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Joomla!Day Philippines - Event Sponsors Page Joomla! Philippines (Local Forum)
1st Joomla! Day Philippines, A Historic Success! PDF Print E-mail

 

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June 14, 2008 - The Joomla! Users Group in the Philippines successfully handled the country’s first Joomla! Day at the University of the Philippines, Diliman, Quezon City. More than 300 people attended the event - an outstanding number compared to Joomla! days in other larger and more developed countries.

Joomla! is a very popular Open Source Content Management System (CMS) which gives users the capability to easily setup and manage their websites. By being licensed as GPL(General Public License), it is freely available to anyone who would like to build their own websites under minimal cost. The number of attendees of Joomla! Day reflects the growing number of Joomla! users in the Philippines.

The Morning Session was held at UP’s Department of Electrical and Electronics Engineering Building with Johan Janssens, Joomla! Developer and former Core Team Member as the Guest Speaker. He introduced the Joomla! project to the audience and explained how an Open Source project like Joomla! works. The Audience were also given the opportunity to ask Questions which Johan gladly answered.
Morning Session


After a quick break was an Open Forum with 4 veteran members of the Joomla! Users Group and 1 of the Guest Speakers as Panelists. The Panelists are Guilliam Roque, Jhondie Abenaza, Israel Canasa, Paul de Paula, and Atty. Magdalena Lepiten. One notable topic in the Open Forum was about the direction of the Community. Concerns were raised if it is ideal for the Community to become Incorporated as a Non-Profit Organization. There was no consensus on this issue, but based on his experience, Johan Janssens advised that the Community, whether incorporated or not, should not complicate things but instead simplify them so that the community is accessible and friendly to everyone. Overall, the open forum was a good treat to the audience who would like to know more about what’s happening in the community.

After the Lunch Break were 2 separate seminar sessions at the Department of Computer Science building Lecture Halls. One for Joomla! newbies(Joombies) and one for developers and advanced users.

Joombies
For the Joombies, topics discussed were PHP and MySQL for the Lazy by Clodelio Delfino, Introduction to Joomla 1.5.x by Paul de Paula, Local and Remote Joomla Installation by Errole Guttierez. As what usually happen to newbies when they first learned Joomla, they were “wowed” to the point of dropping their jaw.  The air was filled with excitement as the audience learned the power of Joomla! and how easy it is to use.

The Developer Sessions were more geeky in nature as speakers talked about some advanced stuff about Joomla!. Topics discussed were Copyright Issues by Atty. Lepiten and Guilliam Roque, Migrating Sites to Joomla! 1.5 by Israel D. Canasa,  Recommended Joomla! Extensions by Jhondie Abenaza, and the most advanced of all, the Application Layer of the Joomla! 1.5 Framework which was delivered by Johan Janssens.
Developer Session

 

Of course, the event won’t be complete without pictures, so here are some user submitted links to Joomla! Day pictures.

Pics taken by Errole
Pics Taken by AudienceOne
Pics Taken by Alvin

Also wait for the Official Gallery of Joomla! Users Group Philippines which will be up some time next week.

The Event was prepared by a group of volunteers who themselves benefited from Joomla! Since Joomla! is free, the least they can do for Joomla! is to promote it by organizing events like these, and to help new users learn it.

Thanks to all the Volunteers who helped organize this Event.

Acknowledgement also goes to Johan Janssens. He travelled all the way from Belgium to grace this historic event at his own expense.

Through the first Joomla! day, the community is hopeful that it will grow, with more volunteers having fun by sharing some of their time and effort to help others.

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