In yet another success in a string of successful Joomla!Days in South Africa, a full room of Joomla! users from across the country met for a terrific event to spread the Joomla! word in Cape Town today.

I had the honor of joining the local Joomla!Day leadership team, including Matthew Philogene, Brendon Hatcher, and Sean Grant, all of whom put in tremendous efforts for a great day of events. I was especially honored to be the first Joomla leadership member to attend a Joomla!Day in Africa.

Key to my goals for attending this event was to ensure that the Joomla project had a strong focus on expanding its efforts for outreach into the African continent, starting with the already vibrant community in South Africa.

I'm happy to report that this goal was met and exceeded!

To start, the day before the event, there was a well-attended Joomla training session. This was a full day of hands-on Joomla learning, covering both Joomla basics and Joomla advanced tips and tricks. Additionally, a terrific local non-profit organization (Zakheni Arts Therapy Foundation) was the winner of the Speed Site Showdown, which provided them with a team of Joomla professionals to build them a Joomla Web site at no cost. The site should be launching soon!

The Joomla!Day event itself included a variety of presenters and topics, including:

• keynote and call to action in Africa (Ryan Ozimek)
• Speed Site Showdown feedback (Matthew Philogene, Carl Beukes, Leslie Bester)
• sh404 SEF (Brendon Hatcher)
• a preview of Joomla 1.6 (Ryan Ozimek)
• a preview of Morph (JoomlaJunkies)
• Jumi - when custom code is needed (Imel Rautenbach)
• a Joomla journey (Phehello Mofokeng)

This Joomla!Day event was an important catalyst for individuals in the local communities to come forward and engage their nearby communities to extend the Joomla goodwill into nearby countries and communities. A passionate closing talk by Phehello brought everyone back to a call to action: Joomla should be utilized to help enable communities across the continent to more effectively share their stories with the world. It truly can be a tool to help organizations within Africa to better engage with their communities, and promote their causes.

The Joomla!Day team here wants to send many thanks to the gracious efforts of Moegamat Alexander and his team at the Cape Peninsula University of Technology that provided a wonderful setting and great support.

Of course, the Joomla!Days in South Africa don't end here! Look out for forthcoming Joomla!Day in Johannesburg later this year. Congratulations to the Joomla!Day South Africa team, keep up the good work!