Eden Orion likes astronomy. Specifically, he’s into telescopes. His personal website offers a complete history of the telescope, tips on buying telescopes and he even recently repaired one of Albert Einstein’s telescopes donated to the Hebrew University of Jerusalem by the theoretical physicist himself. Eden also likes Joomla.
As the University of Haifa Webmaster, Eden has helped establish hundreds of Joomla sites for the school (including their main website) over the past several years. According to Eden, it was "the supportive Israeli community and larger world community that helped him prove that Joomla was an appropriate solution.” Since adopting Joomla, Eden has become active in the Israeli Joomla community, and has brought Joomla to the Hebrew-speaking masses by offering a variety of free Joomla 2.5 and 3.x courses for beginning users.
Those close to the Joomla Project, like Eden and Ofer, understand that their local user groups are part of the larger community. They’ve witnessed Joomla’s ability to bridge cultures and bring otherwise different people closer together. There are thousands of governmental websites using Joomla throughout the world, and even though these countries invariably have differences, Joomla seems to be a far-reaching common denominator.
After a 3 year hiatus, Israelis and Palestinians have recently agreed to resume peace talks, a significant step forward between the two nations. Palestinians are using Joomla and Israelis are using Joomla. Everyone is working together in an open source community towards a common global interest. As a result, Joomla can break down barriers and help resolve disputes between communities that have political conflicts between them. Joomla Day Israel is open for anyone and everyone interested in discussing the CMS.
The first telescopes were invented in the Netherlands early in the 17th century and derived their name from the Latin word “telescopium”, meaning “far-seeing”. It’s fitting that Eden’s surname is Orion (a recognizable constellation in the night sky throughout the world), and it’s even more fitting that Eden uses Joomla as a telescope of sorts - a far-reaching instrument with many practical applications. Is Joomla a direct peacemaker? Probably not. It is a catalyst that can help open up avenues of discussion and collaboration? Most certainly. It’s through the efforts of people like Eden where this can be attained.
You can visit Eden's personal website at http://edenorion.com