The Joomla community is made up of passionate volunteers, that truly believe in the idea of Open Source. They invest tremendous amounts of time to improve the CMS, provide support to other users or spread the word of Joomla’s awesomeness – and the better part of those people is completely “Jeck”. Time for you to become a Jeck too, by attending J&Beyond on 11-13 May 2018!

Jeck is a word from the local tongue in Cologne, Germany. It’s widely used during the carnival season to describe people who are ludicrous (in a positive way), which happens from time to time while wandering around the city in a sunflower costume after drinking a couple of beers. But you can also be “Jeck about something”, which means that you are passionate and even a bit “in love” about a thing. To me, that’s the perfect description of the Joomla community: we are very passionate about Joomla, we love what we do, but we also always have great fun and don’t take ourselves too seriously!

Enjoying our differences

Another perfect match from the local tongue is the saying “Jeder Jeck is anders”. You already know what “Jeck” is now, so giving you “every Jeck is different” as a translation should give you an idea, about what this saying is about: It’s a statement that emphasizes that everyone has his or her own cultural background, own experiences and is a truly unique person – and that he or she is perfect exactly that way! For the Joomla community that fit’s really well: we are a global community with volunteers from around the globe - nevertheless we are working on one common goal and everyone, regardless of his background, is invited to participate.

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You see that the local culture in Cologne is perfect for Joomla - and that made it an awesome choice for this year’s J&Beyond, an international Joomla conference taking place from 11th to 13th May!

Going “beyonder”

For this year’s JAB we wanted to take our motto to the next level: for us, “Jeder Jeck is anders”, so accepting each other and being open minded, shouldn’t be just about our own community but also about other ideas, concepts and even other CMS! We want to go “beyond” and make our attendees leave their comfort zone - because that’s how you learn new things and improve yourself!

For that reason, you’ll find several sessions that have only a rather small or no relationship to Joomla in this year’s schedule, i.e.:

• Continuous Integration with Jenkins Pipeline
• Building a layout worth $50 million with CSS Grid
• Practical guide to comply with GDPR
• Going “headless”
• How to create powerful visual storytelling on the web
• Mastermind - a session where you work ON your business
• BYOF - Bring your own frontend - Content as a service

You see: attending JAB will not only give you top-notch sessions about Joomla but also make you learn about new trends, technologies and mindsets that you’ll profit from in your day-to-day work!

Enjoying your own “Jecks”

On top of that, J&Beyond has a very long tradition of being the place for the international Joomla community to meet each other, hang out and drink a Kölsch (the local German beer) with each other. It’s the one and only chance each year to have an in-person meeting with volunteers from all teams, with developers of extension that you might use for ages and with the people that helped you in a support forum not too long ago. Attending J&Beyond and talking to people makes you realize what it means to participate in a global project - and you’ll get a first-hand experience on why many Joomler’s call the community “the Joomla family”.

To support that exchange, J&Beyond gives you plenty of room to socialize! Join our pre-event in a traditional Cologne brewery, have dinner while doing a boat-tour on the Rhine river or get to know all the Joomla teams in a new (and currently secret) evening format!

Cologne - in the heart of Europe

The city of Cologne is very easily reachable! The event location Maternushaus is a 5 minute walk from the main train station and right in the middle of downtown Cologne, offering various accommodation possibilities in all price ranges.

With the train station offering various connections (check out the international trains going to Paris, Brussels, Amsterdam and Basel!) and not less than 3 airports reachable within a hour (Cologne, Düsseldorf and Frankfurt), getting to J&Beyond is extremely easy.

Dont miss the chance, become a Jeck!

This year’s J&Beyond will be a blast, so don’t miss this chance and get your ticket now! To make this decision even easier, we have a special offer for JCM readers: use the ticket code “JAB18JCM” and get a 30€ discount on your early bird ticket (available till 22.April 2018)!