Our Guests

Andrea Tarr

Dianne Henning

Marijke Stuivenberg

Alice Grevet

Babs Gösgens

Matt Lipscomb

Cristina Solana

Guests:

JoomStew is joined by Babs Gösgens of Crossing Hippos, Matt Lipscomb of USA Freelancers, and Cristina  Solana of Nightshift Creative for an open discussion about their experience with Joomla! ecommerce extensions, including Virtuemart, Tienda, redSHOP and MageBridge (Magento).

JoomStew Radio on Joomla Ecommerce Extensions

Prefer to Download the mp3?

http://www.joomstew.com/podcast/joomstew_10-12-2010_extensions_3.mp3

Looking for the RSS Feed for your iTunes?

http://www.joomstew.com/?feed=podcast&format=mp3

Joomla News:

Molajo - Ataaw Announced the official name for their new Distribution based off of Joomla 1.6. You can find out more information about Molajo at www.alltogetherasawhole.org

JoomlaDayDC - Joomla!Day DC is being organized by the Northern Virginia Joomla! Users Group and will be held at Microsoft’s offices in Chevy Chase, Maryland just outside of Washington, DC on Saturday, October 16, 2010. Tune in to JoomStew for some exclusive interviews with JoomlaDayDC attendees!

Editors Picks in the JED - With no new selections since 2008 and only 8 current listings, it was past time to review the procedures and add new editor picks. They decided to ask the community for nominations and have gotten quite a bit of feedback so far... over 700 responses! You have 1 more day to get your nomination in!

Questions:

The following questions were put to our guests in an open fashion:

Ecommerce Carts are rather large components, with additional extensions, can you tell us your experience with how each is bundled? Are they a 1 click installation?

What is significant about the various configuration interfaces you have encountered? What are your tips for setting that up?

What is your checklist of items when setting up an ecommerce website (i.e. secure cert, payment system modules, etc.)

Let’s talk about the templates for each cart for a minute...

Which carts allow for easy import/export of products, thumbnails, prices, etc. in a spreadsheet? Do they use standard CSV files?

Let’s talk about online payments: Paypal, Google Checkout, secure online bank account, or secure gateway.

Bad Boy of the Week:

Amy Stephen for Branding the new Joomla 1.6 Distribution from ATAAW.

Contributor of the Week:

NOVA Joomla Users Group for their never ending work putting the JoomlaDayDC event together!

Working in the Community:

Help www.alltogetherasawhole.org with the new Joomla 1.6 Distribution, Malajo! They need testers, coders and more!

Help www.joomla.org in the Bug Squad getting 1.6 out the door!

For this special episode of JoomStew Radio we decided to have a little fun in our JoomStew show notes around a serious subject. Perhaps no section of joomla.org draws in more people than the JED (Joomla! Extensions Directory).

Matt Lipscomb & Paul Orwig

David Deutsch

The JED has been in the news a lot lately and our JEDI knight guests joined us to shed some light on the issues. In the roles of JEDI masters we welcome Paul Orwig and Matt Lipscomb, both CLT members (Joomla! Community Leadership Team) and co-leaders of the JED team. David Deutsch, of valanx.org, joins us as in the role of dashing and articulate developer.

Prefer to download the podcast?

http://www.joomstew.com/podcast/joomstew_09-16-2010_return_jedi.mp3

Looking for the RSS Feed for iTunes?

http://www.joomstew.com/?feed=podcast&format=mp3

The Empire strikes back

This week we're following a discussion on the People site called "Why is the name of an extension so important?". It's about the decision to require conformity in the naming of extensions, which has significant implications for how developers must label and code, how extensions will be cataloged in the JED, and how users will search for them. We also wanted to talk about an upcoming opportunity for further discussion and sharing of information when the CLT takes YOUR questions LIVE on streaming video during the Community Leadership Summit to coincide with the Joomla!Day West gathering. Join Paul, Matt and the rest of the CLT as they respond to your input on "Open for Questions", October 4, 2010 from 9am - 10am (GMT-7). It's free and available to all community members by simply going to the JoomlaCommunity Livestream channel.

The Force is with us

The point of these discussions as well as this JoomStew episode, is not to lock light sabers, but to understand all sides. When we take the time to hear all the points of view, it is clear that we share a passion for Joomla! and want it to be the best it can be for everyone. The only Dark Side is lack of communication and misunderstanding.

The Force is with us, and The Force is Joomla!

Joomla 5th Birthday Bash Special Guests

Brian Teeman and Andrew Eddie

Brian Teeman

Andrew Eddie

What better way to celebrate Joomla's 5th birthday than with two original founding members of the Joomla! project: Andrew Eddie, know as ‘Mr Joomla’ around the forums and Brian Teeman, who is considered by many to be the ‘Voice of Joomla’. They join us to share memories of the history and their involvement in the project, as well as their vision for the future. The podcast is a fitting and enlightening tribute to Joomla! on its 5th anniversary. Happy Birthday Joomla!

Looking to download the MP3?

http://www.joomstew.com/podcast/09_01_2010_joomstew_birthday.mp3

Prefer the feed in your ipod?

http://www.joomstew.com/?feed=podcast&format=mp3

Click through the read more to check out links to this week's Joomla News!

Joomla News

Our CMS Rocks - Guests Hils Cheyne Babs Gösgens
Hils, you and Babs have been working hard to get a special project launched in time for Joomla’s 5th Birthday, care to share a bit about that?

OSM Nominations - 7 positions are open, and 3 of them are specific: Treasurer, Capital Chair, and Developer Liaison - Nominations close September 10. Appointments announced October 1, 2010.

OSM Contractor Reports - Open discussion on Joomla Developer Contracts with bi-weekly reports now being published. Good transparency.

Joomla! Community Magazine - 3rd Issue Launches Today, September 1, 2010 with a new International Category that features articles in several languages.

Joomla 5th Birthday Movie has been released on the official Joomla Youtube Channel. Thanks to an awesome global team led by Hils Cheyne, with Producers/Directors Jeremy Wilken and Svein Wisnaes  that worked relentlessly to get this done on time.

Useful Links

How Joomla! got it's name: http://brian.teeman.net/joomla-gps/whats-in-a-name-why-is-it-called-joomla.html

Open source devs site to help Katrina victims:
http://www.joomla.org/announcements/general-news/116-open-source-developers-rally-to-help-katrina-evacuees.html

http://lynnepope.net/hurricane-katrina-my-year-part-1

http://lynnepope.net/new-pc

Contributor of the Week

The Entire Joomla Community

Topic

Handling Conflict - Chapter 9 from The Art of Community by Jono Bacon

Guests

Steve Burge - OSM Board Member - Joomla! Community Liaison
Pattie Porter - Texas Conflict Coach - Conflict Connections

News

JoomlaBlogger - Interview with Alice Grevet, our new JoomStew Hostess
Jen Kramer - What You Need to Know About Joomla 1.6. Part 1
Justin Kerr - Joomla Project Costing - JoomlaChicago Usergroup
Rick Blalock - Video - How to convert a Joomla 1.5 Template to 1.6
Kyle Ledbetter - Joomla 1.5 to 1.6 Template Upgrade Tutorial Part 1
Harry B - Joomla 1.6 Core Generated CSS Class and ID Documentation

The Nature of the Beast

We are going to discuss something that happened recently in our community. As we discuss this topic, we are going to have some fun with it  and not take things too seriously. We happen to believe that the notion of "poisonous people" - inside or outside of the project - is extremely rare. ALL of the people involved in this situation are amongst the finest of our community which just goes to support what Jono meant when he said...

You should absolutely expect conflict in your community.

The reason we wanted to discuss this is that there seems to be pattern in our community that is not healthy and *every single one of us* is responsible to fix it. We do not see one side or the other as completely right or completely wrong, we believe every one of us needs to change and we can because we have help! with Steve and Pattie

Phase 1

The Kingdom issues new Law (or so we thought)

When there is a sense of lost control, people will often bottle it up and discuss it only with a few other friends who they feel will sympathize with them. These people are not poisonous, and there is no malice behind their actions: they just don’t know where to turn and feel that they are not being listened to. In such circumstances, the issue can quickly blow out of proportion. If you get a whiff that something is not quite right, investigate it immediately and reassure those concerned.

Steve - responded immediately with “Cool it, it’s being taken care of.”

Question 1 (Steve). In the future, when there is concern, how should people respond?

Phase 2

The Villagers are attacking the Castle (or so it feels)

While there are many causes for conflict, your community will depend on its leaders to unblock conflict and restore order. ... If your community loses faith in its leader’s ability to unblock and resolve these problems, it can feel as if the earth is shaking. It can make the community feel like a lawless state in which agitation and arguments reign supreme. This is obviously not a good position to be in.

Question 2 (Pattie). How should leaders, or those in charge, respond to a group who comes in angry and frustrated, looking for help?

Phase 3

In come the Knights on their white horses!

Don’t wear the flame suit - Every community has flame wars, that is, the arguments and disagreements that happen on mailing lists, websites, blogs, and elsewhere. Don’t get involved. Participating in the flame wars causes you harm in two ways. First, it raises the temperature, because a well respected community member has sought to weigh in, which drags the war out longer. Second, you don’t want a reputation for taking part in online spats. Instead, you want a reputation for resolving them elegantly, and the place for elegance is not in a flame war.

Question 3 (Steve). How can we support people and the community without participating in the “battle?” When is it best not to jump in? What are you supposed to do when you care and you see this type of conflict happening?

Phase 4

Why do we need a damsel in distress when we can be empowered with great listening and adapting skills?

If your community is pushing, as part of it’s core values, openness and encouragement of input and contribution, you need to ensure that people can actually do that. If they can’t, you are going to have some angry villagers on your hands.

Question 4 (Pattie). How can we empower volunteers with the skills they need to handle input from community in a positive way and adapt to the communities needs, without taking offense to what  is sometimes poor delivery?

The Role of the Facilitator

A facilitator can’t just be anyone: she must secure the trust and confidence of the warring parties. The parties involved need to have faith that the facilitator is going to take a fair, reasoned, and thorough approach to the conflict.

• Be Objective
• Be Positive
• Be Open
• Be Clear

Question 5. (Steve) Is your role as Community Liaison, in part a facilitator? And, would it make sense to implement a formal grievance process?

Question 6. (Pattie) Is this a good idea, and how would we begin?

Futures

Question 7. (Steve) Someone raised the issue of the new communication policy in the discussion. Where is that at? And, how is it designed to help in the future?

Proposed Communication Policy. The results of the initial discussion were a 4 step process:

1. The first community blog post asks for feedback.
2. The second post gives the results of that feedback.
3. The third post details the final decision.
4. Finally, we implement the decision.

Wonderful People

Contributor of the Week Each of the 28 members of the Joomla! Community Magazine Team!

Bad Boy of the Week Andrew Eddie. He knows why and we can’t say!

Further Resources on Conflict - http://www.odr.info

Guest This Week

Ryan Ozimek - President, Open Source Matters Inc. (Joomla Project's Non-Profit Corp.)

Link to JoomStew Podcast on Blog Talk Radio

http://www.blogtalkradio.com/joomstew/2010/06/30/june-30-2010-joomstew-radio--governance-with-ryan-ozimek-osm-president

News

Short Interview with Paul Orwig, Lead Editor for Joomla! Community Magazine

Joomla Community Magazine Launches July 1, 2010

Coming Soon to JoomStew Radio

Handling Conflict

Guest: Steve Burge, OSM Board Member and Community Liason, and Pattie Porter, the Texas Conflict Coach

Time and Date: July 7th at 20:00 UTC

Creating and Running Events

Guest: Robert Deutz, OSM Board Member and Events Manager

Time and Date: July 14th at 20:00 UTC

Hiring a Community Manager

Guest: Jono Bacon, author of the series The Art of Community

1.  Personal Free Software and Joomla! History

“Mike Basinger is a nice guy. Some would say a little too nice for his own good: he is one of those people who are impossible to dislike, no matter how much you try.” Jono Bacon

Jono goes on to talk about how Mike’s character, his commitment to the Ubuntu project, and accountability moved him from a forum volunteer to a  member of Ubuntu’s Community Council.

Question: In reading this piece, I was struck by how people might describe you that way and I wanted to ask you, how did you find Joomla! and get involved? Tell us about your trips around the world as an OSM Board member and what you've learned about this community.

2.  Why Governance?

In the chapter, Jono speaks to “the case for governance” and lists four indicators that signal it's need .

• Size of the community
• Increasing conflict
• Extensive Resources
• Commercial Interests

Question: How do you see your role as OSM president, and the role of the OSM board, as helping guide our community, given those four factors?

3.  Leadership Styles and Accountability

“Hold meetings regularly and visibly. Meetings can either be in IRC in the “ubuntu-meeting” channel or in a special, publicly visible area or subforum.” Jono Bacon

“Transparency, Empowerment, and Accountability.” Ryan at JandBeyond

Question 3: In a practical sense, what do those terms mean and how do you plan to use those qualities in your role as OSM Board President?

4.  Project Internal Structure

“Relationships are more powerful than the tools.” Ryan at JandBeyond

Question: How do you envision the new liaison roles, where Steve Burge is our Community and Communications Liason, Robert Deutz is the Events Team Manager and Marko Milenovic is Trademark Team Liason, helping improve our community relationships, by helping simplify our services instructions and speed processes, and maybe even relax our rules, where possible.

5.  Community

“This is a huge community.” Ryan at JandBeyond

In the section entitled Follow the Leader, Jono talks about the various types of leadership that help guide and protect a community.

Question: In looking at the overall Joomla! Community, even outside of joomla.org, itself, what types of leadership do you see? How well do you see these various satellite communities working together? What kinds of vision do you have for improvements in overall coordination and cooperation?

6.  Future

Question: How is our future bright?

Wonderful People

Contributor of the Week: Cristina Solana Nightshift Creative

Bad Boy of the Week: Arlen Walker

Get Involved: Hils Cheyne The Joomla! Movie

Listen to this weeks JoomStew Radio podcast Measuring Community on BlogTalkRadio

or download the MP3 here: JoomStew Radio podcast Measuring Community MP3

Measuring Community

June 23 - show starts at 20:00 UTC

Music
Severed Fifth - Jono Bacon - War

Guests

Peter Martin – Joomla! Community Leadership Team and Joomla! Forum Global Moderator

Sander Potjer – Community manager for http://JoomlaCommunity.eu and an organizer of the Joomla! Days in the Netherlands, our community event which has enjoyed the most frequency, 2010 was their 5^th event?, and organizer of Joomla! User Groups in the Netherlands and Belgium - Picture from last night's meeting

Radek Suski – Lead developer for http://www.sigsiu.net and creator of SOBI2 extensions.

And, the Beat Goes On

OSM Board Members Take New Leadership Roles

• Community Liaison - Steve Burge
• Trademark Team Liaison - Marko Milenovic
• Events Team Leader - Robert Deutz

OSM People Page - informal space for the community to interact with the members of the board.

Upgrades coming soon to demo.joomla.org - New servers should be up around July 16-23, 2010. Old style demo site until then.

New Support Joomla Page - Change in the type of Non Profit Corporation for Open Source Matters Inc. now allows for donations.

The Art of Meekness Sandra Warren - Our people.j.org Host

JomSocial v 1.8 "Wazi" - fully GPLed http://bit.ly/8YgvoK Congrats to Azrul

Congrats to Robin Muilwijk for being one of four nominees for ez's Community member of the year!

Ask the Team this morning with Brad and Elin - lots of questions about WP 3.0, and whether Joomla! would ever have the ease of WP admin and WP extension installation interface, concerns that developers going to WP, and so on. Reading it made me remember CMS Watch's Blog Post about 1.6 Beta and their warning that J! is becoming more complex but not quite durable enough for large organizations, adding very correctly that we are "stuck in the middle." We need to agree to a direction, head there and think about message.

Future Shows

June 30th – Governance with Ryan  Ozimek, President of OSM

July 7th – Handling Conflict – with Steve Burge and Pattie Porter, the Texas Conflict Coach

July 14th – Creating and Running Events with Robert Deutz

July 21th – Hiring a Community Manager with Jono Bacon

Thoughts About Community

Introduction

Joomla Resource Directory – Matt Lipscomb

Interesting and positive developments this past week triggered on disappointment people had from rejection to the Joomla Resource Directory on the basis that they do not contribute in the Joomla! forums.

As a result of community concerns, JRD expanded criteria to include other ways of contributing but still basically required participating at J org, or in some type of "official" capacity, or by developing extensions.

In essense, what this meant for those contributing by helping offsite or in "unofficial ways" is that their work cannot be claimed as contributing to Joomla!, be it supporting community sites focused on local languages or even speciaizied memberships, like All Together, or supporting users of free extensions, or providing regular blogging news. While attendance at “official” events, like Joomla Days counts as contributing, organizing and speaking at non-official Joomla! events, like the recent JandBeyond event, does not.

Needless to say, a very interesting discussion broke out on “What is community?” and “What is a contribution”.

The JRD updated their rules to include support of International community sites, and that was a great step forward. More importantly, though, good discussions about community are taking place now and we will continue those discussions on this show.

It's somewhat easy to identify "Who is contributing" at Joomla.org but does it provide a complete picture of our contributing community?

If not, who is the Joomla! Community? Wouldn't it be nice to have a listing of people, community groups, and businesses?

How can we identify contributions? measure our progress towards goals? recognize our contributors and measure the contributour community?

Can we really be operating under a Meritocracy if we can’t answer those questions?

Links:

http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1215-resources-directory-evolves-with-new-guidelines.html

http://people.joomla.org/groups/viewdiscussion/441-Discussion:+New+Joomla+Resources+Directory+Guidelines.html?groupid=24

Actions Speak Louder Than Words

And, as luck would have it, all of this fits very nicely into today’s topic which is “How do you measure Community?”

Volatility of Community

Great Community Leadership requires accepting the volatility of community.

Peter – So --- are we volatile? And how does that make Leadership challenging?

Who is the Joomla Community? Official versus Unofficial

Sander: How would we begin to identify “Who is the Joomla Community?”

Mathias: I bet you didn't know these countries had a #Joomla community: http://bit.ly/aWcANX
http://twitter.com/mathiasverraes/status/16478136826

http://community.joomla.org/user-groups.html

What does the Joomla! Community Contribute? Core vs Extensions

Radek: How important is the Joomla! Developer Community? What do developers contribute to the project? Why offer support in your own forums? Why not do it at J org?

Measuring Community Contributions

There are lots of easy ways to measure communities—the number of members on a forum, the number of contributors to a shared project, and so forth…

Peter - What types of numbers are typically used at Joomla.org to measure what this community produces and how popular it is world-wide?

Sander - Tell us about JoomlaCommunity.eu (Why does it exist? Who does it serve? How is it contributing to Joomla?) Do we know who are our international groups? how do you guys contribute to Joomla?

Radek - How do Joomla Developers help with Project activities? Are developers collaborating more with each other?

Defining Purpose

In The Art of Community, Jono Bacon talks about defining a strategy, including a mission statement, objectives and goals. From that, comes measurements that help the project understand if they are on track, or not.

Joomla! has a high level Mission, Vision, Key Values but no specific measurable goals and objectives

http://www.joomla.org/about-joomla/the-project/mission-vision-and-values.html

These are less concrete, more philosophical, and impossible to measure.

Peter: What kinds of goals and objectives do you think are important for our project to adopt? How are we working to increase the project's contributor base?

Radek: Would it help if we had a development road map, again? What type of input do developers want in that process?

Sander: What can the project do to help satelitte communities? What can satelitte communities do to help the project?

And time for Recognition!

Contributor of the Week

Matt Lipscomb of the Joomla Resource Directory for his listening skills and quick response to the International community; and, then for kicking off fun things like Challenge of the Week in people.j.org. Keep that positive attitude!

Bad Boy of the Week

Sam Moffatt - for his Where the bloody hell are you? post -- Sam is a fun guy and he's contributed for many, many years in Joomla!, and he's calling us out to JUST DO IT! "Get out there and do it. The community is anyone doing something positive for Joomla!. Fixing bugs, writing patches, porting to MSSQL even. Organising events, organising JUGS. " From Sam Moffat Good for Sam!

Work for Community

alledia http://bit.ly/b1X3o9 Looking for 4 more volunteers for #Joomla 1.6 blogs: language improvements (including the new language changer), accessible admin template, nested-categories and improvements for site builders

Peter, Radek and Sander –What opportunities are available for people to contribute to the project within your area?

Yesterday I awoke to find an exciting announcement that I had been appointed Host and Spokesman for the website All Together As A Whole (ATAAW), the Independent Joomla Developers and Site Builders Network with over 700 members. This was great news, and something I look forward to participating in.

This small network of Joomla professionals has grown seemingly overnight with the guidance of Amy Stephen, the original creator of the group. In just 6 short months it's been the launchpad for the Joomla Community Magazine resurrection, gave organizers of the J and Beyond International Conference a staging area for early planning and offers folks a place to hang out where freedom rings and words just flow uninhibited.

It just works and does well at bringing people together. Something the Joomla Community sorely needed.

I spent a few minutes reading all the well wishes and kudos to Amy for all she's done for us before returning to check my morning mail.I quickly ran through the 35 or so new messages looking for the few important bits... free pills, free software, overseas web developer offers and then finally, there it was... My very first mail addressed to the new Admin at ATAAW, from none other than an official Joomla Leadership Team member!

Wow I thought, this must be an important day for them to email me like this. I couldn't wait to open it!

And then it happened. That feeling you get when you just can't believe your reading what's in front of you. Like it's a bad dream you just can't wake up.

The long and short of it is, as long as I allow another member to participate in ATAAW, I am not welcome to help the Joomla.org websites as a forum Admin helping to update their software.

While it said they have no power if I were just participating on an external site, but since I have the power of an Admin, and I'm allowing another member to stay at ATAAW, I'm not welcome to help Joomla at all.

Members of Joomla don't feel safe with me helping on Joomla.org. They don't trust me was the words used.

So here's my response:

I’m truly saddened by this action from a Joomla Leadership Team member.

To give me an ultimatum to remove a member of a 3^rd party community site that I happen to be a member of as well, or give up my position as a contributor to the Joomla.org websites is a  pretty farfetched notion, bordering on the absurd.

This type of iron fisted action by you and others within the COC/OSM/Leadership teams is what’s killing Joomla today. This will not go unnoticed by many others I assure you.

I was made aware today of some of the statements made in the past by this member you seek to exile and it’s sounds to me as though the man may have a problem we don’t know about, but he needs help, not cast out of all communities that you can email the admin about.

I find this ridiculous and personally, I will take this opportunity to remove my request to help the Joomla Project as of today. No need to tell me where to get off that train. I’m getting off at this stop.

Basically I'm being told to remove a member from ATAAW or I'm not welcome in the Joomla Project. That's pretty shitty if you ask me.

So the question is, have you ever been bullied by leadership of an Open Source project to the extent of this? I would love to hear your comments on the subject.

Thanks!

RV