Hans van der Meer

20 October 2025

JoomlaDays Netherlands 2025, a big success!

A new edition, another location. For 2025 the team decided to organise the JoomlaDays Netherlands in Utrecht at Crowne Plaza hotel, closeby the Central Station.

20 June 2024

JoomlaDays Netherlands 2024 - a recap with a view from a co-organizer

Finally, after waiting for a year we could enjoy another JoomlaDay in the Netherlands! We had online meetings for a few months, and got our program set, and our visitors and presenters were back!

20 January 2024

Meet a Joomla User Group: JUG London

Sadly this will be the last Joomla User Group interview in this series. But we have one of the most popular JUGs for last! I came across JUG London myself somewhere in 2022 I think, they were doing online meetings and why not join it from abroad? Lot's of other volunteers I know (at least their name) from the Joomla Project also attend the meetings online.

20 December 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: JUG Eindhoven

This JUG has been active for a long time and has always had a nice group of Joomlers visiting. I have visited this JUG when my job was still in ‘s-Hertogenbosch and always enjoyed the level of information shared. Let's visit Joomla User Group Eindhoven!

20 November 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: JUG Athens

Next in our Joomla User Group series is JUG Athens, Greece. Here the organizers do more than "just" organizing the JUG as you can read in this interview. So, let's visit Greece!

20 October 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: JUG Wien

Come and meet Joomla User Group Wien! It has been active for almost a decade now and also looking for new Joomlers to come and visit. This time we found Florian available to answer our questions. I would’ve loved to do it in person, as I (Hans) liked Vienna when I was there for a half marathon. But enough about me, let’s go and start the interview.

20 September 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: Arnhem - Nijmegen

The Joomla User Group Arnhem - Nijmegen is close to my heart as I have been the organizer in the past. This Dutch JUG is located in the eastern-middle part of the Netherlands and has started quite a long time ago. Read more about this JUG in this interview.

17 August 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: Milano Centro, Italy

The third Joomla User Group (JUG) that will be interviewed is Milano Centro. And as perhaps you might have guessed, this JUG resides in Italy. Let's meet the organizers!

20 July 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: Website Design Company Owners

The Joomla User Group has always been a meeting in person, but since 2020 things changed. Now it is also possible to have hybrid or online User Groups. And in this months JUG interview we share one of our online JUGs, the Website Design Company Owners User Group.

20 June 2023

Meet a Joomla User Group: Maastricht, the Netherlands

This is the first interview in the new series, Meet a Joomla User Group. And we start in Maastricht, the Netherlands. In this town in the south of the Netherlands Johan and his co-organisers have been organizing a JUG meeting for years now.

Where is your User Group located?

JUG043 Maastricht organised the meetings at Maastricht University and after the Corona Pandemic we moved to our new location in Beek, Limburg, The Netherlands.
For how long has this User Group been organizing events?

JUG043 Maastricht was started in July 2016 by Leon Kolenburg and Johan van der Velde. And for several years now, Pierre Veelen has also been helping to organise our JUG meetings.

How many people are involved in organising and how many visitors are joining your meetings?

We organise the meetings with 3 organisers, Leon Kolenburg, Pierre Veelen and Johan van der Velde. The number of participants varies and depends on the theme being discussed. Sometimes we are with 7 participants and the maximum we achieved during the Corona pandemic where the first JUG organised virtual meetings via Zoom.

Are your meetings in person, online or hybrid?

We started with physical meetings and during Corona we started to organise virtual meetings. Every now and then we organise a hybrid meeting where participants can choose between being physically present or virtual. This works well and offers people from the rest of the Netherlands and Belgium to hook up without traveling.

How did your JUG evolve during the years?

JUG043 started immediately with a fairly consisted group that has grown to about 15 active members including the organisers. We looked for different ways to keep attracting members to the meetings. This is sometimes a challenge with active members who have busy schedules. But despite this, we only have to cancel occasionally. Many members sign up to participate right before the meeting. We regularly invite guest speakers to give presentations and we organise fun workshops. In this way we can still be successful.

We do not have high costs for organising, thanks to some regular sponsors, for example, rooms, drinks, the website etc. are reimbursed and members usually pay a fixed amount per participation or a yearly fee to attend any number of meetings

What topics are usually/mostly being presented at your meetings?

Various topics are offered, we also organise workshops or Pizza, JUG & Fun meetings where participants can also get started with Joomla themselves. The topics covered are, templates, upgrading Joomla, installing and configuring extensions, SEO, security, backup and restore, website reviews etc.

Upgrading to Joomla 4, modifications to Cassiopeia template and template builders (Yootheme) are popular topics now.

What difficulties do you face organizing your JUG?

The difficulties we are running into is late registration of participants and continiously growing the number of participants, we are having trouble finding new visitors. Getting business Joomlers to join is also proving difficult. They hardly ever respond to our emails to come to a meeting without obligation. Better marketing or promotional videos might help.