Joomla! Community Magazine™

Meet Jennifer Gress, a mom, a co-author of "Using Joomla!", published in 2014, and a member of the Joomla Update Working Group and Joomla User Group Teams. Read this "no holds barred" interview and see what Jenn has to say on how she became involved with Joomla as a CMS and a community; on her highlights of 2014; on her book; on why you should migrate to J!3; on the struggles of a large Joomla User Group, and on how the world totally missed the California baby boom of the 1970's.

On January 6th, I saw an interesting post on the Joomla Facebook group from Alex de Borba that began, "Let's start something different, shall we?". Alex was offering his help for anyone who had a question about Joomla. I read through the comments and was extremely impressed with his courteous, helpful and well-written replies. I asked him to get in touch with me if he would be interested in writing for the JCM. He did. Here is the interview I had with Alex, a bit long, but very informative. I look forward to his future articles.

Last October, Sarah Watz and I represented Joomla at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing at Phoenix, Arizona.  A few booths down from our position was Duke University, which was launching a Kickstarter campaign to create a card deck and poster showcasing notable women in computing throughout the ages, it was fully funded within days, eventually closing at $15,010, 500% of its target. The card decks were also sent out to over 500 educators from around the world - people backing the project could opt for a 'get one, give one' option which sent a pack to an educator in additon to them receiving their own pack - and the project has continued to grow, now including daughter projects featuring upcoming leaders in the Middle East & Africa.

February, 3rd, 2015 marks the 17th anniversary of the Open Source Initiative (OSI).

Peter has been working with Joomla since its beginning and is a member of the Community Leadership Team (CLT). He co-leads a web design and development agency based in Sydney, Australia and runs probably the most popular Joomla weekly podcast/videocast called Joomla Beat wherein he explores the Joomla world and gives light to talented newbies as well as talks with well-known people. Being a professional web-developer, Peter also loves working with new technologies and engineering templates, or doing strategic planning or consulting. In his spare time people may find him practicing yoga. I am glad to introduce an interview with this interesting and creative person. Enjoy!

What takes place when the marketers meet the developers? In 2014 I've watched the most incredible community come together, and we are inspired every moment along the way. Each year, we reflect, we remember challenges and we celebrate success. We celebrate the moments that connect us. Here is a glimpse of the marketing successes of 2014.

Sander Potjer, talented Dutch Joomla developer and passionate Joomla Community Leadership Team member, agreed on this interview with me for Joomla Community Magazine readers to share with them his thoughts on Joomla User Groups, his vision for newly launched Joomla Volunteer Portal, recently revamped by its team Joomla Extensions Directory, his competitive rowing schedule overlapping with JoomlaDay "season" and other Joomla related matters.

Everything started a few months ago when I posted this question on my Facebook profile page. It was amazing how many people answered my post. But, really, what do Italy and Mexico have in common? Reading this article, you will realize that they share much more than just the colours of their flags!

Recently I was at the 2014 JoomlaDay Sydney. It was a fantastic day and great to see so many familiar faces. A wonderful group of speakers, great location, food, atmosphere and Joomla! What an amazing, powerful, mighty application and it is all for FREE! The Joomla CMS, it can do so much and has so many amazing features: ACL, content versioning, over 65 languages supported, downloaded 10s of millions of times, runs about 3% of the Internet and growing. This all appears to be very positive, however, I am sorry to say this, but this is also a sign of what we are doing wrong!

The last four years has seen quite a lot of excitement in the Joomlasphere as the community continues to grow and the software continues to be driven by innovative ideas. As with everything in a quickly evolving software marketplace, platforms come and go and Joomla! 2.5 is no different. Today we reflect back on its nearly four year life span and the framework it laid for Joomla to grow.