Review of J! at the Ontario Linux fest

[instance]

Joomla! had a table at the first Ontario Linux Fest, held in the Toronto Congress Centre on Saturday October 13th. Joomla! was represented by JoeJoomla (JoeJoomla), Jason Kendall (CoolAcid), and Alan Langford (instance).

The day started at 8:30 with a Birds of a Feather Session, hosted by Jason and Alan. Five or six Joomla! users showed up to share their experiences and curiosity about the upcoming version 1.5 release. There was a lively discussion that ran well over the allocated time.

Meanwhile, JoeJoomla manned a busy table and was very happy to get some help! The exhibit area was busy all day, especially between sessions. The only lull in traffic was around lunch time.

At 10:30 Jason gave a "Hands on" demonstration of Joomla! 1.5 RC3 to a group of 20 to 25 people. Jason reported that the demo went well and that version 1.5 was very well received. Being a developer, he also came back with a few small issues to check and fix.

Total show attendance was hard to estimate, but we counted over 200 people at one of the popular sessions, and at least that many went by the table throughout the day. Each of the team spoke to about 10 to 15 people who had a genuine interest in Joomla! There was a lot of interest in using Joomla! as a company intranet and as a platform for educational and non-profit sites. This interest reflected the show attendees, who were already Linux and open source enthusiasts. Some users were well informed about CMS systems and had specific questions about how Joomla! compared to Mambo, Drupal and others.

Everyone on the team thought that the event was well organized, particularly for an inaugural event. We feel it was a very worthwhile day and recommend that we be there again next year.

P.S. See http://forum.joomla.org/index.php/topic,222656.0.html for pictures!

[ianmac]

Thanks for the report Instance!  Glad to hear everything went well!

I'm sorry that I wasn't able to make it!

Ian

[ghosty]

Thanks for sharing instance...

Well done

Cheers

Pete

[Michelle Bisson]

Many thanks to Joe, Jason and Alan!!!

Thanks for doing an excellent job!  I hope that next year I can go.