On 11-13 November 2016, I attended the 5th annual
Joomla! World Conference (#JWC16), in Vancouver, Canada.
After a 17 year IT career and much playing with HTML/CSS, I started using
Joomla! around 2005/2006, but never really had time to get involved in the community. I attended an Australian Joomla!Day in 2013, and the
Melbourne JUG a few times, but that was about it.
I couldn't get to a JWC in previous years so I set my sights on #JWC16. I decided on 2 main goals - to network and meet some of the international community and learn a bit more about it (with a view to possibly becoming involved), and also attempt to gain the new
Joomla! Administrator certification.
The first goal was simple - the #JWC16 crowd were a wonderful bunch of people who were very welcoming and keen to network. As an open source community, everybody is a volunteer and without question, everybody I met was happy to answer questions and explain their own involvement. It certainly made walking in without knowing a soul, far less scary than I'd anticipated.
The second goal was a little more difficult. The certification exam wasn't easy - it requires an 80% pass mark. So no matter how much you think you know -
it requires study. I heard stories on the first 2 days that only 1 person passed the last time the exam was offered. I also heard there would be questions on implementing a multilingual site which, being an Aussie and living in a country with only one official language and no neighbours, is not something I've ever had to do before!
Happily, the study paid off and
I passed! (Along with these 3 other lovely ladies). This means I'm officially
the first person in Australia to gain this accreditation, which I'm quite proud of. :)
At the final keynote, we were encouraged to blog about our #JWC16 experience, and consider our biggest takeaway. I make the following observations:
- The #JWC16 had a nice balance of "business" and "technical" - I was mildly concerned it would be more technical than I was capable of / interested in but this was certainly not the case.
- There was a good range of sponsors supporting the event.
- The location, venue and food was fantastic (although I'm not sure I'll be able to face "breakfast potato" again anytime soon :/ ).
- The workshops I attended were all excellent, conducted by people clearly knowledgeable in more ways than just technical geekdom (and now all available on YouTube).
I guess my main takeaway is that I haven't really been very involved to date, and don't know many Joomlers from my part of the world. (To be fair, I've spent the last 6 years studying part-time,
working part-time, and raising 2 kids so I've had other priorities). But now
I've completed my degree and my kids are a bit older, I've signed up to attend the next Melbourne JUG meetup, and made contact via social media with some of the Sydney JUG. And I've spoken with a couple of people I met at #JWC16 about areas I could volunteer in, and signed up at
Joomla's Volunteer Portal. Who knows where this will lead?!
I really enjoyed the whole #JWC16 experience and got a lot out of it, and will definitely be back for #JWC17 in Rome next year. If anybody reading this is on the fence about attending - just do it! And I'll see you there. :)
Visited Amir this morning. He tested everything hip-wise and was looking quite pleased with himself, everything looks (and feels) great and he's declared me "like normal"!
Nothing much has changed since my last post, except that I've started Lite n Easy and it's Easter. So that's going to go well. Goal is 10kg (which I've put on since the operation) and maybe a few extra for good measure. So far I've lost 3kg...
In news that will surprise nobody who knows me - I didn't enjoy this unit much. Sometime in the last year or so, it became compulsory but because I started studying in 2010 when it wasn't, I'd missed doing it.
After several attempts at physio, which seemed to fix the back problems but not my sore neck, I decided to try something different. I visited a remedial massage therapist, who also specialises in acupuncture and shiatsu, and had a full body treatment that lasted 90 minutes. It was amazing! I stood up and felt like my left leg was finally the right length, and all the back & neck pain was gone.
I've been having some problems with stiffness in my hip the last couple of weeks and Amir is away so I've seen Michael a few times. Physically the hip reconstruction part is fine, but I think my body has been so used to leaning on the "good" leg for such a long time, that now it's hard to go back to level. I'll be standing there talking to somebody and suddenly realise I'm leaning to one side, so I try to balance out and five minutes later, I'm leaning again.
