So far this year, we have:

• 36 new members in 2011
• Held 5 free monthly meetings on the 2nd Wednesday of the month
• Additionally, held a free "Meetup Monday Night" during CMS Expo
• 8 local Joomla Chicago members were featured as speakers at the annual CMS Expo, receiving international exposure in the CMS Community
• Averaged 48 attendees per meeting, with 88 at Meetup Monday Night
• Offered over 16 FREE Learning Sessions on Joomla! CMS
• Provided free lunch for over 200 attendees
• Established new location for meetings in Palatine
• Member Mike Carson is planning JoomlaDay Chicago (Aug 5th & 6th)
• In the process of the 3rd major site update/upgrade to JoomlaChicago.com
• Received over 7,000 unique site visitors
• Over 150 volunteer hours by our Core Team on learning session planning, presentations, meeting planning, site development, writing design & admin
• Lunch Sponsors Arc Technology Group & JoomlaZoomla provided over 250 complimentary meals to JoomlaChicago attendees

Looking forward, in following our mission of providing the best resource for Chicago area Joomla! users, here is what is planned for us to accomplish for the balance of 2011:

• Hold 6 free monthly lunch meetings on the 2nd Wednesday of every month (July through December), 2011
• Provide 18 free learning sessions for those interested in Joomla! CMS
• As part of one scheduled meeting, focus on a business networking mixer local Joomla! enthusiasts
• Recruit at least 30 new members to participate in JoomlaChicago
• Provide support to the JoomlaDay Chicago event in August, 2011
• Complete our 3rd major site update/upgrade, using Joomla! 1.7+
• While keeping in step with the current site design, improve functionality of the site, with focus on establishing an improved Forum and User Profile/Directory
• Research additional location(s) in Chicago to hold monthly meetings

If you have suggestions on what to do to make the JoomlaChicago Group better, feel free to share them with a comment, or contact us via email, phone, or in-person, at one of our monthly meetings.

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. 

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