Joomla! Day Sydney 2008 is scheduled for Monday, May 19, 2008, in conjunction with CeBIT Australia. Community members from Sydney, Australia are finalizing plans for a great event to be held at the beautiful and world famous Sydney Conference and Exhibition Centre located in Darling Harbour. The event agenda is designed to share a broad range of technologies and ideas with a diverse audience of designers, students, charities, businesses, technical experts, and end users.

Topics include:

• A technical discussion entitled "Joomla! 1.5: Under the Hood" delivered by Andrew Eddie, Joomla! Core Team member and Development Working Group coordinator.
• Andrew will also present a session on "Joomla! 1.5 Template Overrides," an empowering toolset for Web site designers and developers.
• Brad Baker, Joomla! Core Team member and Joomla.org forum administrator will share helpful information for "Web site Performance and Security."
• Dinah Randall, founder and president of the Sydney Joomla! User Group and Joomla! Day conference organiser will speak on "Joomla! Creative - Templates and Design."
• Norm Douglas will present an overview entitled "Getting Started with Joomla!."
• Patrick Jackson will share "Joomla! Search Engine Optimization (SEO)" strategies and techniques needed to improve visibility of Joomla! Web sites.
• Damian Hickey will share how Freeway easily integrates with Joomla!, resulting in powerful eCommerce solutions.
• Ashton Murphy will share his experiences on the Google Highly Open Participation Contest and a cool surprise.
• At the end of the day, attendees can ask questions of a panel of Joomla! experts.

Following the event, all are invited for drinks and conversation Monday evening and to visit the Joomla! stand at CeBIT from May 20th to 22nd. Throughout the Open CeBIT conference, several Joomla! open source presentations will be held at CeBIT's Open Source Theatre.

Register now for Sydney Joomla! Day. Those who register by May 14th will receive early bird discounts and a better chance at getting one of the T-shirts only available for the first 100 registrants. We hope that the Sydney Joomla! Day 2008 is a great success and an enjoyable and informative way to have fun with Joomla!.

• Sydney Joomla! Day 2008
• Register now

This event has been postponed until June 20-21, 2008. 

The South African Joomla! community is pleased to invite you to the first Joomla! Day South Africa - Durban, an event to be held May 9 and 10, 2008, at the Varsity College, Durban North. Durban is the third largest city in South Africa, a popular destination for tourists, and considered to be the busiest port in the African continent. It is an ideal location for those interested in Joomla! to gather.

Joomla! Days offer an excellent opportunity to learn, network with other Joomla! users and developers, and discover ways to contribute to the Joomla! project. The South African Joomla! community has been hard at work to ensure that this year's Joomla! Day events are at least as informative and fun as the three successful South African events held during 2007.

The Joomla! Day South Africa - Durban Agenda calls for two complete days of activities:

Day 1: Business Community Friday, May 9, is designed around the needs of the business community. Those who have roles like Web master, business decision maker, and marketing manager, will find helpful, relevant topics. The Business Community Day is a non-technical event focused on helping make the business case for using Joomla. If you want to determine whether or not Joomla is suitable for your business site, this is the session for you.

Day 2: User Community The agenda for Saturday, May 10, focuses on the Joomla! user community. This is a technical and business session, covering topics of interest for those who install and manage Web sites for themselves or for clients. Topics on this day will cover Web site security, migration, templating, extensions, hosting, and business strategies for Web site developers.

Joomla! Day South Africa events are run by the Joomla! Southern African Portal , a non-profit organisation. If you are interested and able to attend, register online. Your registration includes refreshments, a Joomla! T-shirt and an information packet. 

Joomla! Days are well attended worldwide. A key benefit of attendance is the opportunity to connect with hundreds of members of the Joomla! community, including speakers, designers, site builders, and developers. We wish the very best to our South African community members and hope all who attend enjoy Joomla! Day South Africa - Durban. 

The Joomla! community is pleased to announce that Google is sponsoring 15 amazing projects in our fourth Google Summer of Code. Students and mentors from all over the world will work together this summer to bring great things to Joomla!. This year, Joomla! is honored that CiviCRM is also part of the team. Sincere thanks to Google for their continued support of Joomla! and the 175 other free and open source organizations participating.

Congratulations to the Joomla! Google Summer of Code 2008 Students

Your proposals were selected from a very competitive pool of nearly 100 applications. Thank you to the mentors willing to share time for this important effort. Projects that held the most promise were selected and we look forward to seeing this work shared with the community this fall.

This summer, each GSoC project team will share their progress on the developer.joomla.org site. Community members are invited to use the links below to join these conversations as the blogging begins over the next few weeks. End user feedback is an integral part of building useful solutions. If you have questions, please contact Wilco Jansen or Ian MacLennan, Joomla!'s GSoC project managers. 

Joomla! Google Summer of Code 2008 Projects and Students 

Advanced Media Manager, Nakul Ganesh S, Mysore, India
CiviCRM: Aesthetics and Usability, Jon Volkman, Seattle, Washington
CiviCRM: Multi-language Support, Piotr Szotkowski, Warsaw, Poland
Contact Directory, Chantal Bisson, Quebec City, Canada
Content Type Management, Ercan Özkaya, Konya, Turkey

Custom Content Layouts, Jaap Woltjes, the Netherlands
Forms, Mostafa Muhammad, Cairo, Egypt
Multi-DB Support, Alex de Azevedo, Brazil
Multimedia Portal, Marcelo Eden, Recife, Brazil
OpenSocial, Shannon Quinn, Atlanta, Georgia

Research Management, Luis Galárraga, Guayaquil, Guayas Ecuador
Semantic Web, Danh Le Phuoc, Vietnam, studying in Ireland
Tags, Jacek Zielinski, Poznan, Poland
Unit Testing, Scot Inscore, Whitewater, Wisconsin
Version Control, Flavio Kubota, Campinas, Brazil.

The Joomla! community in Byron Bay is looking forward to their first ever Joomla! Day event. Joomla! Day Byron Bay 2008 will be held on Sunday, May 11, from noon until 5:30 PM. Those visiting the area for the Joomla! Day event will want to consider taking time needed to enjoy Byron Bay's beautiful beaches, parks, and nature reserves. This easternmost tip of Australia is a popular destination for tourists.

As event organizer, Greg Cromwell, explains in this invitational video, Joomla! Day events are for a wide variety of people, including developers, site builders, designers, and end users. Not only will attendees learn new skills, but perhaps more importantly, these events can strengthen the local support network and offer opportunities for collaboration.

The Agenda for Joomla! Day Byron Bay 2008 includes the following:

• Greg Cromwell will open the session, welcome attendees, and overview the day's events.
• Brad Baker, Joomla! Core Team member, will demo a live installation of Joomla!, discuss important security and performance issues, and provide an introductory overview of the CMS environment.
• Andrew Eddie, Joomla! Core Team member and Development Working Group Coordinator, will instruct attendees how to take full advantage of Joomla! 1.5's Template Override System.
• Damian Hickey will demonstrate how to use Joomla! with Freeway, an exciting open source eCommerce environment.
• Filling out the day will be various case studies, including a review of Joomla! with SugarCRM, where community members will share real life experiences, lessons learned, and search engine optimization techniques needed to successfully deploy Joomla! for non-profit, community, and business purposes.

Joomla! Day Byron Bay 2008 will take place at the Bush Branding and Marketing studio in the Byron Bay Arts and Industry Estate. Since only 50 participants will be able to attend, organizers expect the event to fill up very quickly. For that reason, you are encouraged to register right away. We wish the Byron Bay Joomla! community a successful event and look forward to seeing pictures and hearing about Joomla! Day Byron Bay 2008.

For more information: visit http://www.joomlabyronbay.com and register online.

The Thai Joomla! Community is looking forward to their second Joomla! Day Bangkok in Thailand's beautiful and thriving capital city. The event will be held on Saturday, May 10, 2008, from 9:00 AM until 5:30 PM at the Chaophya Park Hotel. JoomlaCorner and the National Electronics and Computer Tecknology Center (NECTEC) invite you to attend Joomla! Day Bangkok 2008 which promises to be an incredible day of learning, sharing, and networking with others.

This year, several key members of the Joomla! community are scheduled to speak:

• Mr. Samuel Moffatt - Joomla! Core Team and Developer Working Group;
• Mr. Alex Kempkens - Joomla! Core Team, Joomla! Events Coordinator, and core developer for JoomFish;
• Mr. Johan Janssens - Joomla! Development Working Group;
• Mr. Toby Patterson - Joomla! Development Working Group;
• Mr. Akarawuth Tamrareang - Joomla! Bug Squad, core developer for VirtueMart, and JoomlaCorner.com.

The agenda for Joomla! Day Bangkok 2008 includes a wide variety of interesting topics. Whether you are a professional Web site editor, publisher, developer, or administrator, or if you are simply interested in learning more about Joomla!, there will something for you. Topics to be presented include:

• Overview of Joomla! 1.5, with a focus on new features available;
• Discussion of how to create accessible Web site designs;
• Review of important security issues;
• Implementing authentication using LDAP and Active Directory;
• Migrating to Joomla! 1.5;
• Implementing Multi-lingual support for Joomla! 1.5 using JoomFish;
• Instruction on how to create extensions for Joomla 1.5;
• Presentation on the Joomla! 1.5 Framework;
• Instruction for converting Joomla! 1.0 components to Joomla! 1.5;
• Presentation of Joomla! e-Commerce Edition (VirtueMart).

All over the world, local communities gather at Joomla! Day events. This past weekend Joomla! Days were held in France and Norway. Already this year, Spain, the Netherlands, Melbourne and Italy held successful Joomla! Days. Several more May events are soon to be announced. Joomla! Days are a great way for people who are interested in Joomla! to get together, learn from one another, find ways to contribute to the Joomla! community, and have fun. We wish for our community members in Thailand an enjoyable and successful Joomla! Day Bangkok 2008.

For more information: visit http://joomladay.in.th and register online.