We both are still deeply ingrained in using 1.5, so to learn 1.6 on top of our day jobs was pretty challenging to learn to say the least! After giving ourselves a crash course on some testing sites, visiting joomla.org's documentation we got the hang of it and where able to successfully teach it. Learning by doing right???

I'd like to thank all those Joomla newbies and returning attendees for joining our session. It was great to see some of you from prior years back again. And I'm sure Kendall would agree we had some superb Q/A sessions. And lets face it, us Joomla folks always have more fun than those...cough cough... DRUPAL people right... Ya Joomla rocks harder, I SAID IT!

So some of my favorite memories of CMS Expo 2011 (not in any special order)

1. Having the privileged to come speak at such a high quility and nutruing event. This by far is better than any expo or learning conference I've ever gone too. Even though its not a 100% Joomla expo, there isn't one that could come close to the diversity of the Joomla sessions offered, hands down.
2. Joomla vs. Drupal Smackdown. Man if you missed this you better come back next year for part two. I think the onlookers got more heated than the project heads from both camps. Kyle Ledbetter and the boys from CorePHP didn't back down and had their share of zings. Thumbs up to you fellow JoomlaVangalists.
3. I got to drop Rocket Theme's Gantry Framework mini demo into my kickstart template session. Those of you know me as a RT / Gantry fanboy, so it was cool to show of the raw power of Gantry. I heard plenty of oohs and ahhss.
4. Having Tom Canavan cause me to loose sleep after his Security session. Tom I love ya brother but the moment I walk out I have a three page task list to review back at the office. BTW, nice birth certificate reference, ha ha!
5. Checking out Johnathan's session on CSS3 and the unveiling of Automated CSS3 Generator Plugin. OMG rounded corners in ALL browsers without spending hours doing css and image slicing. A MUST HAVE EXTENSION!!! Go buy it now!
6. Microsoft giving out "Make web not war" Joomla t-shirts. yes...I took a few. ;)
7. Sitting through Avery Cohen's Google analytic presentation. I tell you folks this dude is hilarious. By far one of the most entertaining/lively speakers I've seen. Not only did he school me in new Google secrets, he kept the crowd laughing and interacting constantly. I heard so many good comments from other attendees. Hats off to you Avery, you rocked the crowd! BTW this talented SEO king is a member of our Joomla Chicago group.
8. Kendall, is now known as the VGA cable master. So from now on its Kendall "VGA" Cabe, ir KCVGA for short.
9. The food. Hotel Orrington's breakfasts and lunches where amazing. Their staff was so friendly. I've never seen a harder working bunch. These guys take pride in their work and the amazing service shows!!!!
10. Meeting other Joomla evangelists.
11. I'm sure I'm missing some so I'll append later.

I would also like to personally thank Linda and John Coonen for their tireless work and devotion to the Joomla Chicago user group and for lost sleep for running CMS EXPO. The Expo event gets bigger and better as each year passes. All those who attend do nothing but rave that this is THE BEST Joomla / CMS event they attend. I'm very thankful to know you guys and be involved with people who are so passionate about teaching Joomla to the masses.

Raise the fist of the Joomla child! m/

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. 

Keeping It Personal Keeps It Real.

The #1 over-arching goal at the beginning of the year was to provide excellent LIVE meetings for all members. While online efforts will always be part of the package, to help share information and insights, the purpose for any online efforts will continue to be to support the premise of providing excellent quality person-to-person meetings.

There's nothing like that personal contact, not only for quality learning purposes, but also to forge trusted relationships that webinars, emails and Skype just can't touch.

We presented a full slate of learning and business networking sessions in 2010, including new sessions on Joomla frameworks, audio and video for Joomla, Joomla 1.6, plus a "3-minute dating" format to enable everyone to get to know eachother better.

New Online Capabilities

We performed a major re-design to the site, all done by JoomlaChicago members. The new design is clean, it's stylish, and it's "Chicago!" We added quite a bit of functionality to our website, including a social networking element, using JomSocial, complete with Discussion Groups and apps, ProjectFork for project management, new online presentations, expanded Joomla Showcase section,  rather official "Terms and Conditions" legal documentation and more. We also expanded our blogging area to enable all members to blog on JoomlaChicago.com.

New Location In Chicagoland

After three-plus years at the swanky-swank headquarters of the Acquity Group, we finally outgrew each other. It was time to give a new location a shot, so we shifted to Durty Nellie's in suburban Palatine. Meeting attendance ranges from 35 to 45 participants, which is slightly down from the 45 - 55 downtown, but so far, so good!

Connections With Joomla.org

This year, Joomla.org continues to grow and expand. The parent organization, Open Source Matters Inc (NY based non-profit), has helped fund and foster Joomla's growth as well. Their working groups have implemented several new programs to assist user groups, and JoomlaChicago has been a benefactor of all that work. We participate on Joomla.org's JUG working group, and in 2010, earned its "official Registered User Group" status.

Looking Forward

We're very thankful for several new presenters who stepped up this year to present on a myriad of topics, including VirtueMart, CSS tips and tricks, E-Commerce solutions, Joomla Security and admin, and much more. This group is all about the members themselves, and their own willingness to give of themselves to share their insights with others.

We look forward to another growth year in 2011, helping our members meet their wide array of challenges when it comes to getting familiar with Joomla, ramping up their Joomla-powered sites, and pushing this amazing CMS to its limits.  Our annual planning meeting was today, in which we mapped out a tentative schedule for each and every meeting in 2011. We'll be posting that soon, and taking your feedback and insights over the coming month, in order to finalize, lock-and-load the schedule, and line up capable speakers to present! By the way, if you're a JoomlaChicago member, and you're interested in presenting, please contact us.

Thank you all again for a great year of working together in Chicago to help each other up to speed on the software, the trends, the techniques, the business strategies, and especially all the people who are at the helm, powering their sites using Joomla!

Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays to all!

Linda and John Coonen
Co-Hosts, JoomlaChicago

Now that the email notification issue is solved, we're finally out of Beta1. ;)

If you're part of the Joomla Chicago User Group, and you've spent any time at all in the Community Area of the site, it's likely you woke up this morning to at least one or two (or ummm...150) email notification emails from the site's social engine (we run JomSocial 1.7.15).

While I'd like to apologize for that little snafu, it wasn't a mistake or due to anything improperly operating.

Nope, rather, after many months of working on the site, I discovered how to toggle-ON the ability to send members email notifications when they receive friend requests, responses to their discussions, and a whole littany of other goodies (called cron jobs). In doing that, several months of important and overdue pent-up social messages made their way OUT of the bottleneck created by yours truly.

So, with this discovery, I can officially announce, we have graduated out of the 7 month Beta1 Phase of the new JoomlaChicago.com site existence. We are now in Beta2, until further notice. ;)

Life is a continuous beta test, after all. Cheers and enjoy your weekend!

-JC

The JoomlaChicago Site Squad has been busily making progress on the JoomlaChicago website over the past few months, including a whole new interface design, upgrading to Joomla 1.5x, and a whole lot more. 

Now, the big push over the next 60 days will be improving the "Social Side" of the website. We installed and have been using JomSocial, a great Social Networking extension from Azrul Studios, built especially for Joomla!

We're also in the midst of deciding whether a Forum is a needed part of the site. We've been having some technical difficulties tying together a forum with JomSocial, so in the interest of not turning folks off, we've temporarily disabled (unpublished) the Forum. We still have the data and comments, but we're actively pushing toward a solution which will incorporate both JomSocial AND a Forum. We're encouraged by what we see on the near horizon, especially by the folks over at JVitals, makers of Agora Forum. We'll see how the coming weeks go as we work on integrating the two!  If you want to get involved, jump in, the water's warm.

;)

If you haven't gotten started yet, now is the time to get involved in the Joomla Chicago online community.  In just the last few weeks, there have been daily increases in activity -- and that means more opportunities for all of us to network with other Joomlaistas and expand our web skills, our web activities, and our web businesses.

Try these three simple ways to get into the swing of things:

• * log onto Joomla Chicago and update your profile to tell the rest of us about yourself
• * take a close look at all those snazzy pictures of the other members and pick a few to "friend" - it's fun!
• * follow the links to recent updates to discussion posts. Add your two cents! You'll start getting emails as other people join the conversation

Get started now! You'll be amazed a month from now to see how many great connections you've made!

What's your favorite way to interact with the Joomla Chicago online community?

We're making updates to the site on a nightly basis, so keep watching for improvements, especially to the Social Network and Blog Areas of the site. Thanks again to all the folks helping out on the new site design and development. If you're a Member of JoomlaChicago, and you're interested in blogging here on "The Loop," please contact one of the JoomlaChicago leadership team right away. Thanks! -JC

We're now ramping up "Phase Four" with re-engineering the usability of the Community Area, including JomSocial and our Forum. Our goal is to fully integrate (seamlessly) the JoomlaChicago Social Network, Forum, Blog and Commenting. There's some really, really cool software we got our hands onto that you're going to love!

Being so active within the Joomla Development Community and recently talking so much about the benefits of social networking recently I was thinking about all of the resources that I knew about that most other people using Joomla probably never knew existed. I thought I would share some of these valuable resources here with you.

For those that have a Twitter account and want to follow primarily Joomla related tweets here are a few links that you WON'T want to miss. You can follow everyone on these lists in one easy click.

Main list of Joomla Experts
http://tweepml.org/Joomla/

Some of the best Joomla Extension Developers
http://tweepml.org/Best-Joomla-Extensions-Developers/

http://tweepml.org/joomlaextensions/

Some of the best Joomla Template Developers
http://tweepml.org/joomlatemplates/

There are also 2 additional and might I add, very complete lists of RSS feeds from everything Joomla that you can imagine. 

http://start.joomlaworks.gr/

http://joomla.alltop.com/

Although this is a short list of resources in this blog post if you click on these links you will find that these links will provide you with an extreme amount of very valuable information right at your fingertips.

I suggest that you bookmark these links as they are constantly being updated and added to.

Enjoy!