Chris explained in his renaissance summit blog that we discussed the roles, responsibilities, and structures that the project needs in order for us to be able to achieve our vision. Chris also explained that we identified a number of areas where structural change is needed in the project. We used the past weeks to discuss the direction we want to take with development.

At the summit we concluded that with the incredible growth of the project (we had around one million downloads for Joomla! 1.5.3 for example) the task for the development is exceeding what one volunteer can do. As Chris explained, we did not go into detail during the summit, but past months we have worked hard to lowering the barriers to get people in, and get Joomla! development moving. The most visible part of that effort was the Bug Squad that did an amazing job helping out with releasing the initial Joomla! 1.5 and all the maintenance releases. The Bug Squad now holds 51 members, and the number is still increasing. With already a big load of work (remember we are all volunteers that work on Joomla! in their spare time) it was imperative that we needed to expand the team of coordinators, dividing tasks and create focus...but most importantly, prevent individuals from burning out.

I am very glad with the success of the Bug Squad, and I am even more happy that I asked Anthony Ferarra to become team leader in the early stages. Without the incredible effort from Anthony (and of course also other members) supporting the Bug Squad members, his endless amount of hours spend to solving issues, guiding people and answering question he was the obvious choice for us to become one of the Development Coordinators. I am happy to announce we have invited Anthony to become Core Team member, and after some serious consideration (in a Dutch Castle) he accepted. Anthony will be the third Development Coordinator within the team...but wait, there is more.

As mentioned the Bug Squad is becoming an immense team. We also would like to prevent Anthony from burning out, so we have a second person who will move into the position of Development Coordinator. I have asked Samuel Moffatt (already Core Team member) to also move to the position of Development Coordinator to help out in the Bug Squad, and Sam also accepted this. With this changes we now have four Development Working Group Coordinators: Andrew Eddie, Samuel Moffatt, Anthony Ferrara, and me. A great team that will continue the work, trying to drive Joomla! development forward and lowering the barriers to enable people to contribute!