Sigrid Gramlinger loves to contribute to Joomla. In her opinion, her role as newly elected Production Department Coordinator entails: making sure everyone in the department does their work the best way possible, providing them with a safe and pleasant place where they can excel and grow together, and keep improving Joomla so it remains the best CMS to create websites with. 

Sigrid, congratulations on your election as Production DC! Could you tell us a little bit about yourself? 

Thank you! Yes, sure. 
Geographically, I am from Austria and I live close to Vienna with my family. 
Socially, I am a long time Joomla community member and I always try to give back to the community and contribute in the best way I can.
For example, for a few years, I have been a co-organiser of JoomlaDays in the German speaking community. Since 2019 I am a member of the CMS Release Team and was the team lead for almost three years.

I have a web agency with a team of four and we have been building exclusively Joomla websites since 2010.

What convinced you to run for the position of Production Department Coordinator (PDC)?

As mentioned, I try to give back to the community where I can. My PHP skills are only mediocre, so I try to play my strengths on other levels. I am a good communicator and organizer. A few people asked me to step up for PDC, and I could always imagine myself in this position, but I had to finish some other commitments until this summer first. 

I think Joomla is amazing! 

It gives us the possibility to earn our living with it, to share ideas on websites, to change the world. I want all of that for every single one of us.

Could you tell us what the Production Department is responsible for?

The PD oversees all aspects related to the code of all software led by the organization. So all the teams in the PD work together to maintain and improve the software, to release the CMS, to translate it, to test it, to provide places for documentation, you name it.

In your manifesto, you say your goal is to support the teams to do their work the best way they can. How are you going to do that?

Just very simple: to provide them with regular meetings for exchange and feedback, to give them a safe place and support when they have problems, to keep them updated about new topics related to other teams or departments.

What is the highest priority in Production at the moment?

To get more people involved on a regular basis. If you're interested, you could join the documentation team, the automated testing team, the enhancement team or the bug squad team, for example. If you have any questions: my contact information is in the last paragraph of this interview.

And what do you think is the major challenge for the Production department? How can we all help with it?

We need feedback and tests on PRs. We need volunteers for writing documentation. We need a vivid community to make this happen. After the corona phase, I think it is important to get people back on board and also acquire new people through online-events and live events.

If you can, go and meet people - virtual and real!!!

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

Beside AI and also - for example - cloud technologies, the concept of a CMS may not be cutting edge on first view, but I think a solid and flexible CMS (like Joomla) is for most organizations (profit and non-profit) still the long-term basis for their online presence - and hence, the basis for communication to all of their internal and external stakeholders. We have seen social platforms come and go, but our own websites are still there. And on our own website, we can decide what we want to communicate, build, create, share,... 

So I think the major challenge is to integrate new concepts into our CMS and convince future clients, partners, employees, even competitors, that with Joomla we will have a long, stable and reliable basis.

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

I would like to see people who are creating issues on GitHub to think about what should happen next with this issue. I don’t think you should just drop your issue, leave and wait until it is “magically” done. If you cannot code, try other ways to support, provide insights, explain what you want, how you want to solve it and test it, if there is code eventually. But be also considerate that you cannot “order” PRs. Please accept also, that we have to provide a CMS that will be shipped worldwide for websites, therefore we cannot add every possible option. We (the maintainers, release managers and production department) have to weigh if it makes sense to users in general and how it will be maintained in the future. That means functionality that is not common or very specific, shouldn’t be in the core. That’s what we have extensions for.
I would like to see acceptance and support for decisions made within the teams. If you want to take part and have a say, join a team and contribute on a regular basis.

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

I really want to thank Benjamin Trenkle who was a great Production Department Coordinator. I hope I can follow in his footsteps and continue his commitment just as successfully.

Please contact me (find me on Mattermost, or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.), if you have an idea or also if you have a problem. And then let us work together to make it happen or find a common solution. It is not “them” building the software, it is “us”.