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I just found out from Darren Peterson about the first meetup of Joomla users in Austin. I’ve been hearing about Joomla quite a bit recently — mostly as an alternative to Drupal. I decided to contact Darren and get the details on the meeting as well as a status on Joomla. |
Lynn Bender: Have you been using Joomla long?
Darren Peterson: Not long at all. I stumbled on Joomla about three years ago when a client asked me to customize his Mambo site. I wasn’t familiar with what Mambo was, so I started researching it and found that Joomla had essentially taken its place in the open source CMS world.
Bender: For a local person building a Drupal-based site, there seem to be a lot of local developers with experience in Drupal. What about Joomla?
Peterson: Austin has a great base of talented Joomla developers. There are more Joomla users than there are developers and I’ve found that most Joomla developers are also Drupal savvy. Over the past few years, I’ve attended several Joomla conferences in different cities around the US and have met hundreds of developers and I’d have to say that Austin and Central Texas have some of the best.
Bender:What are some of the local austin websites that are currently using Joomla? What about nationally-known high profile sites?
Peterson: There are so many, its hard to distringuish a Joomla site from other types of sites. You can’t tell just by looking because it is possible to customize every aspect of the framework. Three years ago I developed Twin Liquors (www.twinliquors.com) on Joomla, as well as many other local business sites. On a national level Joomla.org has listed that the United Nations (http://www.unric.org) , MTV Networks Quizilla (www.quizilla.com) , L.A. Weekly (www.laweekly.com) , Harvard University (gsas.harvard.edu) sites have all been developed on Joomla.
Bender:Can you tell me a bit about the licensing model? How does it stack up against other CMS software — like Plone or Drupal?
Peterson: Joomla, Drupal, and Plone are free, open, and available to anyone under the GPL license. I am not has familiar with Plone’s licensing, but Joomla and Drupal both permit users to customize, and contribute code as well as resell the software as long as you allow the purchaser to to modify and redistribute it as well.
Bender:I’ve heard that, unlike with Drupal, most of the modules are are not free. What’s the scoop on this?
Peterson: Some of the modules have commercial licenses attached to them. Some users don’t like this, but I think it’s a great thing. You get a better product, and better support when you pay for an extension. There are many developers who will never charge for their work, and I applaud them, but there are many extensions Joomla would never have if it weren’t for the development teams working hard day and night.
Bender:SEO functionality seems to be lagging behind Drupal. Are there any solutions in the works?
Peterson: The latest version of Joomla has many great SEO features. From SEF urls, individual article meta tags and titles, to turbo charged SEO extensions, the Joomla team has delivered a CMS that drives traffic.
Bender:For someone implementing a new CMS system or collaborative website, what do you consider the main advantages to Joomla?
Peterson: Ease of use, the Joomla community, the customization options, and oh yeah, the local Joomla Austin user’s group (www.joomlaaustin.org) who has their first meeting this Wednesday (http://webdesign.meetup.com/528/) .
Daniel and I have been planning this for a while, and are finally ready to launch. Beginning in September, GeekAustin will be hosting a series of free classes on various core skill sets for beginning tech pros. The classes will be held downtown, and will be free. The classes will vary in length, and will cover topics such as SQL, Java certification, and basic object-oriented design.
The first class will be on basic SQL, and will be team-taught by Daniel and myself. This is the same evening class that we taught at Data Junction and Pervasive. The SQL class will begin early in September, and will tentatively consist of one session a week, each Wednesday night, for eight weeks. All materials needed for the class, including sample database, will be supplied. So that attendees will not have to waste time on things they already know, we have a pre-class evaluation test to determine the right session at which to enter.
For more information, or to request a place in the class, send a note to linearb@gmail.com
Juan Sequeda (CV) and John De Oliveira of Semantic Web Austin just sent me the list of speakers for tonight’s Launch Party. Here are the speakers:
Christopher St. John
Mike Kaply
Troy Lane Williams
Robert Pettengill
As stated previously, this will be a departure from recent GeekAustin events. In addition to the drinks and conversation, the above speakers and members of Semantic Web Austin will be hosting presentations /sessions back in the BoomBoom Room. If you are interested in the semantic web, ontology, microformats, info architecture — or just want to toss back some drinks with folks who are — we look forward to seeing you.
Event: Semantic Web Austin Launch Party
Host: GeekAustin
Date: Tuesday, June 17, 6PM-10PM
Location: Union Park Austin ( 612 W. 6th St.)
Event listing on Facebook
Event listing on Upcoming
Juan just created the following:
SemanticWebAustin Facebook Group.
SemanticWebAustin LinkedIn Group
I know of no one in Austin who knows more about Postgres than Decibel. For quite a while, he has been threatening to start a Postgres user group. He’s finally done it. Here is the scoop:
Event: Austin Postgres User’s Group - First Meeting
Date: Tuesday, May 6th at 6PM-8PM
Location Sun Microsystems (Map)
Building 8 - Longhorn Conference Room
5300 Riata Park Ct
Austin, TX 78727
The rough agenda will be:
6:00 - 6:30 Meet ‘n greet
6:30 - 7:15 Discuss goals for the AustinPUG
7:15 - 7:45 Presentation: What’s new it 8.3?
7:45 - 8:00 Wrap-up
Everyone who is attending will have to register as a visitor; to make this as efficient as possible, please RSVP to austinpug@decibel.org. There will be free Pizza from Mangia’s. When you register, please specify pizza preference: spinach, pepperoni, or Chicago style, etc.
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I really love C — largely because I learned it at the same time I learned Unix, but my knowledge of C is largely limited to the chunks of Unix source code with which I am familiar. I’d love to learn C++ but I doubt that that will ever happen. Tonight I caught up with Matt Weigel,an old friend who just happens to be the organizer of the Austin C/C++ meetup. I took the opportunity to ask Matt about the Austin C/C++ meetup. |
(10:12:16 PM) Linear: C or C++: Is there more emphasis on one or the other?
(10:13:16 PM) Matthew Weigel: It’s a mix. We have a few Linux kernel developers who come, and a few old-school Unix developers of other stripes who stick to C.
(10:13:18 PM) linearb: Do you have presentations? or are these just meet and greets.
(10:13:24 PM) Matthew Weigel: no presentations as of yet.willing to host one, but so far no one has been chomping at the bit to give one.
(10:14:25 PM) linearb: Do you think that is because of the suitability of the venues, or do you think that the guys are just looking for an opportunity to get together?
(10:14:46 PM) Matthew Weigel: a bit of both? I mean, some people come strictly for the socialization. Any kind of presentation, I’d want to precede it or follow it with meet’n'greet. With B.B. Rovers we have the back room available, which is sufficiently separate and quiet that presentations are a possibility. The capacity is around 30? we usually have about 10-15 people show up. So, we have room to grow.
(10:18:36 PM) linearb: BB’s seems to be rife with geeks.
(10:18:53 PM) Matthew Weigel: indeed. wireless+beer.
(10:20:55 PM) linearb: How many of BB’s beers have you sampled? Any beer reccommendations ?
(10:21:05 PM) Matthew Weigel: 80+%, but not all of them there. Recommendations: Full Sail Session Lager, Fuller’s ESB, Great Divide Titan IPA
(10:23:40 PM) linearb: so, are you more of a C or C++ guy?
(10:23:50 PM) Matthew Weigel: “meh” :-). at this point I’ve probably actually spent more time working in C, but the current job is C++, so that will change before too long. I’m probably more of a C++ guy, but I also miss C’s simplicity
(10:25:11 PM) linearb: There is a real poetry about it. What are your favorite C/C++ books?
(10:26:43 PM) Matthew Weigel: for C, The C Programming Language, and The Practice of Programming, and for C++, Effective C++. The Practice of Programming isn’t really about C, it just uses C to illustrate a lot of points (along with awk, Perl, and Java)… but the C is the best.
(10:28:20 PM) linearb: Effective C++ seemed to spawn a bunch of similar books for other languages.
(10:29:24 PM) Matthew Weigel: the important part about the Effective C++ books (there are at least 3, but I’ve only read one) is that they’re written by Scott Meyers
(10:31:15 PM) linearb: I was thinking about Effective Perl Programming, Effective Java
(10:32:01 PM) Matthew Weigel: hehe, wow
(10:32:16 PM) linearb: and all the other books influenced by Meyer’s books
(10:32:53 PM) linearb: Although I don’t expect to see Effective Haskell anytime soon.
(10:33:06 PM) Matthew Weigel: parse error
(10:34:26 PM) linearb: So back to the meeting, do you find that meetup works for helping coordinate the meetings? Can you get contact info for the members? or does all communication have to be mediated through meetup?
(10:34:39 PM) Matthew Weigel: it works pretty well.Enough people use meetup that there’s a stream of newcomers, and meetup.com provides a mailing list, tools to track who has RSVP’ed and who’s active/inactive
(10:34:40 PM) linearb: So when is the next meeting and what is the linkedin page?
(10:34:54 PM) Matthew Weigel: 3/18 the URL is http://c.meetup.com/48/
(10:35:15 PM) linearb: Hey, thanks for the info.
(11:36:12 PM) linearb: hey, so do you know that joke? : “Two C strings walk into a bar….
(11:03:53 PM) Matthew Weigel: the first one says “I’d like a beer, please098u807g23pdhoenueuth,,.’ and the second one says “you’ll have to excuse my friend, he’s not NULL-terminated”
(11:04:20 PM) linearb: hehe, that’s the one
Brad Knowles just sent this in:
Folks, I just wanted to give you a centralized list of all known LUGs here in the Austin area. There’s the Austin Linux Group which meets every Thursday night from 7:00 PM to 9:00 PM at the Waller Creek Complex at 625 E. 10th St.; Austin Linux Enthusiasts (used to be GoodWill Linux User Group) which meets every Wednesday night, from 7:15 PM to 10:00 PM (or later), at Tek Republik, a computer shop and gaming center; there’s Central Texas LUG, which meets the first Monday of the month at 7:30pm at the office of UnWired Buyer in the MCC building; and then there’s the Austin Linux Meetup Group which meets on the first Tuesday of each month, currently at Green Mesquite BBQ, 1400 Barton Springs,
(512) 479-0485.
Matthew Weigel just sent this in: The Austin C/C++ Meetup is coming up (November 20 at BB Rovers), and we’d like you to know about it! People wanting to talk shop for just about any programming language, or software engineering in general, are welcome. Mostly, we talk about recent programming experiences and drink beer.
Once again it’s time for Lunchies.
Your pals at geekaustin.org have reserved the back room
at Star of India for Lunchies this Friday at noon.
For those of you who haven’t been, Star of India is a buffet.
Credit cards are welcome. Separate checks are no problem.
RSVPs are welcome but not necessary.
Here is a map to Star of India (Anderson Ln, just off Mopac)
Hope to see you there!
-LinearB
davidday writes: The first topic is LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP).
I’m using O’Reilly “Web Database Application with PHP and MySQL”, 2nd
Edition, ISBN: 0596000413, but lets see which (if any) text the group
prefers when we meet.
Meetings are at KPI Consulting (2900 Jazz St, Round Rock) each Saturday at noon.
First meeting is 9/24/06. Duration is based on pace and scope
established by the group. Some have suggested adding Ruby on Rails, and if we do this will extend the length.
Legal stuff:
You don’t have to: be affiliated with CTLUG, pay fees, attend all
meetings, already be an expert. And noobs are encouraged to attend (I
don’t want to be the only one).”
(from Chris Nystrom ):
The Austin Chapter of the Hacking Society is having its first meeting, Tuesday, March 21st at 7pm
at BB Rovers.
Food, beer, coding…
Just in from Chris Nystrom: The Austin Hacking Society will be meeting at BB Rovers Cafe and Pub on Tuesday, April 18th at 7pm for food, beer and coding, not neccessarily in that order. Bring your laptop. If you are interested, join the mailing list.
Java Users Group will have it’s first pre-organizational meeting on Thursday 5:00pm in Taylor Basement. During the meeting we will recruit new officers, discuss ways to improve the organization and the agenda for the year. Come with suggestions and ideas that you think would help make JUG a success. Everyone is invited. If you are interested in becoming involved but cannot make it to the meeting, send a note (snarif@cs.utexas.edu).
What : JUG Meeting
When : Thursday (09/28/00) @ 5:00PM
Where : Taylor Basement
URL : http://www.cs.utexas.edu/users/jug
