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.

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!

Just a few weeks ago, our OSM president, Sarah Watz and Community Leader, Ruth Cheesley, came back from one incredible experience, the Grace Hopper Conference. The Joomla! booth was approached by many students and young women interested in learning more about our Community and Project. But what does it really mean for our brand to get involved in such a big conference? What is the real take-away for our Community?

Listening to Tessa's keynote on Volunteering at JoomlaDay Israel a thought struck me. If volunteering is so great, and I think it is and I have done it all my life, then why doesn't everyone do it and why don't those of us that do volunteer do it more. I have travelled the world and met so many people with amazing passion and skills for Joomla and yet I never see them contributing. Why is that? Is the problem with us? Is this a problem we can and should be solving? There are so many different ways that people can volunteer to help the Joomla project, so what is stopping some people from giving their time?

There is a popular Brazilian song, Preludio by Raul Seixas, that includes the lyric "A dream, which we dream alone, is just a dream. A dream, which we dream together, is reality”. I’ve listened to songs in Brazil this year. I’ve listened to songs in Germany, Poland, and other places too as I traveled from here to there speaking and learning about Joomla. In all of those places, just like all the places I’ve been before, I had great experiences meeting and talking with different people, learning about cultures, sharing knowledge, offering help and contributing to a common dream.

The NEW Joomla Resources Directory takes center stage at http://resources.joomla.org with the goal to empower Joomla users to “Connect and Do More” After several years of deliberation, feature enhancements and development, the Joomla Resources Directory (JRD) team proudly presents to the community a fantastic, updated providers resource directory.

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!

The #IceBucketChallenge promotes awareness of the disease amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and encourages donations to research.

Joomla, in partnership with SiteGround, will provide an improved demo site and a new free hosting option at Joomla.com. Steve Burge interviewed Sarah Watz, the President of Open Source Matters and asked her about the new joomla.com and demo.joomla.org.

Joomla is becoming more and more popular and spreading around the globe at an incredible pace. As more and more people are drawn into community life, it’s time to ask questions that may interest many. This month here is some first-hand information about Joomla in an interview with Brian Teeman – a Joomla co-founder. Enjoy!