Speaking / Keynotes

State of the Joomla Union

Rod — Thu, 19 Feb 2015 16:31:17 +0000

State of the Joomla Union Rod Thu, 02/19/2015 - 11:31

Thursday, February 19, 2015

I had the privilege of presenting the keynote at JoomlaDay Sydney 2014. After traveling for 24 hours (a 4 hour flight, a layover and a 15 hour flight), Teresa and I enjoyed Sydney for a day while we adjusted and got over the jet lag.

Joomla! is a fantastic web content management system that powers millions of web sites around the world (about 3% of the entire web). Since April, I've been the Vice President of Open Source Matters, the board that oversees the legal and financial aspects of the project and it was in this context I was invited to head "down under" (aside: I was born in Sydney - so this was "going home").

The title for my presentation was "The State of the Joomla Union".

I think this is a balanced look at where Joomla! is as of this posting.

There are some really great things going on in the project.

A new marketing contract was recently signed (something Joomla has never done very well)
A new hosting agreement with a free demo and hosting at Joomla.com (coming soon)
Probably most significant, a re-structuring of the leadership model that governs the project. More about this in another post - but its something that's desperately needed in my opinion.

That said, not everything is "great" in the Joomla union. You'll have to watch the video to see what I think :)

Since this presentation was made, I attended the Joomla Word Conference in Cancun. While I am even more encouraged, I think my evaluation is still pretty accurate.

Joomla! is a fantastic solution for many website needs. While its not as popular as WordPress, it still powers more websites than any of the other CMS's out there! Go Joomla!

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Live Long and Prosper - My Keynote at the Joomla World Conference 2013

Rod — Wed, 01 Jan 2014 15:38:04 +0000

Live Long and Prosper - My Keynote at the Joomla World Conference 2013 Rod Wed, 01/01/2014 - 10:38

Wednesday, January 1, 2014

Speaking / Keynotes

I presented the Friday afternoon keynote address at the 2013 Joomla World Conference this week (http://conference.joomla.org). "Live Long and Prosper - 10 Business Tips from Star Trek" was really inspired by the room we were meeting in at Harvard University. Really great venue!

Life is Short and So Am I - My Talk at J and Beyond 2013

rodmartin — Fri, 07 Jun 2013 00:13:21 +0000

Life is Short and So Am I - My Talk at J and Beyond 2013 rodmartin Thu, 06/06/2013 - 20:13

Wednesday, June 5, 2013

Speaking / Keynotes

I had the privilege of delivering the Saturday night keynote at the JandBeyond 2013 Conference in Noordwijkerhout, Netherlands (#jab13) on June 1st.

JandBeyond is great conference. Held every year in different cities around Europe, it's more of a developer's conference - so there are a lot of very smart people in the room. The conference was well organized and the facility was really perfect for it. The only down-side - the pizza party on the beach was cancelled due to the rain and 48F temps... no-one really felt like freezing (chickens).

Some of the resources for my talk (in no particular order):

The idea of making every day count and counting the days we've been alive comes from this fantastic book - 20,000 Days and Counting by Robert D. Smith. I can't say enough about how much I have appreciated this short book.
Using Our Practical Wisdom - Barry Schwartz (TED Talk)
What Makes Us Feel Good About Our Work - Dan Ariely (TED Talk)
Enchantment - Guy Kawasaki
Seven Habits of Highly Effective People / First Things First - Stephen Covey
Platform - Michael Hyatt
Harvard Business Review - I'm an avid reader - so many ideas over time - but definitely an influence on this talk
Triumphs of Experience - George Vaillant - The Harvard study I quoted at the end of my talk
Story of the Zen Master - Charlie Wilson's War
The Bible - most of the Proverbs I quoted are from the book of Proverbs (NLT)

Enjoy!

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