Angelika Prox Dampha has volunteered to take on the coordination of the outreach department, and she has been elected for 1 year in this position. Let's find out how she sees this mission and what she's doing to raise awareness of our magnificent CMS among even more Joomlers.

Angelika, congratulations on your election as Outreach Department Coordinator! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?

In 1997, I established my own marketing enterprise in Hamburg, having previously earned a Diplom in Business Administration from the University of Hamburg, Germany. During my university years, I gained experience in marketing, sales, IT consultancy and software training.

By 1999, I developed my first business website using FrontPage and started developing websites and multimedia content for customers. Around 2004, I transitioned to Mambo and subsequently to Joomla. At that time, I was affiliated with the University of The Gambia in West Africa. Although I served as a lecturer in management and marketing, I maintained a close association with the IT department. This collaboration enabled me to engage students with Joomla. I also created websites for local clients, including hotels, restaurants, and retail businesses. For several years, numerous business and institutional websites in The Gambia were developed using Joomla. 

My personal web project, https://westafrikamagazin.de , launched in 1999, faced significant challenges during major transitions from Joomla versions 1.5 to 2.x, and more recently from 3.x to 4/5. In both instances, maintaining the previous versions was unfeasible, as the templates and extensions I utilized were no longer supported by their developers. Consequently, I had to rebuild the site, but I never doubted, that Joomla was the best CMS solution. 

Today, I live in Cologne, Germany, working as a consultant specializing in communication and marketing. My services encompass content and multimedia creation, project management, and occasionally developing websites for clients. I am passionate about photography and video production.

What convinced you to run for the position of Outreach Department Coordinator?

Upon evaluating the current state of Joomla's activities against my experiences from 2012 to 2015, I became deeply concerned. Rather than joining the chorus of complaints, I felt compelled to step in and take action.

I began collaborating with the Joomla Marketing Team, where David and the Cologne Joomla User Group (JUG) encouraged my involvement. This experience revealed that, even without being a seasoned developer, there are numerous meaningful and essential ways to contribute to Joomla.

When the call for manifestos for the Outreach Department Coordinator position was announced, the Marketing Team, particularly Maria Skampoura, encouraged me to run for the office.

The Outreach Department is responsible for marketing, events, social media, Joomla User Groups and volunteers (and of course the Joomla Community Magazine). What is the highest priority in Outreach at the moment?

To enhance Joomla's community and drive the project's growth, I am prioritizing volunteer recruitment to increase marketing outreach. 

Historically, Joomla's activities have predominantly focused on developers and production, which, while foundational, have left little resources for a proactive marketing strategy. During my term I will emphasize on the importance of invigorating marketing efforts, especially given the project's reliance on organic reach due to budget constraints that limit paid advertising opportunities.

To address these challenges, I will start with a comprehensive volunteer recruitment campaign covering all departments' needs. This initiative aims to attract individuals with diverse skills to enhance Joomla's capabilities. You do not have to be a developer to contribute!

Expanding our team will also enable us to produce contemporary multimedia content for our website and social media platforms, giving Joomla a modern appeal.

Let’s take a look at Joomla’s marketing. What are your plans for that?

This year, Joomla is going to celebrate its 20th birthday. We will celebrate that and use it to get good visibility and attention. 

Another thing is to freshen up the local user groups. During Corona, most stopped their regular meetings and many of them fell apart. So my plan is to revive the destinations and reactivate them. Joomla is used all over the world, in almost every country.

I will also try to represent Joomla as much as possible at events and seek opportunities to get in touch with potential sponsors personally. 

By strengthening our marketing outreach and volunteer recruitment, we aim to elevate Joomla's presence and ensure its continued success.

For more information on how to get involved, visit this page.

What can you tell us about Joomla’s market share? How are we doing? And how can we help make it grow?

Joomla  is doing excellent, steadily ranking among the top 10 website creation systems for two decades. Although the total number of installations is decreasing, this trend affects the entire industry. With numerous alternatives available, some individuals opt for e-commerce platforms or page builders over traditional content management systems (CMS).

Certain services promise to deliver a website without efforts through AI-generated designs within moments. While this may seduce temporarily, users may later on eventually lament the lack of flexibility, personalized design and the constraints of a lock-in to a costly, proprietary system. 

Joomla “is yours”! It is open source and free to use. You can decide where to host it or transfer it to any hosting company you wish. 

The Joomla! trademark is owned by Open Source Matters, a US based organization that is entirely run by volunteers. The board of directors is elected through the Joomla community. It is financed by sponsorships and no individual can claim ownership or take undemocratic decisions. 

What remains truly remarkable is that Joomla is an open-source platform, sustained entirely by a community of volunteers and funded solely through donations. In contrast, competitors are benefitting from substantial commercial financial backing. 

Joomla's enduring success is the proof of the diligent efforts and genuine dedication of its volunteers. I extend my heartfelt gratitude to all contributors and volunteers for their commitment.

If you want to help making it grow you can

• Engage as a volunteer
• Contribute to the development on GitHub
• Run your or your customers projects based on Joomla
• Write posts in social media or articles in blogs and media, videos, podcasts, …
• Like and share our social media posts
• Read the Joomla community magazine or even contribute articles yourself
• Subscribe to the newsletters
• Visit our websites regularly
• Sponsor the Joomla project
• Contribute in the forums
• Attend Joomla User Group meetings or Joomla Days

Volunteer engagement is also part of the Outreach Department. What’s going to happen there, and what do we need for it to happen?

Should they choose, they can ascend to leadership roles, gaining invaluable experience that fosters personal growth and enhances their professional careers. The best part is that all of this can be accomplished from a home office.

As I said before, Joomla is only done by volunteers. Of course, we always need developers. But currently there is a high need of graphic designers, editors, producers of training materials, social media channel managers, …. So if you feel that you want to support Joomla feel free to send me a mail (This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.) and, tell us what you can do, and we will see where you are needed most. 

Our volunteers learn to work in an international team in a highly technical context and will be able to learn new skills, soft skills as well profound knowledge. If they want to, they can go into leadership positions and get experience. This will allow you to grow personally and also give you important experience for your professional career. And, best of all, all is done from home office.

What do you think is the major challenge for the Outreach department? How can we all help with it?
The Outreach department does a lot of coordination work. We need to make best use of tools and time to get the messages about Joomla out to the word. Joomla is used in all countries of the world. This is a big challenge.

Another main task in the Outreach Department is to create all the marketing materials from merchandising to social media posts or website content. All designers, editors and content creators are highly welcome to contribute. 

Our budget is small. Currently it would be helpful to have access to some paid marketing tools or get donations to be able to afford paid marketing campaigns. Another way to help would be companies that allow their workers to contribute a few hours of Joomla to volunteer work during their paid working hours. 

And what do you consider the major challenge for Joomla as a whole?

With so many website-building platforms striving for attention, Joomla faces intense competition. The greatest challenge for Joomla as a whole is to have the capacity to continue evolving at the rapid pace of technology, ensuring it remains a most secure, feature-rich and user-friendly platform, our development team to work tirelessly to innovate, integrating cutting-edge features, maintaining rigorous coding standards, and prioritizing robust security measures, to have the organizational team to facilitate the work and the outreach team to gives the project all the possible visibility. 

What change(s) - if any - would you like to see happen in Joomla?

I’d love to see more women in the community stepping up to shape Joomla’s future, whether by contributing code, creating new features, or taking on leadership roles. 

Joomla already comes equipped with a rich core of functionalities, but it still relies on a variety of extensions, templates, and services to push the platform even further. My hope is that more extension developers and service providers feel motivated to introduce fresh products, maintain existing solutions, and stay aligned with Joomla’s version release plan—ensuring our community continues to grow and thrive.

Additionally, I’d like to see more advertising agencies, website designers, and freelance developers recognize Joomla as a powerful alternative for delivering innovative, secure, and user-friendly web experiences for their clients.

Is there anything else you’d like to share with us?

Joomla is turning 20 this August, and we’d love for you to celebrate with us! We’ll soon be unveiling special commemorative merchandise in our shop so you can mark this milestone in style. 

Don’t forget to subscribe to our social media pages or follow the Joomla Community Magazine to stay in the loop on all events and festivities as we toast two decades of Joomla and gear up for many more successful years ahead!