Joomla! Community Magazine™

At the start of 2017 we look back at the Joomla! Community Magazine (JCM) statistics for 2016. This is the first of a 2-part review.

For me, surprisingly, I received an invitation to a Joomla! Automated Testing Code Sprint. Developers from all over the world come together. Of course I did not say no. My experiences with the active participation in the Code Sprint I would like to share with you in this article.

A new year begins and I'd like to wish all our readers throughout the globe a Happy New Year! For Joomla, this year means news and changes that will bring the CMS to a whole new level. 

iJoomla and JomSocial owner Merav Knafo kindly agreed to talk to "Joomla! Community Magazine" on what has been major highlights for her team in 2014 but due to a logistical issue this interview was not published in due time as planned. Read on to learn about her experience of becoming a new "sheriff" in JomSocial "town" which she acquired two years ago; on how she and her team are striving to create a "WOW" factor; on her favourite food Sushi and on how today's computing graduates should approach pursuing their dreams of building their own web-development business.

A story about how my car was invaded and attacked by a mouse. Usually, you don´t associate a mouse, the animal, with a car. They don´t mix and have nothing in common. At autumn this may change. The mouse may see your car environment as a perfect shelter for the incoming cold winds and wet weather. No less do you associate a mouse, the animal, with website security? Perhaps this will change at the end of this story.

I really appreciate the Joomla in Action sessions because we have an opportunity to strengthen the community and get stuff done. So being part of the Joomla! User Group (JUG) Team, when I found that I could go to the Joomla! World Conference in Vancouver, I wanted to foster new JUGs and assist in supporting existing groups.

Back from Lisbon and Granada, where I attended two fantastic and different technology events (more about them here, The Challenge to reach The Summit), I have one more J-story to tell. In Lisbon, I attended to WebSummit. Web Summit (originally Dublin Web Summit) is a technology conference held annually since 2009. The topic of the conference is centered on internet technology and attendees range from Fortune 500 companies to smaller tech companies. This contains a mix of CEOs and founders of tech start ups together with a range of people from across the global technology industry, as well as related industries. On the other hand, in Granada, I attented to JoomlaDay Granada. JoomlaDays are Joomla community events, organized by local user groups (JUGs) of each city.

Joomla made an appearance at HostingCon Europe 2016 (http://europe.hostingcon.com/) in Amsterdam, the Netherlands. As the name suggests, this was an event for cloud and service providers from Europe. We were asked to represent Joomla and given an expo booth to share about Joomla with a good few hundreeds of attendees.

Parth Lawate, Co-founder of "Tekdi Web Solutions" and "Techjoomla", Open Source companies focused on Joomla CMS, has agreed to answer some questions for Joomla Community Magazine readers at the end of 2014 but due to some logistical issues this interview was not published in due time as planned.  Please read on if you want to know more about Parth and also: five benefits you will get "selfishly" contributing to Open Source projects like Joomla CMS; how you can easily get involved with Joomla where you live and how you can become a Joomla bug squashing champ even not being a web-programmer.  

Another year, another Joomla World Conference…Once again I had a wonderful experience with the Joomla Community in Vancouver, Canada. I believe many that also attended will agree with me. It feels like powering up and boosting my brain with new and improved Joomla knowledge.