With 157 user groups around the world, there is always something exciting and interesting happening in the Joomla! Community - this is a monthly round-up highlighting new Joomla! User Groups, events, and reviews of JUG meetings. If you have anything you would like me to feature from your Joomla User Group please email me at This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. - you must be writing from a Registered Joomla! User Group (i.e. listed at https://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html).

The epic month of JoomlaDay events

It has been a busy time in the JoomlaSphere with no less than nine JoomlaDay events taking place around the world in October, which makes October 2014 the busiest month in the JoomlaDay calendar ever, and I'm reliably informed that in 2013 we stand to have the highest number of JoomlaDay events on record! For more information and to find out what happened at the events in October, check out their sites:

• Joomla!Day Poland http://www.joomla-day.pl 
• Joomla!Day UK http://www.joomladay.co.uk 
• Joomla!Day Israel http://jday.joomla.org.il/ 
• Joomla!Day Italy http://www.joomladay.it/ 
• Joomla!Day Hungary http://joomladay.hu/ 
• Joomla!Day Bulgaria http://joomladay.bg/ 
• Joomla!Day South Africa http://www.joomladay.org.za    
• Joomla!Day Houston http://joomladayhouston.com 
• Joomla!Day Sydney http://sydney.joomladay.org.au

I have been fortunate enough to attend several JoomlaDay events this year and got to meet a lot of people involved in running and attending Joomla! User Groups - it has been great to hear how things are going around the world and of course pick up lots of ideas to share with other JUGs Organisers. I would definitely recommend attending and supporting your local Joomla!Day event if you can - it is a fantastic opportunity not to be missed!

JUG Registration

As you would expect from so many JoomlaDay events, we've had a few JUG registrations come through this month, and also some JUGs who have joined forces to develop a stronger presence in their geographical area:

New registrations

JUG Madrid - Website http://www.jugmadrid.org

JUG Valparaíso - Website http://www.jugvalparaiso.org 

Re-structured groups

JUG Greater Houston - Meetup Group www.meetup.com/Greater-Houston-Joomla-Users-Group 

Changes to JUG Terms of Service

We recently put out a request for JUG Organisers to comment on proposed changes to the terms of service - mainly to bring it up to date in regards to social sites being used to organise JUGs, but also to remove some 'red tape' which we often come across regarding JUG registrations.

We would like to thank the community for your responses, and we will be publishing the revised terms of service as soon as they are approved by the Community Leadership Team 

Getting in touch with you

Some of you might have noticed that the number of JUGs has dropped slightly this month - this is due to the fact that with our new team in place, we are systematically working our way through the JUG directory and reaching out to the listed organisers.

We are doing this for two reasons - firstly to make contact, see if there is anything we can help with, and to say hello!

Secondly, there hasn't been a check done to ensure that all the listed JUGs are still active in quite some time, and we suspect that quite a few are not running any more. It doesn't give a new visitor a positive experience if they are excited to find a JUG in the directory which is near them, only to land on a dead site, or not receive a response to their emails expressing an interest in joining.

For this reason we're working through the JUG directory as a team, and reaching out to the listed organisers to introduce ourselves and make contact - any listings which we are concerned about and where we do not receive any response will be unpublished after 14 days.

We will raise a support ticket via the new Community Helpdesk which will be copied to all the contacts listed on the JUG if we need to contact you.

Getting in touch with us

If you have any questions, concerns or queries relating to JUGs, please raise a ticket via the Community Helpdesk - https://community.joomla.org/community-helpdesk/department/joomla-user-group-team.html which is accessible via the User Groups menu on the left side of the site.

At present we have team members who speak the following languages:

• English
• Spanish
• Hindi
• Gujarati
• Marathi

We currently span four time zones, so there is usually somebody around if you need some help! You can also join the JUG Organisers Skype Chat if you would like to - please add viryatechnologies to your skype client and I will add you to the group chat.

News from JUGs

I've received several updates from User Groups around the world this month, so here are a few:

• JUG Zurich met on 31st October at the Technopark in Zurich for a session on CCK's, featuring K2, Zoo and Seblod.  Speakers included Raphael Steinhöfel, Stefan Biller and Corinne Meister
• JUG Buenos Aires attended the Free Software International Conference, they place a stand and spread the Joomla! love with the people who attend the event. After that, they travell to Bahia Blanca, in there the JUG Buenos Aires was introduced to the people in Bahia Blanca in a event called "Vermouth Joomla!", they say it was a great experience meet people from other cities in Argentina. They want to give a big and special Thank You to Mauro Javier Andres, who find the venue and acomodations for the whole JUG.