Today was the second day of the international Joomla! Conference J & Beyond 2011. You can read our report of day 1 here. Below you'll find a report on day 2, another bright and sunny day in Kerkrade.

Pre-conference

Ever since I've started optimizing websites, I'd start noticing flaws in 'things' around me. Elevators with buttons that look identical to the arrows that mark the floors, televisions with carefully hidden on-buttons, and our hotel room in the Rolduc. Right outside the door there is a large light on the ceiling that lights the hallway. No problem you might say. It shouldn't have to be, until you realize all doors to the hotel rooms have a large glass window above them, which results in a permanently lit room, all night long. A $5 curtain would easily double the value of that room to me.

Unconference

I started the unconference by lying on a bench in the courtyard, enjoying the sun. Thanks again for the free beer yesterday eBay ;-) After having rested enough, me and Robin headed over to the aula major for the unconference session. In there, a lively discussion was going on about the benefits and irritations of Joomla. At the point we arrived, the good parts were already covered and the discussion (led with verve by the guy in the yellow shirt, whose name I unfortunately forget) was going on about what irritated people about Joomla. After having collected quite a big list, people were split into groups, each of which went on to discuss about a pre-selected subject. The discussion we'd decided to participate in was led by Jen Kramer and had 'the future leadership of Joomla' as subject. Several viewpoints were presented by each of the participants and the decision was made to publish all the findings in an article in the Joomla Community Magazine, and be presented to the different leadership groups (PLT, CLT, COC, OSM) at a joint meeting in July (or was it June?).

Warm Up Session

In this both sarcastic and educational show (I wouldn't call it a presentation), Paul told us about the so called 'Homo stupidus custumeritus'. In a fun act using an egg and a guitar, he tried to tell us that customers usually aren't inheritally stupid. Often a lack of communication or understanding between the developer and the customer is what causing the thought that the 'customer is stupid'. In contrary to the Dutch Joomladays, Paul was doing his singing in English this time, which might have led to the deletion of the sing-along at the end of the song?

Continuous Integration by Jeremy Wilken

A solid presentation on an interesting subject. Jeremy explained us how we can combine techniques and tools such as version control, deployment, automated testing etc. to come to a so called 'continuous integration' (CI). This can be best defined as a 'state' in which developers are constantly improving their code, while automated tests are validating the integrity of that code, and deployment scripts are putting the code in place on their websites. As much as manual work as possible is automated to rule out the human factors to the highest degree possible.

The Nooku Platform – From Vision to Code

The first time I've actually went to the Aula Minor, which was packed up pretty nicely for this session. Johan (who has acquired quite a following during JAB!) showed us with a fancy Prezi presentation how the ideas and concepts behind Nooku has led to what it is now set to become: the first open source web based operation system. While the session might have been a bit too hardcore in terms of code for some of the visitors, I found it quite interesting to see how Johan and his team are making big steps to achieve their vision I mentioned earlier.

'The third session'

During this session we haven't attended any presentation, but decided it was time to discuss some internal affairs for ThemePartner. Right now I can't disclose any more on this, but rest assured you'll be hearing more about us in the future!

Dinner

Just before typing this blog we've finished a nice dinner. Can somebody explain to me why it was vital that I had to claim to be a vegetarian in order to get a 'special kind of' vegetables? If there is such a big demand for this product that people have to be told to 'please not take it', why wouldn't you just make a little more of it? Right now I'm sitting near the tennis court, in a quiet couryard. Around me are birds singing, it is virtually windstill, and the temperature is pleasent. Life is good, and maybe I should start taking these dinner and lunch sessions more lightly. The J.O.S.C.A.R.S. are starting in 20 minutes, after which I will add a short report of that session to this blog.

J.O.S.C.A.R.S.

Just a couple minutes ago we've attended the J.O.S.C.A.R.S award show. Below you'll find a list of the winners:

Community Web Sites
http://magazine.joomla.org

Non-Profit Web Sites
http://www.guggenheim.org/

Commercial Web Site
http://gorillaz.com

Blog Web Site
http://www.joomlablogger.net/

Component
Akeeba Backup

Module or Plugin
Advanced Module Manager

Admin Only
Akeeba Backup

Template Framework
Construct

Forum Junkie
Peter Martin

Code Junkie
Nicholas K. Dionysopoulos
Stian Didriksen

Blog Junkie
Brian Teeman

Social Media Junkie
Amy Stephen

Joomla! Person of the Year
Johan Janssens

Joomla! Innnovation of the Year
Joomla! Community Magazine

Now only one more day to go. We are now off to the bar, without free drinks this time :-(

PS: Amy Stephen has personally asked me to mention that there will in fact soon be new information on the rumor I've mentioned yesterday. Exciting times!