Joomla World Conference 2016

On 11-13 November 2016, I attended the 5th annual Joomla! World Conference (#JWC16), in Vancouver, Canada.

After a 15+ 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 user group 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 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 first time the exam was offered. I also heard there would be questions on implementing a multilingual site, which is not something I've ever had to do before in Australia.

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 conference had a nice balance of "business" and "technical" - I was mildly concerned it would be more technical than I was capable of or 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 (available on YouTube).

I guess my main takeaway is that I haven't really been very involved to date, and don't know many Joomla developers in my part of the world. But now I've signed up to attend the next Melbourne user group meetup, made contact via social media with some of the Sydney crew, and I'm investigating areas I could volunteer in. Who knows where this will lead?

I really enjoyed the whole #JWC16 experience and got a lot out of it, and I'm already making plans to attend #JWC17 in Rome next year. If you're unsure whether to go or not - just do it! And I'll see you there. 😊