JoomlaDay Ireland 2012

Blog - JUG Meetings and Events Written by Techbot | 14.12.11

Just a quick note to wish everybody a Happy Christmas and a Prosperous New Year.

And I'd like to take the opportunity to make a call to action for the new year. On Dec 20th, Joomla 2.5 beta is being released and with it, Joomla enters a new era with a new long term support release. The Irish Joomla User Group will be barely a year old (our first meeting was to celebrate the launch of the short term release 1.6) . We ‘ve had our ups and downs like any other. I for one have appreciated being part of the Joomla community.

Microsoft have for a while now offered us a premises, speakers, and sponsorship help when we are ready to run our own Joomla Day Ire. I think we could do this in the Spring. We need to start thinking about what we want now. The Microsoft HQ can hold 120 people. If adult education VECs are turning to Joomla! will this be enough places?

What kind of talks would we give?

Who will give them? I have spoken for two hours and it was easy, and I spoke for 10 minutes and it was really difficult. It depends on whether your audience is a group of developers, or first-time users. The speakers will need to practice. Do you want your business involved? Can your employee represent you in front of a group of 120?

If you are a student of Joomla! what kind of workshops would you like to attend? Hidden secrets of the JCE editor or what about CSS and Templating for 2.5, or maybe Javascript: Mootools versus Jquery ? Hopefully for the Devs, Ryan Ozimek can takes us through Joomla as a platform concept, but what about talks for the non-technical?

• I will be inviting various educators.
• I could also give a talk on Joomla and open data which might attract some county councillors and others interested in the open data initiative in Ireland.
• Do we contact every other web dev company that uses Joomla! and maybe get some of the Developers from England or Europe over?
• Ryan Ozimek from OSM, the legal body behind Joomla, has confirmed that he will attend.
• What if we got Brian Teeman from http://brian.teeman.net/ ?
• Redshop does the Joomla!Day circuit too I think, as does JCE Editor and Virtuemart.

I can find out who else is available to give a talk. Some of these guys need expenses paid. Others will be sponsored by their companies if a large potential audience is present (I think).

I can do the paperwork and having met so many great people at the Joomla!Day UK I know who to contact there to get things done.

It all depends on how many people directly respond letting us know what they want. And for the companies or freelancers out there who want to give a talk or promote a service to get in contact.

I intend to hire a publicist/events person to manage this and use the sponsorship money to pay for it. This is going to be a well run event that will cater for web professionals, hobbyists, entrepreneurs and educators. Joomla is well known enough that sites like Silicon Repubic might attend and report.

Would you buy a ticket for an all-day Joomla extravaganza?

There will be loads to learn, loads of opportunities to network, to promote your services and jive about Joomla!

See you all in the new year