The year 2009 just began and it is really great to see how many people pick-up the idea to organize a Joomla!Day in their region or support a regional conference. With that they contribute to the project and helping others to learn more about the project or the services related to it. As the Joomla 1.0 series will come to an end mid 2009 we will support all Joomla!Days to offer sessions about the migration towards 1.5. The Joomla User Groups are talking about the topics in their regular meetings and during the conferences people are available for 1 to 1 talks. It is great to see the events and JUG calendars are filling up.

Some of you come to us and ask about how to start an event in a region or if it is ok that you present Joomla on a regional conference. Actually both is great and quite easy to start with. The first step should be that you get in touch with the events team and sign up to become what we call an "event organizers". The events mentoring team will guide you through the process and within all the organizers you can find new ideas and help if needed. More detailed information can be found on our wiki page as well as in the events forum.

Joomla! @ Expos and Conferences

The Thailand Internet Expo 2009 was the first conference in 2009 Joomla attended. On the last weekend members of the Thail community answered questions and presented the latest information about the project to the attendees of the conference. Akarawuth Tamrareang (aka JoomlaCorner) presented Joomla in a seminar that was pretty crowdy. Check out the pictures to see what was going on.

The upcoming weekend Joomla will have a stand at the FOSDEM 2009. The conference is one of the most important Open Source Conferences in Europe and it always gets alot of geeks and interested people together. On the stand may people from the European Community will be available to answer your questions about the project and of course we will make sure that we can also present some of the upcoming features in the Joomla version 1.6.

A small outlook what the various communities around the world will support in the next few month. Most of those events will have either speakers or a stand on which you can meet with Joomla community and team members. For example you can visit the PHP Quebec Conference in March to listen to a speach from Michelle Bisson, or join in at the SXSW in Austin, Texas and talk with Arno Zijlstra about a very interesting project he is going to present during this event. In Europe Joomla will be presented on the Linux Tage Chemnitz. The team on site is looking for volonteers still and if you have a chance to be around it would be great to support them.

Joomla!Days

The season for Joomla!Days started as well. Next weekend you can meet with development coordinators and team members in Melbourne. The latest news about the project development as well as presentations around the migration to 1.5 will give you a great inside of what is going on in the Joomla-sphere.

In March the European community meets in the United Kingdom at the Joomla!Day UK 2009. The first J!Day in Europe for 2009 will be pretty interesting as the development of Joomla 1.6 will move on and the first results of the opening of the development mailing lists can be seen. Also the migration of Joomla 1.0 websites will become more and more important as the EOL will get closer. Many sessions with high profile speakers are already in preparation for this event.

The registration is already open and the agenda for the Joomla!Day Las Vegas is already forming. Many speakers from the development and community teams are offering various presentations and talks about Joomla. Based on the conference concept it is up to you what will be presented and which information you get. So make sure you register to the event and take part on the process to give an initial idea what you like tohear during these days in Las Vegas.

After Europe and USA Joomla comes back to Asia and the first Joomla!Day in India end of April 2009. The regional community is forming their team and event at the moment. If you have suggestions or contributions please join in the discussions and support the event there. The same goes for the Joomla!Day New England that is planed for end of May 2009. Please support your regional organizers with suggestions, feedback and help with the organization. Many more Joomla!Days are already in preparations for 2009 and we are going to keep you informed about their progress here on the site.