In June 2010, the brave knights and dames from all over Europe and from far away, gathered in a monestary outside Wiesbaden. Their quest was a noble one - to unite the kingdom of Joomla and to learn from each other. And so they did.

Word about the gathering spread far and wide, and the kingdom of Joomla (or is it really a republic?) felt like a warm and cosy place.

Next year, the knights who say J! will gather once more. In the city of Kerkrade, Netherlands, J and Beyond 2011 will have the Joomla world come together to share, learn and drink some insane amounts of Dutch brew.

The dates are May 6th - 8th 2011.

Open Source Matters (OSM) has announced that the first ever Joomla! World Conference will be held in Melbourne, Australia.  OSM President, Ryan Ozimek said «the conference is a great opportunity for the global Joomla! community to meet and connect in a professionally organised event. This will bring together everyone from the lead development team to community developers, designers and end users».

As you know, I spent 4 days in Germany to attend the Joomla! conference «J and Beyond 2010». I had a great time! And it seems a lot of other people did, too.

I've put together a video with some attendees sharing their view on the conference.

Today, the J!Oscars, or the first ever global «Joomla Open Source Creative and Artistic Recognition» awards were held held at the J! and Beyond conference in Wiesbaden, Germany.

The event was led by Brian Teeman and Johan Janssens, both co-founders of Joomla!. Brian actually planned to have a Eurovision Song Contest-like voting process. But as there are 27 countries represented here at the moment, it would last all night (just as the ESC) ;)

To the cheers from the crowd, the winners were announced one after eachother. Johan picked one representative from each country to present the awards, which I found was a nice touch.

J! and Beyond is the first international event for Joomla! addicts. 187 people from 25 countries across 5 continents have gathered in Wiesbaden to live and breathe Joomla! for 72 hours (and add some).

As I'm finally here, it's almost surreal. I've «met»  a lot of the attendees before - but only virtually. To meet these people in real life is a really nice experience. It's like coming home, really. It's like coming to a place you've never been before, yet the people there are like your neighbours. It's a very nice feeling indeed.

Last night, I met Rafael from Dioscouri, Joe leBlanc, Brian Teeman, Fotis Evangelou from JoomlaWorks, Nicholas Dionysopoulos, Thoma Kahl and Sören Eberhardt-Biermann from Virtuemart, Chris Davenport from the documentations team, Yannick Gaultier and Victor Drover from Anything Digital (sh404SEF) and a lot of other people from the community. We had some beers at a place in downtown - oh, the German beer is nice!

It's one thing chatting with people online, but it's when you meet face to face that you teally see the person behind the name. And, I think I need to change my profile picture. Everyone was telling me I looked very different in person. I'll take that as a positive :)

Now I have just registered and try to figure out who everyone is :)

I will report back to you all throughout the conference, so stay tuned for more.

With three days of CMSExpo, one could write a book about all that took place at the CMSExpo in Chicago.

But I guess since a blog is a blog and not a book and my reporting expertise is limited at best, I’ll do a little focused reporting.

A week ago, I bought my ticket for J and Beyond, the first international Joomla conference. The conference takes place in Wiesbaden, Germany, May 30th to July 1st.

I’ve been to JoomlaDay Norway once, but this will be my first attendance at a larger Joomla event. Also, it will be the first time I meet a lot of people I’ve been communicating with online during the past year. It will be a nice experience meeting these people whom I respect and enjoy communicating with on Twitter, Skype, Facebook and through blog comments.