This week I have a round up of the Joomla World Conference and some highlights from the event.
Some key take away points from it as well.
Last but not least, I also have an interview with Andrew Eddie who talks about the idea of distributions for Joomla and the way Joomla 4 might look in the future.
Show Notes
Joomla News
You can find the new marketing material for Joomla! 3.2, available now. Download it, play with it, test it, and use the banners, Facebook cover images etc.
Another article of interest you can find is about the Joomla! 3.2 features. It includes video tutorials on content versioning, user interface enhancement, the extension finder, two step authentication, multilingual site installer, module ACL video, rapid application framework and more.
Also on the blog you can find an article by Peter Martin, this is a call out for Joomla! community leadership nominations. The CLT are looking for some new members, so if you know of anyone who you think would be suited get the nominations in.
Joomla World Conference Review
The Joomla World Conference was an absolutely fantastic experience. I met people from all around the world and many who listen to the podcast. It gave me a real big buzz to hear feedback from people who listen to the Joomla Beat Podcast and were attending the conference.
I apologise to everyone that I didn't quite get around to interviewing, it was a very busy few days! However, I managed to get a total of 17 interviews conducted, so stay tuned for those in the coming episodes.
Reflections
. I attended a massive bug squashing event during the conference. It was a great experience, and it showed a lot of beginners on how the bug squashing process works. For myself and I believe many others there, it was an eye opener.
. Joomla! Ignite Session - This is a series of 5 min presentations, and each one has 20 slides. There is a transition every 15 seconds so the speaker has to refine the presentation and really know what they are talking about. I participated in this and found it took a long time to prepare for but was an interesting section of the conference. You can find them on the Joomla World Conference YouTube channel. Thanks to Duke Speer for putting together the Joomla Ignite Sessions.
. The presenters who gave the keynote sessions where great. One I would like to mention is Matt Mullenweg who is the founder of WordPress. He showed the parallels on how WordPress grew as a community and a platform over the years, in comparison to Joomla!
. Sander Potjer from Joomla Volunteers portal presented a new project which he is leading. It is in regards to a matchmaking service with volunteers who want to get involved in the Joomla! project. To get tasks and other things that need to be done in the community itself. You can register and set up a profile on the portal, showing what you can do and how much time you have. This will match up with particular tasks on the portal so you can contribute and do these tasks. If you are interested in this particular project, watch his video. Then send him a message and find out how you can contribute to be part of this team.
Other Key Points
. Tenko Nikolov, the CEO of SiteGround gave an interesting presentation on security and on how your Joomla! site can be hacked. It was eye opening to learn how easy it is to hack a website. The biggest takeaway point from his presentation was to make sure your websites are updated and backed up. If they are up to date, the security holes and patches which are known are covered up and the hackers can't take advantage of them. A good backup process is also important, so if anything happens you can restore your site.The marketing plan and direction of Joomla! was presented by Jessica Dunbar from Anything Digital, and she was leading the conversations about this. It is a really good starting point in terms of the marketing of Joomla! and the direction it is going.
. Some people were talking about how they were afraid that Joomla!'s popularity was declining or the growth rate was dropping. That is affecting sales of extension developers and service providers. I will do a little bit of research to find out where people are making money within the Joomla! space. and where in the market the money is coming from? I'd like to find out more about the eco-system within Joomla!. Stay tuned over the next few months while I investigate this.
Interview with Andrew Eddie on Distribution
Welcome to the Joomla Beat Podcast, Andrew.
A few ideas from Andrew's keynote presentation about Joomla! distribution
. One of the goals on the CMS roadmap is to break Joomla! up into distributions. A one size fits all model is not necessary true, not everyone needs everything that comes out of the box. As a user removes what they do not need, those components and extensions come back in patches. Maybe we can introduce more flexibility for people, rather than downloading the whole stack all the time.
. This can take in the forms such as a lite version, a classic version and developer version.
. We could be doing that and/or things like extension developers and even the core extensions are listed in the JED. Where there is a little flag that says this is distribution aware.
. The Joomla! download page is the distribution builder, where you can choose your own adventure.
The distribution packages
. The project needs to have a few as a starting point for beginners and those who are not too sure where to start. Those who know what they want can customise their download, and it will be saved.
How will it be presented to the community?
The idea is quite old, but it is only lately that it has got some traction in the community. We have set up a site to start talking through these issues. The response here has been extremely positive and a lot of people are interested in the user experience. They have shown interest in working on that. This is something new and a chance to get people involved.
Thanks for joining us today, Andrew.
Stay tuned for more Joomla World Conference attendee interviews in the upcoming episodes.
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