Joomla Day New England was held on June 5, 2010, in Marlboro, Vermont, USA. We had 125 attendees, enjoying 12 speakers, terrific networking, and Joomla. While the day was quite hot and muggy, and the buildings were not air conditioned (no one has air conditioning in this region of the country), attendees provided very positive feedback and went home happy.

Cows figured prominently into our conference for three reasons. First, there are 135,000 dairy cows in Vermont (PDF link) and 265,000 cows overall, making it the state with the greatest cows per capita. Vermont is a rural state, with a population of 622,000. The town of Marlboro has a population of just under 1,000. One of Vermont's famous exports, outside of maple syrup, is dairy products, particularly cheese (and Ben & Jerry’s ice cream). If you look at the side of a Ben & Jerry’s ice cream container, Vermont looks exactly like that.

Second, this was our big weekend in the nearby big city (Brattleboro, population 12,000). This was the Strolling of the Heifers weekend, a celebration of our rural heritage.

Third, our own user group member Andy Tarr created the Hathor template for Joomla 1.6. Hathor was an Egyptian goddess who had human form but the ears of a cow.

But best of all was how many women attended. Joomla User Group New England has always been a group dominated by women, but we outdid ourselves this time. We had 6 men and 6 women speaking, and we had even attendance between men and women.

This is best illustrated in two photos. First, here are the attendees at Joomla Day New England. Here is the same photo, this time with the women with their hands in the air.

And yes, perhaps you have heard the rumors that Jen Kramer served as Lead Cow for the day, pictured here with Andy Tarr.

The rest of our photos are posted online.

We can get more women involved with Joomla, and in open source projects in general, by being warm and welcoming, actively seeking out qualified women and asking them to help in specific ways with the project, and providing a supportive and constructive working environment for all people, regardless of their level of knowledge of Joomla or web development in general.

Please plan on joining us for the Third Annual Joomla Day New England next year. We'll provide details in a few months.

And join one of our user group meetings anytime! Our next meeting is on June 16, 2010, 5:30-7 PM at the Marlboro College Graduate School in Brattleboro, VT. For more details, see the Joomla User Group New England website.