Joomla DocCamp – fun to the finish!

Hey! I attended my very first ever Joomla event this past Saturday - namely the Vancouver Joomla DocCamp - which JenTekk sponsored and co-hosted. With no expectations other than to meet people, have fun, play with and write about Joomla 1.5, it did not disappoint.

[ photo courtesy of Rastin Mehr of rmd Studio ]

So it started...

The Joomla 1.5 DocCamp got well underway at 9:30am with eventually 17 of us hanging out at the Network Hub in Vancouver. The ultimate goal – after consuming questionable amounts of Timmy's coffee and donuts – was to document via blog, wiki, video etc., one or more aspects of Joomla 1.5 CMS.

Rastin Mehr started out with a brief introduction to the history of websites and their functions on the web, from static sites, to dynamic websites, content management systems (Joomla and WordPress) and brought us right around to the future of social intranet sites. Discussions revolved around these topics for a bit until we noticed it was really time to get down to work.

Poking around Joomla 1.5

Each attendant was supplied access to the Administrator Panel of a default installation of a Joomla 1.5 website, and was encouraged to play around with it. Rastin set this up on his server the night before, thanks so much Rastin!

I chose to check out and write about the Joomla Article and Menu manager, and how they are used to achieve a proper information architecture. In addition to Joomla Template design, I am often responsible for organizing the website content in an intuitive and comprehensive structure – so this seemed like a natural choice.

After poking around a bit, we all went and had lunch at Steamworks - the food was delicious. After filling our faces, we marched on back to Network Hub - even catching a glimpse of that bright ball in the sky on route.

Blogging, interviews, wiki and video blogging

For the rest of the day, the light tapping sound of fingers on laptop keyboards could be heard with people blogging and contributing to Joomla Wiki - how sweet it is!

Bruce Byfield dropped by at the end of the day to interview a few of those in attendance. Rastin also joined in with video blogging.

Great big thank you!

I'd like to say a huge thank you to all the sponsors, and everyone who showed up and made this event memorable. It was a great time!