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.

Great news for the Joomla! Community!  Joomla! 1.6 Beta (1) was just released! Now you can dig into all the new goodies in the new version. We recommend you do NOT use 1.6 yet on your live sites, but go ahead and give it a shot for testing purposes.

Here's the link to the full article on Joomla.org

Here's a link to DOWNLOAD Joomla! 1.6 Beta1 now.

Have fun! Joomla 1.6 ROCKS!