This Thursday I was luck enough to speak at the meeting of the JUG  New YorK City. in a great space at Lincoln Center.  It was great to hear their plans for their Joomla! Day on October 12. Part of the fun was hearing about the ways that the Lincoln Center team is increasingly moving to Joomla for their sites.

As always a major topic was how to get even more involved in different parts of the project. I talked about how I got involved by  answering questions on the forum ... and someone said "oh you're mcsmom, you helped me when I was starting." That's such a great thing to hear.

Some people talked about how they feel unqualified to answer questions, but the truth is the best people to answer are often advanced beginners and intermediate users, especially in the general forums. It's a great way to learn, plus someone with a Joomla business can have a link in their signature. That's a great source of free advertising, in which the more you contribute the more you get back.  

I am always amazed to find out how many Joomla businesses are not sending their feeds to Joomla!Connect. I know that for me and lots of others in the Joomla world, it's one of the first things I look at in my news reader every day. If you want to be seen in the Joomla community that is an crucial place to be. The coming Joomla Resource Directory is another place where every Joomla business should make sure to be listed.

Participating as a mentor or project proposer in Google Summer of Code, by participating in the Joomla Bug Squad or following the development mailing lists are other ways that you can get involved. Of course, organizing events and a local users group are things that this group are already doing. I got to talk about how we are working to make those things easier.

For me the meeting was an unusal chance for me to talk about what Open Source Matters is and what it does to provide organizational infrastructure for the Joomla! Project. In particular I got to describe how we are protecting the trademark on behalf of the Joomla community around the world. The success of the conditional use logos has been crucial in helping us find the right balance between ease of use for the community and a secure future for the trademarks since to keep the trademarks we are required to control their use.

Thanks to JUG NYC for inviting me; it was a lot of fun to talk about what is happening in Joomla.