aspect of Liferay. You'll typically find customer case studies, insights into Liferay's Roadmap and our "Speed consulting", where an experienced Consultant answers as many questions as you can ask during your appointed time slot. In contrast, Symposiums add the technical crowd to the mix. The different target audiences are organized in different tracks, but there's some overlap and you can choose from session to session. Purely technical people are the target audience for DevCon

Trainings

Mastering Liferay FundamentalsLiferay offers different certified courses for all target audiences - how about getting you or your project team kickstarted with Mastering Liferay Fundamentals? This course gives you a comprehensive overview over Liferay Features. After having taken this course, you have a solid impression of Liferay's feature set, the configurability and how to adapt this great platform for your own site(s). Our trainers are well experienced, so you'll be able to get your own questions answered during class, in addition to the curriculum.

For the managers and business owners: You'll learn what Liferay can do for you.

For the developers and technical people: You'll learn that Liferay has many features that you just need to enable or tweak, rather than implementing them yourself, from ground up.

A customer once stated to me that they'd have saved months of implementation if their developers only had taken this class at the beginning of their implementation, rather than a few years in.

Trainings are offered on-site (a good deal for 5 and more participants from your organization: Have the trainer come to your place) or as public trainings, open for anybody to sign up. "Mastering Liferay Fundamentals" is also available online. For all Liferay trainings, you can get a certification of participation as well as a badge on your liferay.com profile (check out mine)

So much for the basic overview, stay tuned for Chapter 2: The infrastructure Liferay is running in, and what you should know about it.

Blogs
Olaf: nice job. I am looking forward to more postings. Thanks for taking the time.