Giving a Conference on Joomla

[MALdito]

Hi everybody,

I was invited by the local organizers of the "Festival Latinoamericano del Software Libre" to give a VERY general conference on Joomla.
Why me? I run a small company which specializes in web design. And, naturally, we use Joomla for everything. So, we are kind of the "Joomla Guys".

Anyway, I was wondering if someone has something that could help me give a better conference. Bare in mind this is just an introductory speach of Joomla. The objective of this festival is to promote the use of open source among users (geeks and normal people alike).

I promise I will not carbon copy your work, AND that I will give credits..

Thanks

[akede]

Hi Maldito,

we have a couple of information with various focus areas. Can you tell us something more about the conference?

Alex

[ibnhafsun]

Replied on the spanish board too, with aditional resources in spanish.

[MALdito]

Yes, thank you.

Basically, I'm in charge of talking to the IT comunity about our experience using joomla.
Why we use it, Why is it better than drupal (for example), etc

There will be developers, designers, and also users who just like the web comunity and opensource.

I think It should be more like an introduction to joomla, with a few tips for the fellows webdesigners.

[akede]

Hi Maldito,

one thing is very important to us. We do not compare Joomla! with other OS CMS solutions based on the "why it is better" statement.

From our perspective each OS CMS solution has it's advantages and disadvantages. Based on the requirements the one or other solution is better. In general terms you can compare the different technical approaches and the philosophy behind the solutions. But in general this is not something you can easily present in a talk like yours.

I would focus on the Joomla! framework architecture and the extension concept. This is pretty powerful and will help your audience to judge themselves what is best for their requirements.

Alex

[MALdito]

Understood. Let's elaborate on those 2 advantages you mentioned then. Is there any material concerning those two topics?
Personally, I use joomla because of its EXTENSIVE collection of extensions. That makes joomla very "personalizable" (is that a word?) and I need that, in order to avoid senseless (and otherwise, expensive) coding. It is a designers dream come true.
So, my experience will be the half of the conference. The other part (I think) should be something more official or institutional.

[brian]

Re the extensions framework

"it has been a design concept of Joomla since the very beginning to create an extendable CMS. Everything that can be done to make the life of developers easier has been. When I say that I mean that installers have been provided for extensions and joomla has been internaly structured to allow the easy integration of extensions.The latter is done by making the core code well documented and enabling extensions to hook directly into the core. This means that developers do not have to write everything they can use the joomla framework within their extensions. This reduces development time and ensures consistancy and compatibility. If you look at some other complex open source applications the ethod to add extensions is to directly edit the core files. This makes thing very hard for the user and increases compatibiity issues. Some other CMS have chosen the path of including the "best" extensions directly in the core. Joomla however believes that there is no one tool for  job and that by keeping the core as slim as possible and encouraging 3rd parties to develop you the uer get the option to chose the most appropriate extension for your site. You only need to look at the range of image gallery extensions and their different features to see what I mean. Joomla could have chosen to include the most feature rich extension directly in the core but this would be overkill for many sites that just want a simple way to display images,Joomla lets you the site developer chose what is most appropriate for your site. Another example of where the open framework of Joomla comes to the fore is in multilanguage sites. An extension is available, joomfish, for this and because of the standardisation of extension structure joomfish is able to handle most extensions without alteration."

[ianmac]

looks like you're quoting that from somewhere brian...  be interesting in knowing the source to do further reading.

Ian

[brian]

Its part of my presentation that I am giving to non-profit groups around the UK at the moment

[ianmac]

thanks...  will that be in the marketing resources package eventually?

Ian

[brian]

Perhaps.  (explanation in PM)