The Joomla User Group (JUG) team is a vital part of our community, ensuring that our passionate community members can connect with other people living near them and meet up in-person to share their love for Joomla!.

The JUG Team has been led by Liam Mandville for many years, showing enormous dedication to the creation and maintenance of the JUG Directory and encouraging the formation of new User Groups around the world.  After many years of dedication, Liam is stepping down from his role as team lead due to work commitments, effective 30th April 2015.

 

The JUG Team has elected from within the current team members Jennifer Gress as the new Team Lead, who takes up the position on 1st May 2015 for an initial term of six months.

Jenn has been part of the JUG Team since July 2014, having been involved in the Joomla community in the Bay Area of San Francisco since October 2010. Jenn is passionate about connecting and inspiring members of our community around the world and helping to share our passion for Joomla.

As part of the process, the JUG team has defined their team structure and roles to give better transparency as to expectations and term lengths of team members, understanding of responsibilities, and to ensure succession planning for those leading the teams.  The structure will be as follows:

Team lead

The team lead will be responsible for the JUG team, and will organise and chair meetings.  The team lead will also oversee public communications from the JUG team, organise end of term reviews for team members, and publish calls for new members.  The initial term length of six months can be extended by one year after the initial review, conducted by the CLT Liaison.

Assistant team lead - Community

Focusing on the community engagement aspect of JUGs, this role will be focused on communication, engagement and on-boarding with new JUG organisers, along with keeping in touch with established User Groups and communicating regularly with the wider community about JUG activity.

Assistant team lead - Operations

This role will focus on the internal processes of the JUG team - managing the directory and helpdesk, dealing with any technical issues, and ensuring that listings are being processed effectively by the JUG team and escalated where necessary to the JUG Team Lead and/or CLT Liaison.

Trademark specialist

The Trademark specialist will be responsible for ensuring that all JUG team members have sufficient knowledge of the trademark requirements to process JUG listings and will act as in an advisory capacity should any queries arise within the team relating to trademark and brand violations.

CLT Liaison

The Community Leadership Team (CLT) Liaison will be appointed by CLT to act as a liaison between the JUG team and the CLT.  The CLT Liaison will be responsible for carrying out reviews with the JUG Team Lead, providing them with support and training as required, and approving any umbrella or regional JUG registrations.  The CLT Liaison will also be responsible for reviewing any disputes arising from JUG registrations and any complaints relating to the JUG team.

 

The JUG Team has also decided to have an open call for members, for both the team and for projects that we are organising and leading.  If you are interested in getting involved with the JUG Team then please find more on volunteers.joomla.org.