Joomla! Community Magazine™

This year’s conference is shaping up to be better than ever with an amazing lineup of keynotes, some exciting new workshops that will be presented this year, and much more! The call for sessions closed at the end of August, but while our organizing team is creating the full conference schedule, we already have some exciting announcements for what’s happening this year, and some of the amazing people you can expect to hear from at the 2014 Joomla! World Conference. Oh, and an opportunity for you to win free conference tickets!

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.

Joomla!’s first World conference is just around the corner! Set for November 16th-18th in the heart of Silicon Valley, USA, the Joomla! World Conference brings together Joomla users, builders, and developers from around the world. For one weekend, the international Joomla community will meet for a first of its kind event in the Joomla world.

With an old, out-of-date Drupal site getting maliciously and successfully hacked every week, Truthout was looking for answers. A few months later, with a complicated Drupal to Joomla! migration behind us, Truthout transitioned to a new, stable, and flexible Joomla! Platform with room to grow.

The Joomla project is gearing up to participate in this year’s Google Summer of Code program, and there are a lot of really great ideas that have been developed. The proposals that students have submitted to Joomla this year have been generated from our GSoC Idea List, something that the community helped us generate before we could even submit our GSoC application to Google. We’re very grateful for the community giving us an all-hands-on-deck to get that completed.

In September, 2005, the lights went down, the last stragglers grabbed their seats, and the last few coughs were made. This audience had gathered for a Symphony of sorts, not the traditional masterpieces that have been performed on stages for centuries, but something new, an orchestration performed far from the domain of maestros and musicians.

Summer is here! and a lot is happening in the Joomla! World! Joomla! Events are taking place on almost every continent this summer, and that means there’s one close to you! Here’s a quick run down of some of the events that have already taken place this summer, and some events that you can still make it to, that you don’t want to miss!

Joomla! User Groups around the world allow thousands of Joomla! users to connect each month with local Joomla! users, and talk about everything from the Joomla! Community and the latest releases, to their own experiences and solutions with Joomla! This month we caught up with the members of the Joomla! User Group in Cape Town, South Africa and asked them about their user group, what they liked about it, and how it impacted them!

With so much happening in the Joomla! Community these days with all these brilliant people working on the new Joomla! Framework Project, and the geniuses adding great new features to the Joomla! CMS, I wanted to take a quick minute and highlight a crucial area of the of the Joomla! Project that everyone can help with, even folks like me who are pretty much useless when it comes to programming!

Each month Joomla! users around the world gather for collaboration, learning, and good times with Joomla! User Groups in over 50 countries (55 to be exact). Groups range from get-togethers of 8 or 9 people, to meetups of over 40 people! I caught up with the Joomla! User Group in Suffolk, England for this last month's meeting for a good time, and a quick interview. We were able to talk with JUG members and get their thoughts on JUG's and how the Joomla! Community is affecting them.