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It seems nearly every day, I read about a brewing debate to determine what’s “best” for non-profits: Joomla!, Drupal, Plone, or Wordpress. To be honest, I really think this debate is about as useful as a debate about the “best” color in the rainbow. So you can imagine my surprise when I read a quite useful introductory review of Joomla by Tess Gadwa in TechSoup on Friday. After an introduction on CMSes, Tess dives into a key question that folks ask me nearly every day: Why Joomla? With a question like that, I couldn’t help but pen a blog entry. The summer is abound with conferences and conventions in the nonprofit technology field. There are the big names like NTEN, Netroots Nation, and South by Southwest, and then there are some of the more technical-focused ones that we PICnetters attend. In May, I wrote about the CMS Brasil Conference, which was a great opportunity to spread the word about Joomla. This past week, I attended the Open Source Convention in San Jose, Calif., where anyone and everyone in open source software (more than 3,000 developers, designers, consultants, etc.) get together to share the latest and greatest. The sessions and discussions were designed to inspire, urge us to explore the future of open source, and to think creatively about how to use it effectively and efficiently for our clients in these tough economic times. I had the honor to co-lead the Joomla! Birds of a Feather group on Wednesday, with the President of Open Source Matters, Elin Waring, in addition to hanging out at the Joomla! booth at the expo – which gave me a chance to talk to a lot of people from different backgrounds. It’s always neat to see so many people come together and share ideas, best practices and provide expert advice. It’s also great to run into friends of the non-profit tech sector, including Leslie Hawthorn and Chris DiBona from Google, as well as Mark Surman from the Mozilla Foundation – both friends of PICnet that I just saw a few weeks ago in Brazil of all places. Finally, the Joomla booth wouldn’t have been such a success if it weren’t for Bay Area Joomla User Group, including Ron Severdia, Nathan Mallamace, Deborah Susan, Steve Reichgut, and Karl! For more on OSCON, check out their website for a full program and details on the conference. Or, you can search on Twitter for the hashtag #OSCON to see what attendees were tweeting about it. Thanks to OSCON for the invite – we hope to be back next year! Know a developer interested in doing coding that helps change the world for the better? We’re looking for a programmer to help us with PHP-based development on custom projects and on our flagship CMS for nonprofits, Soapbox. Creative attitude, smarts, and a sense of humor required. Joomla experience a plus. Send letters, resumes, or recommendations to jobs-developers@picnet.net. The detailed job description’s after the break. Read more » There’s few countries that have embraced the power and promise of open source software as much a Brazil, so I’m more than excited that I’ve been invited to speak at CMS Brasil and Fórum Internacional de Software Livre 10 (FISL), along with my Joomla! colleague Anthony Ferrara.
With more than 3,700 registered attendees, I’m sure it’s going to be an awe inspiring site of open source at work. You can follow the conference’s events on Twitter. Of course, with the co-founder of Pirate Bay and Richard Stallman in attendance, you can expect some interesting discussions on the conference floor. Looking forward to seeing our Brazilian (and worldwide) Joomla! friends at these great events. Ping me if you’ll be there. |
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