Melbourne JoomlaDay 2 Feb 2008 - DEBRIEF

[mraab]

Hi Australian Joomla fans,

Melbourne JoomlaDay 2008 is well and truly under way and registrations are now open. Two Joomla core members - Brad Baker and Sam Moffatt - and other keynote speakers have already agreed to meet the Melbourne (and beyond) Joomla Community.

When: Sat, 2 Feb 2008, 1-5pm, registration opens at 11:30am
Where: The University of Melbourne, Old Arts lecture theatre D
Keynote speakers: Norm Douglas, Dinah Randall, Sam Moffatt, Brad Baker
Register at: http://melbourne.joomladay.org.au
Fees:Early bird from 2-13 Jan AUD $15, 14 Jan - 1 Feb AUD $25
Who should attend: Everybody with an interest in Joomla - we cater for the entire range, from beginners to developers
Major Sponsors:Nerds on Site, TechSpace Magazine, Rochen

The programme covers:

• How to get started with Joomla - Norm Douglas.
• Joomla Creative - Inside Joomla Templates and Design - Dinah Randall.
• Joomla 1.5 - RC4. Migration, demonstration and benefits - Sam Moffatt.
• Joomla security and hosting - Brad Baker.
• Meet the experts - panel discussion with all presenters.
• More details soon...

Having the Australian Linux Conference hosted at The University of Melbourne, we seized the opportunity and booked a lecture theatre for our event close to the Linux Conf Open Day Exhibition. Visitors can now enjoy the best of both events.

Please register early if you like to attend. There is a seat limit of 130 seats. Should we exceed the number of seats in early Jan, we may have a realistic chance of upgrading to a larger theatre.

We offer attractive sponsorhip packages if you like to become recognised as a sponsor of Melbourne JoomlaDay 2008. If you like to run software and other give aways through the goodie bags, check details on our website http://www.melbourne.joomladay.org.au and contact me for enquiries.

This will be an exciting JoomlaDay and I look forward to welcoming you soon to Melbourne.
Matthias and the Melbourne Joomla User Group

[eathermark]

YAY! Joomla returns to Melbourne 

Looking forward to a good day. I will pitch in somehow, Matthias. Lets spread the word people and share the load.

Cheers

Mark Eather

[mraab]

I am looking for the developers who built their really large commercial websites with Joomla, such as JetStar and ABC. I would like to invite them for a short presentation on how and why they did it with Joomla. Brief - strategy - implementation - experience - future - wishlist. Something along those lines.

Please PM me if you know a crew member of the sites above or from other top-professional teams using Joomla.

Thanks,
Matthias

[brad]

Last year we also had some staff from MelbourneIT there...

BTW, try getting in touch with Robyn Winter.. she should have a list of last year attendees as well.

[puppet1991]

can i get in for free if youve got empty seats 

[mraab]

Hi Puppet,

since we are operating on a cost recovery basis only, we are not offering last minute rates. And thanks to our sponsors, we can offer Melbourne JoomlaDay in a professional setting and with all its goodies for just $25... That is incredible value for what you get.

Cheers,
Matthias

[dex]

Matthias+co
Should be a cracking day! I see you have lots of registrations already. Looking forward to meeting everyone in Melb.
D

[mraab]

Registrations keep coming in and we have already matched numbers from last year (>60).

I am organising classy-dressy limited edition polo shirts for at least the first 100 participants. The size break-down has to go in tomorrow (Thu, 24 Jan). If you contemplate registering, please do so asap to ensure you are getting a shirt in the right size... (http://melbourne.joomladay.org.au)

There are other attractive goodies available on MJDay, plus discount vouchers for Joomlashack templates, discount vouchers for Barrie North's user guide for Joomla 1.5 and full versions of JomComment from Azrul.com.

Matthias

[akede]

Hi Folks,

I published the announcement in the new events section of joomla.org. Due to the 1.5 stable announcement it is a bit tricky to get it pushed to the frontpage. I still see what I can do.

Cheers Alex

[mraab]

Important note to everybody who hesitated registering for MJDay so far: We are beyond 100 registrations and there are only a few more seats available. Online registration closes 5pm EST tomorrow (Friday 1 Feb 08).

Another good news is that I received 20 copies from Barrie North's 1.5 book: "Joomla! A user's guide". We will offer them at a discounted price to MJDay registrants only, on a first come first serve basis. These are amongst the first copies in Australia and you struggle finding them in bookshops at the moment. Check your email on Friday after 5pm and become one of the first proud owners of this comprehensive book. It will be waiting for you at the registration desk...

Matthias

[puppet1991]

i wanted to come but i dont have a credit card 
im sad now

[gav240z]

Last year we also had some staff from MelbourneIT there...

BTW, try getting in touch with Robyn Winter.. she should have a list of last year attendees as well.

Yeah I was one of the Melbourne IT employees there. I dragged the others along .

Can't make it this year unfortunately not in Melbourne.

[brad]

Well, that was an incredible day. Speaking for myself, I thoroughly enjoyed all the presentations.

.. if only we had had more time.

Thanks to all who attended, and special thanks to all who helped arrange and organize the event.

[dex]

Big congrats to all the people who made the Melbourne day such a success! It was packed to the rafters and a very enjoyable day - lots of really good presentations. For myself, I received a very warm welcome from the Melbourne posse and it was great to meet everyone at last.
Well done peeps & thanks.
D

[cccelebi]

Hi to everyone who attended Saturday's Joomla Day in Melbourne,

this is Claudia, who welcomed you at the registration desk. Most certainly I am the only non-Joomla person posting in this forum! However, I just wanted to say how much I enjoyed Saturday's event and share some observations from the point of view of an outsider who somehow had to "volunteer" because she's married to Joomla-fan Matthias and seized the chance to spend some of his rare time with him on that occasion.

As you know, there were more than 130 people attending and I found that everyone I met - and I met many of you being at the front desk and looking after drinks and food during the breaks - was extraordinary nice with interesting stories to tell and so many diffent ideas for what to use Joomla!

I was positively surprised and encouraged by the relatively large number of female attendees who even came down from Canberra. This is great to see in a domain that is still very male dominated. They - together with Dinah who is organising Sydney's event and came down to present in Melbourne - will certainly serve as role models for young girls thinking about a career in this area.

It was also good to see that families can get involved in Joomla, like one father who brought along his two sons. (Or did they bring him along?  ) Speaking of fathers and sons: I learned that Joomla users can be as young as teens - well, at that stage they can even be core developers! (Good on you, Sam! That's amazing!) And they can be a bit "more advanced" in age. I loved seeing that and - as a non-IT person - again am very encouraged by that!

It was good to see the group somehow grew together during the event which is a success indicator and something which is obviously very typical for the Joomla Community - being open, helpful, community orientated.

Reading through the survey sheets you filled in I'm very glad to see that you all seemed to have enjoyed the event very much. We got many, many feedback forms back which is a really good sign. I'm sure Matthias, Patrick, John and Malcolm will acknowledge and act upon your suggestions - like allowing more time for such an event with maybe hands on workshops or more time for presenters, questions and networking, etc. Feedback is very helpful for improving next events. So, if you haven't provided yours drop them a line or make a post. Maybe next time they will allow themselves more than six weeks to get such an event up and running.

I also pay respect to Matthias, Patrick, Malcom and John who organised the event - from website, registration, advertising, venue, insurance, technical equipment, presenters, especially sponsors, etc. So much time and energy went in and they also carried every single apple, banana, waterbottle, napkin, milk, coffee and sugar container - not to mention table cloth, T-shirt, signage and rubbish bag, powerplugs, cable, etc. - from the shops to the cars to the venue, etc. And their work is not over yet, with many things to follow and put up on the website. I know they loved every support they got and are excited about the great feedback they receive!

Sponsors played also an important part and it is indeed thanks to them, that fees were so low which I guess everybody appreciated especially when getting so much in return with great presenters sharing their expertise. I can imagine some of you might be a bit nervous hearing sponsors mentioned but their contribution truely supported this event.

I know in your "Joomla world" posts are only three or four lines long. One more indicator that I am a happy outsider here (also someone whose a journalist and loves to write). I quickly stop here. Thanks again for making my job on Saturday easy. And thanks also for the nice comments I got from many of you about our boys who were the youngest attendees and truely very good and patient with their parents.

(As Matthias said, Andrew Eddie must have thought the Joomla Day was held in the local kinder and not in one of the lecture theatres of Melbourne University with a three and five year old enthusiastically waving at him while skyping with you from Towoomba . Just joking - I'm convinced everybody agrees that the event had a very professional aura.)

All the best to you and good luck with your Joomla projects!

Cheers, Claudia

[dex]

btw if anyone needs a copy of either the Security presentation or the template one:

Security: http://melbourne.joomladay.org.au/image ... uction.pdf

Templates: http://melbourne.joomladay.org.au/image ... Design.ppt

[dex]

Also, if anyone was following the 1.0 to 1.5 migration demo by Sam on the subj. of migrating your SEF URLs, Sam has written a post about it here: http://www.joomla.org/component/option, ... 105/p,484/
Thx Sam

[mraab]

Ranging from beginners and enthusiasts through to experts and global developers, 135 people attended the sold out Melbourne JoomlaDay 08 at the University of Melbourne on Saturday February 2nd. The capacity crowd saw presentations on a range of areas to do with Joomla, including some exclusive demonstrations of Joomla! 1.5 features by Brad Baker and Sam Moffat from the Joomla Core Team. Norm Douglas walked through the basics of setting up Joomla! 1.0. Dinah Randall highlighted some of the issues that users will face in converting 1.0 templates into the new format for Joomla! 1.5.

Damian Hickey from Freeway Ecommerce (http://www.openfreeway.org) outlined issues being faced in regards to ecommerce in the coming months, and explained the path ZacWare were taking currently to integrate Freeway with Joomla.

Leslie Hawthorn from Google Highly Open Participation contest got the group thinking about mentoring students in the GHOP, where there's currently over 100 projects being run in conjunction with Joomla.

Videos from the day will be posted to http://www.joomladay.org.au shortly, and all those who attended are encouraged to register and log into http://www.joomladay.org.au where there will be follow up discussions in the forum there.

Thanks once more to the sponsors of Joomladay - Techspace.com.au, Nerds on Site and Rochen hosting - for making the day possible. Feedback shows the event was extremely successful and the organizers are already looking forward to running an even bigger Melbourne event in 2009.

Matthias and Patrick - Melbourne Joomla User Group - http://www.joomladay.org.au

[normdouglas]

Wow guys, what an awesome day.  Sorry for the late post but I have just moved house and have been busy.

Personally I would like to thank Matthias for giving me the opportunity to be involved, it was certainly a priveledge.  It has given me a lot of confidence in continuing to invest my time and resources in continuing my involvement in Joomla.

Thanks again.

[mraab]

Patrick had a crack on the session videos and put them all up this morning: All videos from Melbourne JoomlaDay 2008 are now online and can be viewed on http://www.joomladay.org.au/session-videos.

Big thanks to Henry for hours of filming and big thanks to Patrick for hours of post-processing... Great team work. I am very proud!!! and so must you.

Matthias

[puppet1991]

alright, whos the wise guy?
who registered 30-40 seats on the last day of registration?
because of you, I could not come

[Partic]

To keep the momentum from JoomlaDay going, for those who attended who haven't yet registered on http://www.joomladay.org.au, please check it out. The discussion forum has a more 'stralian focus, and the community is slowly growing, but an injection of 100+ members from JoomlaDay would get things moving.

BTW Puppet - you did miss a great day. Perhaps next time you can duck into a 7-Eleven for a prepaid Visa card, or grab yourself a Bopo prepaid visa. Perhaps we were just confused when you were hitting us up for a free ticket, rather than explaining that you needed to pay offline for which we might have been able to hold a place for you.

[puppet1991]

the free ticket was a joke sort of lol. i did contact the organiser to pay at the door but he didnt reply until the 3rd last day or something and he said if i dont reply by 5pm i cudnt go coz we was reserving a spot for me but i didnt check my emails until the next day and then it was too late...

so who was it! own up! was it a group?

[dex]

It was a real shame that not everyone could get in on the day - who knew that so many would want to come? - but everyone had a sporting chance and last minute tickets went like hot cakes. Hopefully a few people who could not get in can make their way to one of the other JoomlaDays in Australia this year and/or to one of the JUG meetings. Hope so!

Btw fantastic job on the vids guys - thank you! At least all can learn and participate by watching those. And for free!