Joomla! Community Magazine™

This month I had the opportunity to go to a tech conference and talk about Joomla!, Open Source Communities, and Education – nothing unusual for me, I do that all the time at colleges and Joomla! events around the United States and elsewhere. But this time was different, because I was showing up to an event I’d never been to, a WordCamp. The most common questions I got almost non-stop for two days? “Why in the world are you here?” and “Isn’t this ‘enemy territory’ for you?” Here’s what I said, and why I went, and why I’m definitely going to go to more events in other Open Source communities.

The 2nd Joomla! World Conference was held last month. Last year in San Jose there were keynote speakers from major open source names such as MySQL and Mozilla. This year the team went a step further and invited a speaker from WordPress. Matt Mullenweg is one of the two co-founders of WordPress and also the founder of Automattic, the company behind WordPress.com.

As a technical writer, I think Opensource Matters is missing an important marketing opportunity by not targeting Joomla! at the professional writing community. By "professional writing community," I don't mean novelists, poets, or publishing company editors (though, Joomla! would be great for them too) - I mean professional writers in the corporate world: technical writers, instructional designers, and marketing personnel. While the professional writing community is a smaller, more-niche market than the corporate CMS market and the software development community, I have thought for some time that Joomla! could be the next "killer app" for professional writers.

Anyone who knows me knows I have a bit of a sweet tooth and I'm a sucker for chocolate, cheesecake and ice cream. It's extremely hard for me to walk past the local gelato shop. As I yield to temptation, I'm affronted with an assortment of flavours and mix-ins. I can choose between standard or sugar cones or have it in a cup. I can tailor my order for the likes and dislikes of my family, and get serving sizes that are realistic for their appetite (or my budget). Decisions, decisions ...

A big thank you to all who submitted artwork for the Joomla! Fan Art Logo Contest, we had some great logos to choose from! All three stickers will be printed by StickerMule.com and will be available at the upcoming Joomla! World Conference!

If you haven't heard of Twitter, you've been living under a rock. Twitter is one of the fastest growing social networks on the Planet. It's the fastest growing for an older 55-65 demographic. It also gets a lot of interaction. This month we had a chance to sit down with Twitter Expert Branden Hampton. Branden manages the most interactive handle on Twitter @notebook.

Every so often I have some tweets in my timeline where I can watch people from Joomla! talking really bad about Wordpress. Or Drupal. Or another CMS. And most of the times, people do this because they see all the opensource CMS as opponents on something that they call "the CMS market". Now, take a seat, because here comes a shocking truth: neither Drupal nor Wordpress nor any other opensource CMS is an opponent for Joomla. 

Joomla! Ignite is coming to the Joomla! World Conference stage in November! Here is your opportunity to inspire, educate, enlighten and entertain your colleagues!

The Joomla! World Conference is holding a fan art contest with our sponsor, StickerMule.com, giving community members the opportunity to get creative with the Joomla! logo. 

Seeing how are open source technologies can make a real difference in someone's life is something quite special, but see how it can help a nation to develop into the central hub for technology is just inspiring.

Joomla!Day Kenya was my first visit to Africa, and I really didn't know what to expect. I had heard there was a lot of suport for Open Source technologies in Kenya and Africa as a whole, with there already being several Joomla! user groups in existence across Africa, but none in Kenya ... yet.