view from an airplane window
Conference season is upon us, so get ready to expand those frequent flyer miles PHOTO: Jakob Owens

As we greet the month of May, it’s time to take another look at what the free and open source CMS space has in the pipeline.

In our April forecast, we welcomed the arrival of TYPO3 CMS 8, and anticipated the release of both Drupal 8.3 and Joomla 3.7 before the month expired — a goal realized when both Drupal and Joomla made their respective announcements.

As for the month ahead, here’s what to expect from the world of open source CMS.

Magnolia

Magnolia’s DX Days, a European roadshow for digital experience professionals, will kick off in the Dutch capital, Amsterdam on May 11.

Magnolia’s roadshow will hit the following cities between May and October: Amsterdam, London, Milan and Berlin. The Switzerland-based vendor also announced its developer unconference, taking place in Basel, Switzerland on June 21.

Last month, Magnolia 5.5.3 was released with improvements for authors and developers alike. Those improvements included simplification of visitor trait values and updated REST API libraries to fix broken JSON output.

Liferay 

This month, Liferay is accepting registrations for the Liferay Symposium North America 2017, taking place Oct. 16 through Oct. 17 in Austin.

The annual conference will bring together Liferay leaders, partners and customers for discussions and workshops on improving digital transformation and omnichannel customer experiences. This marks the first time the conference takes place in Austin.

Liferay is accepting speaking proposals for the Symposium up until June 30.

eZ Systems

EZ Systems is bringing its eZ Conference to London on June 6 through June 8.

Company representatives told CMSWire the conference aims to sharpen digital strategies and help eZ customers make better use of eZ software.

(And if you attend, be sure to say "hi!" I'll be the one tweeting from the CMSWire feed from the event.)

SilverStripe 

Last month SilverStripe released SilverStripe 4-alpha 6 to deliver “better caching and improved stabilization.” 

The SilverStripe open source community also gathered in New Zealand in Auckland and Wellington for a SilverStripe-4-themed HackFest. The event resulted in bugfixes, updated modules and new documentation.

But things are heating up for the project now. SilverStripe told CMSWire the highly anticipated SilverStripe 4 is “entering a deadly phase,” (although I imagine they mean deadly in a good way).

SilverStripe also informed CMSWire that it is, “gearing up for a SilverStripe 4 stable release later in the year."

DNN

Members of the DNN open source CMS community will come together at the Vilar Rural de Sant Hilari Sacalm in Girona, Spain, for DNN Connect 2017, which is set to take place May 25 through May 28. DNN Connect features various technical and business-oriented sessions, on topics including DNN Platform, Angular, React, structured content, mobile app development, IoT and content marketing.

Last month the company released an update to its Evoq CMS which introduced capabilities for publishing on new channels.

Other Open Source CMS Headlines

In other news, CMS Made Simple is undergoing its third round of beta testing, and its developers have posed the possibility of a May release:

“If no significant bugs are reported before May 15, the developers will recommend to the Dev Team that we release the final version, and move to a vote. If the vote is successful then soon after we will prepare the final release notes and the final release.” 

Meanwhile, Plone CMS has announced that it will have a booth at PyCon 2017, the Python event being held in Portland, Ore. on May 17 through May 25.

Event Season is Coming 

With conferences on the horizon from DNN, Magnolia and eZ Systems, it’s fair to say that event season is upon us.

Until then, May the source be with you.