One of Joomla’s 2013 overall project goals is to improve our understanding of our users. This overall project goal supports our three year vision statement which is to improve adoption of the CMS and Framework. The better we understand our users (including what they want and what they don’t want), the better we will be able to know what areas to focus our resources on. And the better we know what areas to focus our resources on, the more effective we can be to improve adoption of the CMS and Framework.

We are seeking volunteers throughout our worldwide community to form a new team that will help us achieve this overall project goal to improve our understanding of our users. If you are interested in joining this team, please send an email to paul.orwig@opensourcematters.org summarizing your relevant experience and explaining what areas you are interested in helping with.

Some of the responsibilities for this new team will include:

• Identifying the many different types of users we have.
• Developing goals and plans for how to connect and interact with our users in order to improve our understanding of them.
• Designing and administering multi-language surveys and other research methods, and analyzing results.
• Publishing and engaging with the Joomla community to share and discuss the results of surveys and other research.
• Collaborating with leadership teams and project working groups to apply learnings that can help improve Joomla.

This is an important new team that is expected to have an ongoing role for the Joomla project. What our users want and don’t want will change over time, and so we need to be continually asking questions and listening to their answers. If you are excited about the idea of joining this new team, please send an email to paul.orwig@opensourcematters.org and help us improve Joomla - together!

Please discuss this blog here: http://forum.joomla.org/viewtopic.php?f=704&t=804161

In the March 2013 Open Source Matters (OSM) board meeting, the board voted to accept changes to the OSM bylaws that were proposed by the Community Oversight Committee (COC) upon their dissolution. For more details about those proposed changes, please read this previous blog and the public forum discussion.

By voting to accept those proposed changes to the OSM bylaws, OSM has become a self-governing group. In simple terms, this means that OSM is now empowered to add and remove board members on its own, without the approval that was previously required by the COC.

It is our privilege and pleasure to announce the immediate release of Joomla! 3.1. The biggest feature of Joomla 3.1 is Tags, a built-in tagging system chiefly engineered by Elin Waring and Mark Dexter. However, it’s not just any kind of tagging, it’s dynamic tagging across content-types.

Last week the opportunity to support women in tech was presented in a blog entitled Joomla & GNOME Partner Up for an Internship for Women.

Become a Sponsor!

To Donate:

To Apply:

1. Make sure to read up on the GNOME program: https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen
   
   
2. You must contribute code to GitHub as part of the application process.
    
3. Send your cover letter, resume, and link to any code to sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org

Supporting diversity is an important tenet for Joomla leadership to uphold. Not only does it improve the quality of work coming out of our project, but as leaders in the Open Source space, it is important that we lead by example. This is particularly true, considering the currently low numbers of women in Open Source, which according to a well-cited study by UCAM at the University of Cambridge, is only 2%

Let me repeat that again: 2% of individuals in Open Source are women. While it is true that the Joomla community seems to be an organic leader in this regard, in that our events and leadership teams are comprised of more than 2% women, we still have a lot of work to do in this area, particularly when it comes to coding. Like most other projects, the percentage of women coders is quite low.

As a result of these and other reasons, the Joomla project will be taking part in GNOME Outreach Program for Women. The program was inspired in many ways by Google Summer of Code, and by how few women applied for it in the past. The program is also backed by the Software Freedom Conservancy, and has attracted the participation of many well known Open Source projects.

We are Looking for Sponsors!

We are also looking for community sponsors who could donate towards the internship fund since GNOME requires $5,000 stipend for each internship, as well as $500 travel allowance, and $200 administration fee. (The administrative fee will be used to cover intern payments transfer fees and to expand the resources of the GNOME Foundations needed for growing the program.) Our goal is to raise enough money for two internships.

Organizations that sponsor will be able to have their logo listed on the GNOME website and the Joomla landing page for this initiative. 

 
To Donate:

Please contact Sandra Ordonez, who serves on the Open Source Matters board, at sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org

To Apply:

1) Make sure to read up on the GNOME program: https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen

2) You must contribute code to GitHub as part of the application process. https://live.gnome.org/OutreachProgramForWomen

3) Send your cover letter, resume, and link to any code to sandy.ordonez@opensourcematters.org