It was my first J and Beyond! It was excellent!

Great international meeting of Joomla! enthusiasts was held on 2-4 June 2017 at Cracow, city once inhabited by the Dragon. This is why this conference was held under the motto: "Fight the Dragon", which was the allegory of "fight" on the Joomla! Project ;-)

I always say that Joomla! enthusiasts meetings surprise me each time! I love these excellent people who want to study in order to know everything about Joomla!. Relationships become something more than only a common training, work, or doing business. This is a completely different world! People are friendly, helpful, smiling and full of energy and passion. Moreover, they are willing to share their knowledge with others :-)

Why some people get so emotional about Joomla!, which is only a tool for creating websites? It doesn't make sense! Those who think so do not notice anything that at first glance may be too obvious. The truth is that people are creating an incredible community of mutual learning and motivation.

I would like to thank you warmly for the time spent together and all those happy moments together. Thank you very much JoomShaper and Paul Frankowski, for giving me the opportunity to attend that fantastic event!

I am happy I met so many wonderful people from all over the world: Robert Jacobi - mr president :-), Fred Abu, Ak Shehu, Patrick Jungbluth, Djamel Kherbi, Rick Spaan, Opati Aswani, Viktor Vogel, Elisa Foltyn, Gerardo García, Puneet Kala, Bartek Jazwinski. Now You are my #JFriends :-) Sorry about my terrible English and I hope I didn't say something wrong ;-)

I was also happy to met again my old JFriends: Stefan Wajda, Justyna Michallek, Danuta Idzik, Michał Trzepizur, Paul Frankowski, Aleksander Kuczek, Wojciech Babicz, Darek Śnieg, Dominik Mirosław Piotrowski, Andrzej Kasprzyk, Tomasz Jeska, Slawek Sikora, Radek Suski, Sarah Watz, Nicholas Dionysopoulos, Richard van Tilborg. I love You :-D
I am happy that I could learn so much!

Standing ovation for all organizers, THANK YOU :-)

I came to the meeting with Paul Frankowski from Joomshaper who lives in Wrocław near small city Jawor where I live. When we got to the place I was very happy that my old friends from Poland were already there. My English is tragic, I was afraid I won’t be able to communicate with others. Big Thank You for Justyna Michallek and Danuta Idzik! They were always with me when I needed help :-)

So, we made some great pics and J and Beyond started! The conference was opened by Robert Deutz, one of J and Beyond organizers. Next Aleksander Kuczek, vice president of Open Source Matters began his keynote and he reminded us the legend of the Wawel Dragon. Aleksander called to join forces and fight the "dragons" together. I think he meant to come together to fight the adversities and all different problems.

Photo by Dominik Piotrowski CC BY SA

After opening keynote by Aleksander Kuczek we had a 10 minutes coffee break, and of course some time for talks and making photos;-)

There was so many presentations, and it was not easy to choose. So I chose a presentation of the person I know and appreciate: Sarah Watz. We met during JoomlaDay Poland 2015 in Gdańsk. During her presentation she showed us 7 Facebook Strategies to grow our business. Sarah talked about how to create good marketing leads that will be read by users. I remembered that "content with no end result in mind is a waste of time!"

Fortunately, all of the speeches were broadcast live on the official J and Beyond channel on YouTube. So you will find there a record of all presentations.

Next was Viktor Vogel and his presentation “A fast and secure Joomla! website”. He showed us 3 layers of website security: user, Joomla! and server.

I love this guy because he is always smiling and full of energy. I am only sorry that we exchanged with each other only a few words. Maybe next time when I improve my English there will still be a chance to talk ;-)

After lunch I had the opportunity to attend the lecture of my #JFriend Andrzej Kasprzyk. He was talking about how Joomla security affect SEO rankings? I participated in his lectures during JoomlaDay Poland so I knew there would be a lot of knowledge and a lot of details. And so it was ;-)

Photo by Dominik Piotrowski CC BY SA

Another lecture was also my #JFriend from Poland, Paweł Frankowski. He showed us how to build a website without keyboard using great extension from Joomlshaper - SP Page Builder. Now we know that we can play with blocks and still be a Magician for our clients ;-)

After that, there was a very important keynote “Think before you act - the principle of accessibility” by Toovya Shenfeld from Israel. He showed us how blind people read pages and how annoying it might be. So he encouraged us to use the ARIA attributes that make it possible to optimize the page for accessibility. I hope that together with Stefan Wajda they will create a great team that will help Joomla! become the most accessible CMS!

Photo by Dominik Piotrowski CC BY SA

In the evening, the traditional JOSCARS award ceremony was hosted by Brian Teeman. It was awesome! The Special Award for outstanding personal achievements in the Joomla! received Stefan Wajda, president of the PCJ Otwarte źródła - foundation that is supporting Joomla! project in Poland.

My #JFriend Paweł Frankowski on behalf of Joomla Shaper, received statuette for the best Joomla! template systems :-)

Another awards went to:

• MyJoomla! for Best Joomla! Services,
• Akeeba Backup for the Best Free Joomla! Add-Ons,
• Regular Labs for the Best Product Support,
• Admin Tools Pro for the Best Commercial Joomla! Add-Ons,
• Brian Teeman for the Best Bug Junkie,
• Radek Suski for the Best Communications Junkie,
• Sandra Thevenet for the Best Documentation Junkie,
• Marc-Antoine Thevenet for the Best Transtation Junkie,
• www.nintendo.se for the Best Corporate Web Site,
• wassp.co.uk for the Best non-Corporate Web Site,
• Language Associations Component - Special Award for Innovation of the Year,

Congratulations for all!

After party ended the day ended the next day :-) We talked, we sang and we drank beer. To feel this atmosphere you have to be with us ;-)

Next day, another great lectures! First keynote by Harry Roberts who convinced us that speed and performance are now the most important for our web sites. Next, Duke Speer in his presentation “Present Like a Pro - Top Ten Tips for Owning The Room”, talked about effective communication during the speeches. Remember, don’t open your presentation by “Hello my name is…”. Better open with “I am…”

After lunch there was very interesting speech by Robert Jacobi - president Open Source Matters. Robert is a very nice and friendly, full of energy person and he has Polish roots :-) He showed us what really is Joomla! Joomla! is not only the software, but the people, engineers, designers, integrators, and teams! It’s one of the most popular content management systems on the world!

On that day there was also the Joomla! Administrator Exam. It was the most international exam so far. Fourteen candidates from Uganda, Israel, Belarus, Poland, Germany, Estonia and Algeria completed the exam and eight of them passed with great marks. The great news is that Stefan Wajda is among them! From now on we’ve got Certified Administrators in Poland :-)

I hope, there will be more of them soon, because me and Stefan Wajda will start translating the exam into Polish.

In the evening we had a lot of fun. Brian Teeman offered a game - Joomla! karaoke. The player had to tell stories on random topics related to Joomla! based on the images displayed. It was really very funny. I can not wait when we're having fun with this game at JoomlaDay Poland 2017 in September :-)

Another night and after party ended the next day. That night, me and Michał Trzepizur decided to fight the dragon on the Vistula Boulevards. There were a lot of people, fireworks and of course the dragons ;-)

The third day is a speech our #JFriends Justyna Michallek and Stefan Wajda - Accessibility first! Based on their research they tried to answer the questions if Joomla! is accessible.

Another interesting presentation was “10 strategies for making more money from Freelance Web Development to try in by the end of the year” by Bartek Jazwinski. One of strategies is:

• be an expert,
• help other,
• be vi-sible,
• speak at the events,
• be different.

Last keynote was “You are not a web-developer. Trust me, I ain’t one either” by Radek Suski (developer of great extension SobiPro). After that we made a group photo and we had to say goodbye.

I am extremely grateful that I was able to attend such a fantastic event. I know that Joomla! is Doing Great Things with Great People because Joomla! means TOGETHER! :-)

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