Joomla! turns 6 in September, and what a wild ride it's been! Milestones since Joomla's last birthday include:

• Release of Joomla 1.6 and 1.7
• Establishment of a new timed release cycle
• A record number of Joomla Day events
• Over 25 million Joomla downloads
• Over 500,000 forum members and over 2 million forum posts
• Over 8000 extensions on the Joomla Extensions Directory
• Joomla was separated into two projects, the Platform and the CMS
• 50,000 users on Joomla's Facebook page
• One full year of great Joomla Magazine articles, along with two JOSCARS!

With so much to celebrate, what better way to do it than with your Joomla friends at a local Joomla User Group meeting.

Joomla User Group New England has a cake every year to celebrate Joomla's birthday, and we encourage you to do the same! You could also celebrate in other ways.

• Organize a barbecue, a dinner, or other social event
• Run an installfest, a bug squashing session, or a documentation party to benefit Joomla
• Ask a speaker from another Joomla User Group to speak at your group's meeting, through Skype or other remote connection tools
• Start organizing a Joomla Day for next year, or sign up to attend a Joomla Day
• Ask your group to show their best work from the past year and explain what they learned from the project

Joomla User Groups are still the best way to meet great new friends, network to find skilllsets complimenting your own, learn something new about Joomla, or just have someone who not only listens to all of the geeky things you say, but even understands them!

Happy 6th birthday, Joomla!, with love from Joomla User Group New England!

This article has been translated into Russian, courtesy of Eugene Sivokon