Event and Meeting Minutes

A small group met at PICNet in Washington, DC on January 19, 2010, starting after 6:30. Members included Bruce Scherzinger, Dorothy Firsching, Ryan Ozimek, and other PICnet employees.

Joomla Report

Ryan provided a report on the latest Open Source Matters(OSM) news; he is on their Board of Directors and is involved in fundraising. OSM is now paying some Joomla! 1.6 developers. Having continuity among important developers is yielding great results. Louis Landry is leading the architectural direction and Andrew Eddie is leading the code development.

He cited some counts in Open Source World or Netcraft that said that there were some 6 million WordPress-based sites, 2.5 million Joomla-based sites, and about 700 thousand Drupal-based sites as of December 2009. This makes sense in terms of the targeted user base for each tool.

Joomla! 1.6 answers the main shortcomings of Joomla!, in particular the ability of the administrator to set permissions for each page.

JoomlaDay Plans

Ryan has a great deal of experience in planning these types of events and so the discussion of planning a JoomlaDay in the Washington, DC Metro Area made a lot of progress.

1. Schedule and Format
   We decided upon a single-day format in September, 2010, in the DC Metro area within a reasonable walk from a Metro station. 50 attendees for this first event was deemed to be a reasonable target. We would need 2 to 4 breakout rooms and a main room for the entire group. Target Date: Saturday, September 18, 2010, dependent upon venue. Format would be something like:
   1. Morning opening session
   2. Breakout sessions
   3. Lunch topics
   4. Afternoon breakouts
   5. Closing session
   6. Evening dinner the night before for out of town attendees and others
   7. Happy hour the day of the event for all
2. Budget / Sponsorships
   It was felt that $99 tickets would be a good target, and that sponsors could be obtained. Sponsors could include:
   1. OSM – would probably contribute $500
   2. Rok
   3. Bruce’s contact
   4. Add a “Donate” button also
3. Keynotes and Speakers
   OSF might cover flying in the key speakers.
   It was suggested that speakers could include:
   1. Joe LeBlanc
   2. Ryan Ozimek
   3. Louis Landry (New Orleans)
   4. Mitch Pirtle (NY) – entrepreneur and business session
   5. Elin Waring (President of OSM)
   6. Disocouri speaker
   7. Steve Burge – Joomla Training.com
   8. Dora Tarver
   9. Other Core Team speakers
4. Venue Options
   1. The Josephine Butler Parks Center, at 2437 Fifteenth Street, NW was suggested. (See http://www.washingtonparks.net/parkscenter.html). It is 7 or 8 blocks from Metro. It is anticipated that we could get the space we need for $500 - $1000 for the day.
   2. AFL-CIO location; World Wildlife Federation location
   3. Other places with either good parking or close to Metro
5. Outreach / Advertising
   1. We will let the Atlanta, NY and Baltimore Joomla user groups
   2. Washington Post
   3. Craigslist
   4. RefreshDC.com
   5. DCWW
6. Tracks / Topics
   We could put up a wiki to allow people to suggest topics
   1. Developer Track
   2. Administrator / End User Track

Topics could include:

1. Hosting in the Cloud
2. Security Issues
3. Registration / Logistics
   1. Website needs to sell the event – JoomlaDay look
   2. Ryan has standard kit for JoomlaDay organizers
   3. EventBrite could be used for registration – allows for various ticket types, etc.
   4. Joomla T-shirts, mouse pads, etc. could be obtained
   5. Badges
   6. PICNet has 2 projectors; we would need microphones/amps
   7. Catoctin / Ursa Major could provide professional facilitation
   8. Establish TIN and bank account

Components / Tidbits to Consider

Other items that came up…

• EventBrite
• Payvment – website payments
• Firebug
• DVD application in Safeway uses Joomla!
• Soapbox – custom rollout of Joomla! for nonprofits by PICNet