The Joomla! Project is once again hosting a bug squashing day around the world. On December 10th, 2011, many coders, testers, and just regular users came together to help Joomla! test Joomla 2.5 before release in January. Lots of bugs were coded that day, the core patched and included in the new version. Many patches were tested by regular users and those patches included as well. For those without that much experience with testing or coding, much documentation was also updated. Even a group of folks in New England tested the new Beez mobile functionality.

On March 3rd, 2012, we'll be at it again with the next release of Joomla 2.5. We'll be coding, testing, and documenting again! This time around, we've got a sponsor - Taylor Bruce Design Partnership - that has agreed to host us at their offices. We'll gather together, help users get setup to test or work on documentation. 

We've got limited space for only 10 people, so please sign up early! We'd like to have more join as at Taylor Bruce, but if you can't make it there why not test at home? You can get setup for your home PC and we'll be live in a Skype chat both locally AND internationally with other Joomla groups testing at the same time.

If you want to register, click here or the link for "Joomla Pizza Bugs and Fun" in the upcoming meetings on the home page and register.

Please contact Kendall Cabe at kendall.cabe@timestwotechnology.com if you have questions or need more information.

Resources:

Announcement: http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1545-pizza-bugs-and-fun-march-3-2012.html

Joomla Docs: http://docs.joomla.org/Pizza_Bugs_and_Fun_March_3,_2012

To help get Joomla 2.5 ready for release in January, Joomla! is throwing a bug squashing party!!! On December 10th at 9am (in your time zone), groups from around the world will be joining on Skype and in local locations to work on bug squashing and testing of Joomla 2.5.

Here in Chicago, we do not have a local business sponsoring a site for us to meet and take part as a group. Joomla itself is offering Pizza to the local groups that are registered by Dec 10th.  If anyone is interested in hosting the bug squash, we can register with Joomla and get free pizza for those taking part. As of now, no one has tried to arrange anything for the Joomla Chicago group.

If we don't get a host, you can still take part. You can join me and many others virtually in the bug squashing chat on Skype. You have to be invited to the chat by the organizer. You should also take a look at what you need ready to go in order to do this event. There is some pre-setup that needs to happen for you to be able to help test the software.

If you have any questions, I'm going to be getting myself setup for doing testing and possibly trying to fix bugs as well.  I have one or two that I know I want to try to see if they are already fixed.

Come on and help Joomla get 2.5 ready for launch in January. Join me and many others at the Pizza, Bugs and Fun 2011 event!

More information can be found here: http://docs.joomla.org/Pizza_Bugs_and_Fun_2011

If you are interested in hosting, feel free to contact me as well. I can help to coordinate everything.

I've had the privilege to be in contact with some folks from Portland Oregon that have been attempting to pull together a Joomla User Group in Portland.  The first attempt didn't go very far, but a new set of people have stepped up and have really started pushing things forward.  On my latest trip to Portland, I contacted the group to see what was going on.  Nothing was scheduled but the organizer suggested a meetup between myself, her, and another gent that mentioned they wanted to meet soon.

From that meeting, a user group meeting was planned, date set, venue found, and publicity released.  All from a simple post to the user group forum.  What was the key?  I believe the biggest thing that helped was just the push of someone offering to be the speaker at their event.  That someone was me and I offered to speak on a topic they were definitely interested in - Joomla 1.6. 

I have gotten involved with the local group as part of the steering committee to help from afar based on the experience I have gained from being on the core team in Chicago.  When I visit Portland, I can plan my trip around the meeting in Oregon and visit with some new colleagues around the NW portion of the US.

It's amazing where you can find new places to converse about Joomla!.  I'm very happy to have met some very nice, talented, and passionate people.  Joomla! enthusiasts are everywhere!

Want to see what's happening in Portland if you are going to be visiting, go to http://www.joomlapdx.com and see what's up for their next meeting.  If it was like the first one, it should be another great meeting.

At our December core team meeting, we discussed altering the JoomlaChicago Kickstart training sessions.  This will be about the 4th iteration of the KickStart for Joomla 1.5.  Every iteration built upon the previous and has become better and better as time progressed.  This one will be no exception.  The new format will be 5 parts instead of 4 and will include 1 new session run one time per year.

Here's the new cycle information:

Part 1 - Joomla Overview and Installation
Part 2 - Content is King
Part 3 - Content Layouts and Navigation
Part 4 - Templates and Extensions
Part 5 - Kickstart Roundtable Q&A

The new session we will run 1 time per year will be a take on a previous format we've used in our Must Have Extensions main event session.  Only, this time, we are gearing it towards a 101 theme and calling it Kickstart Toolbox: What every site should have.

In 2011, we are restarting the cycle at Part 1 in January to accommodate our new schedule. If you are interested in Part 4 of the current cycle, all 4 parts will be online in the month of January for your review.  We'll start with Part 4 since it is the latest one and get that published for you.  We apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Here is the schedule for the Kickstart sessions for 2011:

January - Part 1: Joomla Overview and Installation
February - Part 2: Content is King
March - Part 3: Content Layouts and Navigation
April - Part 4: Templates and Extensions
May - No Kickstart due to CMS Expo
June - Part 5: Kickstart Roundtable Q&A
July - Kickstart Toolbox: What every site should have
August - Part 1: Joomla Overview and Installation
September - Part 2: Content is King
October - Content Layouts and Navigation
November - Templates and Extensions
December - Kickstart Roundtable Q&A

If you have any questions about our new setup for JoomlaChicago Kickstart, please contact myself or Linda Coonen.

At the last JoomlaChicago meeting, it was announced (I think again) that we were going to be rebuilding the Durty Nellie's website for the restaurant / pub.  I was very happy to hear we are going to perform this as a group effort.  Of course, there are always pitfalls to a "group consensus" design.  We just have to remember we can't ALL have everything we want in the design.  Compromise is key. :)

I'm personally looking forward to being involved either as a tester or developer / implementor of the site.  At the meeting, it was not announced who the leadership will be for the development of the website.  I believe the Core Team is hard at work discussing who to ask to take on such a project.  I'm sure that we will likely hear more about it at the next JoomlaChicago meeting.

Durty Nellies site rebuild should be a very interesting project to be involved with.  It will lend itself to explore quite a few possible avenues.  The venue is available for live concerts, dining, drinks with friends, and meetings.  What functionality will they need to accommodate all these different aspects of the business?  Will it all need to be on the site or will we just include some of it on the site?  What technologies are out there that could help with something like displaying concert information or linking to it from an external source like facebook as an event? 

I can imagine we may find some pre-built extensions that will work for what we need.  What happens if we can't?  Will we need to create a custom extension to handle some pieces of the site?  Will we have to modify some existing extension to work for our needs or change the design of the layout to match our site design?

There's a lot of unanswered questions.  You can be assured that the project will be a good learning experience for ANYONE involved in it.  If you want to be involved, let Linda or John know by putting your name on the evaluations you get at each meeting.  Yes, they do get read by the "management".   We value your feedback and input.

I don't know about you, but I'm really excited to see what JoomlaChicago can come up with for Durty Nellie's! 

Okay, so it's a bit of a strange subject, but it caught your eye, didn't it. ;) 

The subject refers to the kick off of our Business Index project.  I'm heading up this initiative with support from other Core Team members as well.  We're looking to develop a very useful business index that will allow Joomla Chicagoans to find assistance when they need it.  We hope that we are able to have a very strong participation amongst our Joomla Chicagoans.

Our goal is to have a useful, searchable and fairly heavily populated list of people in the Joomla Chicago group.  We want people to participate to not only identify resources in the group, but to also help people potentially increase their business from the group.  If people know about you or find you in the index, maybe they'll be more likely to chat you up at the next meeting!  This index could open up some new avenues for the shyer people in our midst, assuming they participate. :)

Check out the post in our JoomlaChicago group discussions in the site squad.  Oh, you aren't in that group, then join the group and you can read, comment, or just follow the progress of the group as we plan, build, and deploy our upkeeping JoomlaChicago Business Index!

Group discussion: http://www.joomlachicago.com/viewdiscussion/163-Business+Index+for+Joomla+Chicago.html?groupid=5

Interested in being involved?  Contact me on the discussion or through messages on JoomlaChicago. 

Thanks for the compliments yesterday after the Joomla 101 Basic Training session.  I hope everyone got something out of it.  If you are a member of JoomlaChicago.com, the slides will be online this weekend.  If you want to see Parts 1 and 2, they are also online on the site.  You have to be a registered user to view them.

 For those wanting to see the cycle again, we'll start fresh with Part 1: Installation at our January 14, 2009 meeting.  Nick Martinelli will be the presenter for this 3-part cycle of Joomla Basics.  Nick is a great speaker as well and really knows is stuff.  He presented this year on Virtuemart and at least one other topic.  I'm sure he'll do a fine job presenting Joomla Basic Training in January, February and March.

 Don't worry!  I'll be back in April with an addition to the lineup.  We'll be adding a Part 4 to the cycle for April.  We couldnt get it ready for January because we wanted to come up with a great session for Part 4 and needed more time to pull it together.  I'll post more details in my blog when we have more info on it.

If you have suggestions for a "basic topic" to maybe include in Part 4 that we haven't done yet in Parts 1-3.  Please comment on my blog and I'll take a look at it.  Maybe we can work it in.  WHo knows, if we get enough, maybe we can add a "special session" that isn't part of the cycle to cover as many as we can.

Keep plugging away at Joomla!  See you soon....

 KC

There's been several times that we've been chatting around and someone has thrown out a cool tip or trick or fix about Joomla and its extensions.  I'd always ask if someone wrote that in the forum somewhere or recorded it ANYWHERE.  Usual answer was "No".

So, we as a group decided that I'd be a good candidate to start recording them.  Thanks guys! ;)  We are going to setup a forum area for members to submit Tips, Tricks and Fixes.  We'll review them, and if they haven't been submitted before, we'll put them into article format available publicly to help out the Joomla world at large. 

Start submitting those items in the forum and we'll start putting the articles together.

Enjoy!