Community Magazine

This was the motto of this year's JoomlaDay Poland 2017! This two-day event is an annual event for users and fans of this amazing content management system. Every year it is organized in another place, and this time we met in the capital of the West Pomeranian Province - in Szczecin.

Last month I attended the Joomla World Conference #JWC17 in Rome, Italy. Since my first JWC visit to Vancouver last year, I've joined a couple of global teams including Showcase, Certification and the Joomla Community Magazine (JCM), where I help out with things like moderation, English-language proof reading and documentation. This year, in addition to the actual conference, I also got to attend some team meetings prior to and during the conference.

In just three short years JoomlaDay Florida has become the premier Joomla event in the United States and has grown from a single day to the current three-day event that includes workshops and certification. To be honest, it wasn't as hard as expected; the USA has far less JoomlaDay's than Europe and some of the largest have been dormant for the past few years. Still, we are honored and feel blessed to have the support of the Joomla community. As we lead up to our 2018 event, I would like to share with you how we created JoomlaDay Florida!

Tampa, Florida is well known for invasions, from snowbirds to pirates, Tampa has been a winter getaway and vacation spot for countless years. Over the past two years, Tampa has also become known as the largest JoomlaDay in North America. The combination of easy access from the Islands, South America, and Europe and a break from the winter cold for our friends in the North has made JoomlaDay Florida a premier Joomla event.

Our first real official Joomla Day NYC was in 2008 in Google. In 2009, I coordinated the first JoomlaDayNYC in a 'paid space'. This event was in a small space that most of us called the 'chachkie' space. If you were there you will know what I mean! In the front entrance, you saw little trinkets, etc. At the same time, almost 200 people met and worked on Joomla. It was an exciting weekend for all involved. We met people from other countries, focused on Joomla, and had a ton of fun!

Jab17 was an opportunity for several of our newly-elected members of OSM's leadership to meet with the Joomlers who were attending the conference in Krakow, Poland, for a drink a chat and brainstorming. 

CMS Summit will bring together developers, integrators, designers, experts, and users with other Merge attendees ranging from start-ups, hosting companies, funding, digital media and legal experts to domain owners looking for advice and help with launching their site.  The conference will offer much more than sessions and training by creating a unique networking situation to drive business and commerce.

In the past two years, Joomla's outreach has grown beyond the usual JWC, JAB and JoomlaDay's by working with several hosting conferences. Joomla's first experience at HostingCon Global 2016 gave us great insight into the current perception of the project, fantastic advice from media and hosting experts, and opened the door to new sponsorship for the project. This one event showed us how important our visibility outside the core community could be.

I had a conversation about JWC with Hugh Douglas-Smith, a contributor for the JED Team, en-GB Team and is in charge of the JWC 2017 marketing. He shared with me an interesting testimonial and I would like to share with the readers of the magazine. 

JoomlaDay Chicago 2017 was held on Saturday, September 23rd on an unseasonably warm 90+ degree Chicago day. The event included three tracks one for beginners, one for seasoned users and one for those seeking certification.