Phew! It's been a two tiring but exciting months to prepare Joomla! Day Malaysia. During the time, The Team at www.azrul.com (Azrul, Meriza, Heng Woon, Roy) who have never met up with the Joomla! community in Malaysia, finally got caught up with them and collaborated together to host our very first Joomla! Day in Kuala Lumpur. Sure, there were a few hiccups (as expected at first), but after discussing openly and understanding each and others thoughts and opinions, the Joomla! Day committee lead by Azrul and Meriza finally get together to plan and execute the whole event.
Luckily for us, or unfortunately if you see things half glass full, reservations for Joomla! Day were fully booked three weeks in advanced! We were receiving e-mails and phone calls everyday after that waiting and begging to go for J!Day but we just had to (reluctantly) decline. Perhaps the next time round we'll book a bigger hall!
After weeks of planning the event, going back and forth with Alex Kempkens to tune the event according to Joomla!'s needs, the week has finally arrived. The committee at first panicked because the t-shirts that were promised has not arrived. Some made a really big deal out of it as they were scratching their heads to how to send the t-shirts to the respective recipients. But Alex does his magic and the t-shirts arrived on the dot on the Wednesday of the week having to pick it up at the Customs Quarantine near the KL International Airport. Yeap, you guessed it. Taxes were levied on the donated t-shirts.
The Saturday before the J!Day on Sunday, the committee worked like dogs to prepare for Joomla! Day. Meriza went up and down the hotel to make sure the room was prepared. Fuqaha, Firdaus and Shaiful were at the office the whole burning CD's and printing the J!Day tags to prepare for the goodie bag. The car came in handy to drive around to the printers and picking up stuff for the J!Day. There was a major crisis during the day itself as one of the speakers for Joomla!Day, Syahzul who was supposed to talk about Creating Templates pulled out at the last minute because of work commitments. We were panicked. Luckily Azrul and Johan filled him in on J!Day.
On Joomla!Day! March 18, 2007
Registration started around 8.30 am, and there were a few eager members from the Joomla! community that we there even before registration starts. I remembered people coming not only from Peninsula Malaysia but all the way from East Malaysia three hours across the South China Sea by plane, an elderly man from Holland who lived in Malaysia for about two years (this is his final year here), a British guy from Cambodia, a few from Singapore and Indonesia too. Believe it or not, people coming from Microsoft to an Open Source Event. Hmmm… Basically, the crowd attracted people from many parts of South East Asia, it was amazing!
Heng Woon was a great and comical emcee for J!Day. He didn't leave the crowd sleepy for sure. Heng Woon introduced all the speakers and did some ice-breaking with the crowd asking them how and what they used Joomla! for. This was certainly ingenious of Heng Woon to get the crowd warmed up and to remember each and other's name (theoretically), but it made the first part of J!Day fun nevertheless.
Fuqaha did a short introductory talk on Making the Best of Joomla, how to install and run Joomla, as well as doing SEO using Joomla! The highlight of the event was surely Johan's talk on Joomla! 1.5. Excited he was, he made the crowd wait in hunger for about half an hour to lunch. He deserved the ooohhhs! and aaahhhs! he got from his charismatic speech.
All hungry after hearing Johan's speech, the crowd adjourned to the hotel café for a delicious buffet that served local delicacies which we were pretty sure that was alien to some people especially foreigners.
After lunch, Lee CY kicked off the J!Day again by making it simple for Joomla! newbies in explaining what components, modules and mambots and what they do. The most interesting part of his speech would certainly be about the Joomla! Extensions Directory and how it works. He explained the ratings system very honestly, and Lee, as an open minded person, accepted criticisms from the crowd that his statistical method could do for some improvement instead of using the averages of the ratings which would be severely distorted by the presence of outliers.
For more technical fans, Azrul did about 45 minutes speech on component development. Azrul is the lead developer or CTO that is responsible for Jom Comment, MyBlog and Nice Talk components for Joomla! After the event, many were in contact with him to share learn his secrets.
The J!Day ended with template development by Azrul and Johan. Many were tired already but there were informative, yet fun filled memories of the first J!Day in Malaysia. A photograph was taken in memory of the J!Day and I'm sure Alex will post it on the site.
Overall, it was a great event. It was highly informative, of course, but the crowd finally get to mingle with members of the community from all over the place. We personally made some really friends like Krit and gang from JoomlaCorner Thailand, a couple of Singaporeans that were really close to us during the whole event. Like the words of Alex for, May the Spirit of Joomla! help us all with our future in reaching a common goal.
Many thanks to Alex Kempkens for all his troubles. |
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 For the first time in Malaysia, Joomla! Day will be hosted on March 18, 2007. Joomla! Day is a special day where all Joomla! fans and users in Malaysia, and all those curious about the most popular Open Source Content Management System in the planet, that is Joomla! gather around and learn more about Joomla! and its development roadmap.
On Joomla! Day itself there will be introductory topics for the novice users of Joomla! and talks for more intermediate and advance users. It’s a great opportunity for Joomla! fans and those wanting to know more about Joomla! to get acquainted and familiarize themselves with Joomla! For those who are convinced and are enthusiastic about Joomla!, the highlight of the Joomla! Day is the attendance and talk from the lead developer of the Joomla! Core Team, Johan Janssens. Johan will be giving the introductory talk for our Joomla! Day, and will be letting us in the know of the development of Joomla! 1.5, where Joomla! is heading in the future, and how it’s taking over the world by storm! 
Of course, there will be great talks from experienced users in the Joomla! community. Attendees of Joomla! Day will also receive gifts in goodie bag of software from Azrul Rahim who kindly sponsors his commercial components, plus free templates, and Joomla! installation CD. On top of that, Joomla! Day attendees will also get a free Joomla! t-shirt from Joomla! (courtesy of Alex Kempkens from Joomla! Core Team) And don’t forget to mingle around with Johan - a well-known member of the Joomla! core team, our homegrown Azrul Rahim and Lee CY - successful Joomla! third-party Joomla! components developers, Syahzul – our template guru, other Joomla! web developers and Joomla! enthusiasts in Joomla! Day. Joomla! Day Malaysia will be held on March 18, 2007 at Cititel Hotel, MidValley, Kuala Lumpur. Lunch at the Café and two breaks included. So, what’s the focus on Joomla! Day Malaysia? Joomla! Day Malaysia will focus on: - Introduction on website development using Joomla. We will show how easy it is to get your site up and running in less than 5 minutes.
- Joomla! as the best open source content management system for web and portal development*
- Developing third-party components for Joomla!
- Developing Templates for Joomla
- Joomla! development road map and it’s plan for taking over the world
- Case studies using Joomla!
- Questions and Answer session with the Joomla! Day speakers and audience
*Pakct Publishing – 2006 Open Source CMS Award Winner What will you get? First and foremost, Joomla Day is a community event, and is a great oppurtunity for the community members to get to know each other. On top of that, you will also get: - a chance to meetup with the Lead Developer of Joomla, Johan from Belgium.
- official Joomla t-shirt, flown directly from Germany!. This t-shirt alone cost RM60, not including the shipping cost.
- freebies will include, live-CD where you can try out Joomla without a web server, as well as commercial Joomla add-on such Jom Comment and many others, worth hundreds of Ringgit!.
- for beginner, Joomla Day is a perfect opportunity to learn all about Joomla, from the experts within the community.
- meet up with successful local developer such as Lee CY and Azrul who will share their secrets.
Who Should Attend? If you’re a fan of Joomla!, you must definitely attend this. Joomla! Day is also great for web developers if you’re looking to know about the best open source content management system to use for web and portal development. - Joomla Community members, beginner and experts, everyone is welcomed
- Open Source aficionados
- Web developers who wants to learn more about Joomla
- IT Managers in corporate organizations
- Government sector
- NGO’s
- Students interested in Web development
Interested? Wait no longer. Register now! Let us see what is going on that day!
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