Open Source CMS Award Week and a New Community Award

This is the week for the PackT 2008 Open Source CMS Awards. The week began with a new award that recognizes community. Two dozen open source projects and contributors were recognized by PackT, including Johan Janssens for his work with the Joomla! project.

Without Johan's contribution much of the Joomla! Framework we know today would not exist and it is good to see him honored with this award.

We thank Johan for his contributions to the project. He was one of the original Joomla! Core Team members who took a huge leap of faith, not knowing how much work lay ahead of us, to initiate the Joomla! project. In the two years Johan was active, he wore a number of hats, having served as a developer, a lead developer, a project manager, and a member of the Open Source Matters Board of Directors. Although his direct involvement with the Joomla! project has come to a close, he continues as a third party developer of Joomla! solutions.

Joomla! has been blessed with phenomenal growth. Recently, the seven millionth copy of Joomla! was downloaded (and that only includes copies downloaded from JoomlaCode since March 2007.) Nearly a quarter of a million people have registered in the Joomla! Forums and their questions are answered by a large, active, helpful body of volunteers. Others have generously contributed documentation, translations, money, patches, legal advice, Web hosting and system administration, articles, and time.

If you have visited the Joomla! Extensions Directory recently, then you, too, must be impressed by the body of work produced by Joomla!'s army of third party developers. As a result of the contributions of thousands of developers, we can Tweet and Ping and Flickr and comment and translate and backup and restore and microblog and quote and authenticate and RSS and more. Thanks to our hard working Extension Editors and to each user who provides feedback and ratings to help inform others.

We also recognize those of you who contribute locally. Thank you to each one of you who have started or helped with Joomla! Users Groups and Joomla! Day events. Thanks to those of you who have helped out with Expos and other events, or have simply demonstrated what Joomla! can do at your place of work or worship or neighborhood association. 

Our community powers Joomla! innovations and deployments. This spotlight on Johan is symbolic of the importance of every improvement each contributor brings, because in sum, that is what makes Joomla!. Again, many thanks, Johan, for your work, and many thanks to each of you who also help make Joomla! better -- in doing so, you are each Joomla!'s Most Valuable Players.