2008-08-05 23:40:02 -

- Liferay, Inc. Alice Cheng, 1-877-LIFERAY pr@liferay.com Liferay, Inc., a leading provider of enterprise open source portal and social collaboration software, hosted its second annual Liferay Meetup in Los Angeles last week. The event brings together the product's global open source community for a day of live collaboration and brainstorming. This year, the leadership introduced new social networking features that

facilitate fluid collaboration over the web to an international audience of partners and users.

"We set this day aside each year to meet and thank our community in person. They've been an integral part of our success and we want to give them full access to the Liferay team and the latest developments in our business and technology," said Brian Chan, Liferay Portal's creator and Chief Software Architect. "The idea is to bring the forums to life." This year's Meetup pulled together a group of presenters from Liferay Portal's core development team and partners, including jQuery, SpringSource, Sun Microsystems, and Terracotta, among others. All sessions were run roundtable-style to foster live collaboration and brainstorming.

In line with this emphasis on open discussion and collaboration, the Liferay team showcased its new out of the box social network, which seamlessly integrates all of Liferay's collaborative tooling under one umbrella and augments them with Web 2.0 social features, including an activity wall, dynamic chat, and tie-ins with Facebook and iGoogle. "This network essentially provides a space in which our global community can collaborate as fluidly as possible when they aren't able to meet face to face at an event like the Meetup," commented Chan. Liferay also allowed attendees to self-register for the event through the social network, reducing time and administrative expenses.

"We wanted to illustrate how the power of social computing can be harnessed within a secure and controlled environment," said Bryan Cheung, Liferay CEO. "Social technology can go beyond elegant communication to also address real business issues." For example, Liferay's social network not only facilitates communication with wikis, message boards, blogs and chat, it also dynamically tracks development activity of individual members to indicate and rank their experience and knowledge of the product. The result will be a merit-based system of credits assigned to each user based on their experience, which provides an accurate representation of partner experience for those interested in services or advice.

"There was great feedback at the Meetup about the social features," said Chan. "The beauty is that over a hundred community members from Europe and the Americas can still give instant feedback about the event after returning to their respective homes."

Liferay Portal is in its ninth year of development and powers collaborative work environments for organizations such as World Vision, AutoZone, the United Nations and the French Ministry of Defense. It also boasts one of the most active communities in the open source realm and over 1.5 million downloads to date. For those interested in Liferay events outside the US, the first annual Liferay European Symposium will be held in Frankfurt, Germany, September 23-24, 2008. For more information about, please visit www.liferay.com. For a sample profile for the Liferay social network, please visit www.liferay.com/web/bchan.

About Liferay, Inc.

Liferay, Inc. is the provider of Liferay Portal, the world's leading enterprise open source portal framework, with Fortune 500 clients worldwide. Liferay Professional Services offers technical support, custom development and professional training to ensure successful deployment of its flagship product in the most demanding IT environments. The company is headquartered in Los Angeles with offices in Frankfurt and Dalian, PRC. For more information, please visit www.liferay.com.

Liferay, Liferay Portal, and the Liferay logo are trademarks or registered trademarks of Liferay, Inc. in the United States and other countries.

Technology Leader Taps into the Value of Social Networking