The re-energized Events Department tackled several initiatives this year.  

The JUG Team has been engaged in outreach to our user groups, the latest culminating in the recent JUG sessions where they reviewed the volunteer portal, updating user group information on the community portal, and how to add events.  

The Events Team, who are responsible for reviewing and approving events posted as well as review funding requests for events like JoomlaDay has been busy as well.

This year, the events team has been working to make event submission easier and inclusive of online only events. The first step involved converting from Sobipro to DPCalendar. The conversion is nearing completion.

The new event submission form looks similar with a few noted exceptions.

Ability to designate if the event is online, in-person or both.

1. The updated form includes a “How will you meet” question with two (2) checkboxes. Click one or both if the meeting is a hybrid, meeting in-person and online.
   
   
2. The repetitive entry of JUG information is replaced by selecting your JUG
   Instead of entering your JUG information, there is a “Select your JUG question”. 
   
   
   The list of JUGs is taken from the User Group Directory (https://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html).  If your JUG is missing or needs updating, please submit a Help Desk ticket and the JUG Team will assist. If not a JUG meeting or event, simply skip the question.
   
   
3. Your event should be shared! To help make this happen we have added a Social Share Text field where you can enter a short 130 character description that the Joomla Social Media team can add tags to and share on Joomla Channels.
   
   
   
   
4. Published events appear on the Event Listing as well as the individual JUG listing
   By selecting your JUG, once the event has been reviewed, approved and published, it will appear at the bottom of the JUG listing as an Upcoming Event.
   
   

Please enter your event by going to https://community.joomla.org/events/submit-event.html as early as possible to allow the events team volunteers time to review. 

If you have questions or issues entering events, please submit a help ticket (https://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html) and a team member will get back to you. 

In addition to the event submission process changes, we are working on updating the event resources and other information to help plan and execute Joomla/Joomla-related events. One resource that you may not be aware of is that OpenSource Matters (OSM) has made available subdomains for use by User Groups and JoomlaDay events. The subdomain policy can be found here: https://www.opensourcematters.org/organisation/directors/policies/312-official-subdomain-licensing-policy.html  and to apply for use, please fill out this form: https://www.opensourcematters.org/subdomain-request.  

Also, as part of these efforts discussions are underway with Marketing to create a newsletter to distribute on a regular basis events from the Community calendar giving your event another promotional path. Details regarding this newsletter will be communicated as soon.

This is the beginning. There is recognition that many of the resources meant to help have not been kept up and the events team as well as the entire events department is working to change that.

Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

How long from the time an event is submitted to when it is published? 

Events are typically reviewed and published, or comments sent back within 1-3 days.  

How to submit a virtual event?

To submit a virtual event, click the checkbox for ‘Online’ and don’t enter a location.