The fun began early!
Working with InMotion Hosting’s Customer Community team has it’s payoffs: learning about Joomla, writing tutorials that help 100,000’s of users, and getting my hands dirty from time to time with some development work.
Every few months I get to travel and attend some great conferences too. Last March I attended Joomla Day Boston 2014. Over the weekend I had the privilege to both attend and present at Joomla Day Minnesota 2014!
Before the event started, the gracious organizers took some of the event’s sponsors out to a Twins game! Unfortunately the Twins didn’t win, but that didn’t matter, watching the game from the box seats helped make the night one to remember.
Sessions and Speakers
STATE OF THE JOOMLA! UNION
Rod Martin was the event’s keynote speaker in the morning. His talk was all about the current state of Joomla!.
Do you remember being 10 years old, and do you understand how far you’ve come since then? Do you know that Joomla is turning 10 next year? That’s right, and Rod did an excellent job through his stories driving home that point.
The evening before his presentation, Rod and I had some time to talk WordPress, Joomla, and Drupal. He has significant experience in all three, and he wasn’t shy about praising his favorite (guess which CMS?). I saw his optimism and excitement for the future of Joomla during our conversations and while he took the podium.
The Success of Joomla 3!
Michael Babker, member of the Joomla Leadership Team, spoke in the afternoon on some of the successes of Joomla 3.
Some of the highlights shared during his talk included:
- Joomla has been downloaded 12 million times in the last 12 months.
- During the last few summers, Joomla has seen new and updated code thanks to Google’s Summer of Code.
- Joomla 3 is expected not to reach end of life until 2018!.
Free Schwag!
USB thumb drives, cool iphone chargers, and free hosting! That’s right, I came packing! How cool is it when your job is to give away some cool schwag to fellow Joomla users? Very cool!
If you ever see us at an event, stop by and say hello! And don’t be afraid to ask, we’re usually equipped with goodies you can take home and show off to your friends.
Looking forward
This year was the first year for Joomla Day MN. There’s no doubt that this was a very successful event! A big congratulations goes out to Demo, Ryan Book, and the other event organizers.
The event went so well that the team is already organizing Joomla Day MN 2015! Next year the event will be held at Mall of America. My fingers are crossed – I hope to attend!
Thank you Joomla Day MN!
Brad Markle
