An Official Joomla Event is a local, regional or national gathering of the Joomla! community for the specific purpose of promoting the Joomla Project. The Joomla Project encourages a growing and vibrant Joomla! community and Official Joomla Events are part of that effort. To ensure continued protection of the Joomla! name, usage of the Joomla name in an event requires permission and agreement to this charter. In order to arrange or promote your own Official Joomla Event, you simply need to complete two items:
- Fulfill the requirements defined in this charter.
- Submit a your event here on community.joomla.org for official approval.
1. Official Joomla Event Definition
- An Official Joomla Event is an event open to everyone, and the only fee charged should be that necessary to cover costs. An Official Joomla Event should not used as a commercial enterprise for profit raising purposes.
- The aim of an Official Joomla Event is to provide an opportunity for Joomla! users to meet and learn together. There should be speakers on a wide variety of topics and usually an opportunity for a representative of the Joomla! Project to make a presentation or keynote.
- An Official Joomla Event is an event created exclusively for Joomla! users and related projects. It is not acceptable to name an event, for example; "JoomlaDay" if other open source projects or commercial products which are not related to Joomla! are featured.
- An Official Joomla Event may be organised on a national, regional, or city basis. There should be only one Official Joomla Event each year in a given geographic location, but there could be several in larger countries such as China, Canada or the USA
- An Official Joomla Event can be one or more days or a partial day; RE: evening, morning, etc.
- An Official Joomla Event can be backed up to another third party event, but not combined as part of another 3rd party event and must be clearly separated as an independent event. For example “CMS 3rd Party Event” cannot have a JoomlaDay immediately prior or after their event.
Examples of existing Official Joomla Events are:
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- JoomlaDay
- JoomlaNight
- Pizza, Bugs, and Fun
- Joomla Festival
- JoomlaCamp
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2. Event Application and Rules
Before any actions are taken using the name Joomla, JoomlaDay, JoomlaNight, Pizza Bugs and Fun, etc; an application must be filed with the Joomla! Events Team. Anyone may submit an application for usage of the name Joomla in their event name.
Applications can be submitted online by clicking here.
2.1 Organizing Teams
Two different teams will not be allowed to organize two Official Joomla Events within the same country/region/city during the same year. Open Source Matters, Inc grants any approved Official Joomla Event exclusive use of the Joomla name for the events in their country/region/city for a period of 12 months starting with the date of their application.
As long as the organizing team approved for any given country/region/city does not violate the rules of this charter it will be granted, upon receipt of a renewal application, the right to organize the next Official Joomla Event in that country/region. If a new organization team wishes to take over the responsibility for the following year's Official Joomla Event, the Joomla Events Team will contact the original team to ensure it is not interested in organizing the event. If the original team is not interested, or a renewal application is not sent in on time, then the new team can take over the organization of that country/region/city's JoomlaDay event.
2.2 Official Contact
For each Official Joomla Event organization team, one member will serve as the official contact for the Joomla! events team. If this person is not reachable within a period of more than 30 days, an alternative shall be named by the organization team. A secondary contact person will also need to be appointed for each event to be approved.
2.3 Promotion and Marketing
Promotion of the event prior to JoomlaDay name usage application approval is prohibited.
2.4 Financial Rules
A major requirement for the approval of your application is that the event is not designed to generate profit. An Official Joomla Event might offer associated workshops and other services for a fee, but the primary purpose of the event must not be commercial.
Some clearly excluded concepts are:
- Paying the speakers money for their talks. (except expenses for traveling, accommodation and session materials)
- Paying an event company money for organization.
- Paying your team money for organization of the event.
We recommend that you plan to transfer any surplus funds from the Official Joomla Event to your local Joomla! community and/or the Joomla! project.
Official Joomla Event should aim to be self supporting. However organizers may request financial support (seed money) from Open Source Matters. This support is not intended to cover all expenses of an Official Joomla Event. Local organizers are responsible for raising funds to cover other expenses. If there is a surplus from the event this money is required to be repaid to Open Source Matters.
JoomlaDay organizers may seek sponsors to support their event. In general, sponsorships may be sought from any source, however the following limitations apply.
- Sponsorship from firms which have products that are not in compliance with the Joomla! license (GPL) may not be accepted. This is to prevent any association of the Joomla! brand with violations of the license. If you have any questions about a sponsor please contact the events team for assistance.
- All sponsoring firms must be in compliance with Open Source Matters trademark policies.
It is up to each organizing group to determine whether to charge admission and, if so, how much to charge. Because of the nature of the events, we recommend finding a free or inexpensive location and not to make complex contracts with space providers.
After each Official Joomla Event a financial report must be submitted. At a minimum it should include:
- Number of attendees
- Total expenses
- Total income
- Status of any surplus or deficit
- A list of sponsors
2.5 Legal Matters
Official Joomla Events are organized and controlled by local event organizers who are solely responsible for all actions and liabilities in association with the event. Neither Open Source Matters nor the Joomla! project is responsible for the actions or expenditures of local organizers. Local organizers are responsible for obtaining all appropriate insurance, permits, and other similar items.
2.6 Support from Open Source Matters and the Joomla Events Team
The Joomla! Project provides support for Official Joomla Events in the following ways:
- Use of the Joomla brand
- Publicity on the Joomla.org family of sites
- Advice and mentoring for organizers
- Arranging for participation by members of Joomla! teams
3 Organization and Structure
Generally an Official Joomla Event should be focused on local people and companies. Make your organization as simple as possible. A highly sophisticated event is not what people expect. Community interaction and collaborative learning should be the focus. The main thing the people are looking for is a place to meet each other in person and to get to know other Joomla! users and contributors.
3.1 Activities
You are free to determine the topic, range of activities and structure of the day. We suggest you include time for people to talk and chat about what's going on in the Joomla! world, both globally and locally.
3.2 Inclusivity
Organisers must do as much as possible to put on an event that is accessible to all. This includes providing facilities for those with accessibility needs alongside consulting the Interfaith Calendar alongside their local holidays to ensure that they hold their events away from religious and other holidays that may prevent members of their potential audience from attending.
3.3 Exhibition / paid workshops
During a JoomlaDay event sponsors may pay for exhibition space or clearly labelled presentation slots to help reduce the entrance fee for the audience or expenses for the organization holding the event.
Special interest workshops can be organized and might have a separate fee. One idea is to create one day which includes special workshops or training and charge a higher fee for that day. The income of that day is then used to organize the community day and reduce the entrance fee for everybody or to finance refreshments.
3.4 Speakers
If desired by the organizers, the events team will help to arrange for the participation of a speaker from one of the Joomla! Project teams. This may be a live presentation or maybe via web conferencing. The events team cannot guarantee the availability of speakers. Event organizers may contact potential speakers directly to ask about potential participation. Event organizers are responsible for the costs of any travel for Joomla! team members, though the financial support for Official Joomla Events from Open Source Matters is often used for this purpose.
3.5 Naming Convention
Official Joomla Events follow an established naming convention. For events covering an entire country the name should follow the convention: JoomlaDay [Countryname] is the name of the country and is the recognized country code[1] for the country. For events covering a region in a larger country the naming convention is: JoomlaDay [Cityname] and are the same as above and is the name of the region the event covers. If a city name is appropriate it may be used.
Some examples of names would be:
- JoomlaDay Paris
- JoomlaDay Amsterdam
- JoomlaDay Chicago
- JoomlaDay Boston
- JoomlaDay Vancouver
- JoomlaDay Pune
- JoomlaNight Israel
- Pizza, Bugs, and Fun London
4 Satellite Events
The Joomla! Events directory will list satellite events from time to time. This enables the project to notify the community of events that do not fit into the category of an Official Joomla! Event, such as cross discipline sprints and hackathons or Open Source Events where Joomla! is represented. Listing of these events is at the discretion of the Events Team, each event will be assessed for entry on its own merit and they will be clearly signposted as satellite events within the directory.
5 Credits & Contributions
This document was written and reviewed by the following contributors:
- T. Akarawuth
- Ryan Bernstein
- Henk von Cann
- Mike Carson
- Pete Coutts
- Robert Deutz
- Ulrich Eichenseer
- Dianne Henning
- Alex Kempkens
- Louis Landry
- Wim Marynes
- Ryan W. Ozimek
- Alex Red
- Saurabh Shah
- Markku Suominen
- Radek Suski
- Sigrid Suski
- Brian Teeman
- Pierre-André Vullioud
- Elin Waring
- Rowan Hoskyns Abrahall
If you have any further questions please ask within the Joomla! Events forum or contact the Joomla Events Team via the helpdesk.