Joomla's Operations Department Coordinator is responsible for the day to day operation of all the Joomla.org websites, such as the Joomla Extensions Directory, the one and only Joomla Community Magazine and the Volunteers Portal. Since a few weeks, Operations has a new coordinator: Carlos Cámara. Carlos has been volunteering for quite a while, so he's not exactly a new face in the Joomla Crowd. Find out why he stepped up for this particular board position!

Carlos, thanks for stepping up for this role and congratulations on your election. We’re looking forward to knowing a bit more about you and your vision for the department you’ll coordinate. Could you tell us a little about yourself?

Thanks! It’s always a pleasure to take a step forward in this community. I am a web developer in love with Joomla. I have been involved in some other community projects and in other leadership roles in Joomla. And now I saw the opportunity to take my involvement in this community one step further and step in as DC Operations. In a personal matter I am married to a wonderful woman who is the mother of my 3 great children. I am the human for 2 dogs (and very soon a cat) and I enjoy running and listening to podcasts. Also I’m a huge Dune fan and I love science fiction in general.

What convinced you to step up as Operations Department Coordinator? 

Truth be told, I spoke to Crystal at JoomlaDay ES last October about all the things I saw we could improve in the community. At some point she suggested I could try to step in. After our talk I could notice the passion and involvement she had with Joomla and I thought I could help better in a coordinator role.

What part does Operations play in the Joomla ecosphere?

The Operations Department is responsible for the most human part of the community. To mention the most active teams in the department: Forum, Magazine, and Extensions directory teams are key sites in our community, and they are all part of the Operations Department. 

What do you consider the highest priority of your Department right now?

I am still checking the status of the teams, but as far as I can see from my position we have some teams working very well without much need of attention, and we have other teams that have been idle for some time now. In any case, I don’t like using "priorities" in my work. I think it makes more sense to define important goals and planning your work from there.

And the biggest challenge?

The biggest challenge in any leadership position in Joomla is helping people understand each other. We have the great advantage of working in a multicultural community that enriches our ideas and developments, but sometimes this also leads to misunderstandings that we need to work out as soon as possible.

You’ve been part of Joomla's leadership before, in what capacity? What did you do, and how do you look back on that now?

In 2018, I was Events Department Coordinator. We made some interesting decisions in the board back then, some of them, like the current Joomla Launch provider, are still in effect so I understand the impact of the decisions we make in the OSM board.

In your opinion, where does Joomla stand at the moment?

In the present, with Joomla 4 finishing its days and Joomla 5 smoothly taking over, I see we have a wonderful tool from the technology point of view. We also have great third party extension developers providing high quality tools to create anything with Joomla. All of this is a sign of the great community we have, and that is a good thing.

What opportunities do you see for Joomla in the future?

I see Joomla providing a great solution for all those who need a quality tool to develop anything on the web. We were the first CMS worried about people using the web in different languages, and we also set the path for other great developments. Joomla 4 set the bar on how accessible a CMS should be for visitors and creators, and we definitely showed the world that you do not need a bunch of plugins for a site to be SEO friendly and fast.

Joomla will keep this path set by the Production Team, in which we keep developing a useful and high quality CMS for everyone to use and enjoy.

And what do we need the most right now?

We need to keep promoting how good Joomla is now, the great step forward that Joomla 4 meant in the codebase and all the great benefits you get using a current release of Joomla.

We need to document on social media every step we take when working in our Joomla sites, so people realize how good our CMS is and make them check it out.

How can we all help make that happen / push Joomla forward?

I think the best we can do for Joomla right now is to start writing about it again. We need people creating content about the wonders of Joomla 5, cookbooks about how to create websites with Joomla, and definitely, we need people dancing their way to create a website on social platforms 😉.

Is there anything we forgot to ask but should have asked you?

Certainly! I am wearing my best clothes for this interview, so I really wonder: why didn’t you ask about my glamorous shirt! 😜