We attended the Joomla! User Group South Western Ontario on October 28th.· Joomla! User Groups exemplify the active and extended community of Joomla! Content Management System users and this was certainly the case with JUG SWO, which has a great team of Joomla! enthusiasts and organizers.
Fellow Hamiltonian Ian McLellan of the core Joomla! Production Leadership Team attended JUG SWO and presented "Joomla! 1.6 and Beyond - A Look into the Future" at the event, which gave us the well-received opportunity to ask Ian about some of architectures and behaviours in the forthcoming release.
We appreciated Ian's candor and subsequent discussions, and Joomla! 1.6 seems to be very well-designed for users and administrators.
Editor's Note: Joomla! Users may want to check out our new Code Labs, where we're posting Joomla! Tips & Tricks, and the odd new extension.
The image to the left is from JoomlaBlogger's Top 10 End-User Improvements over 1.5 article.
The big (obligatory) question in the Joomla! community right now is 'When Will Joomla! 1.6 be Released?" We asked Ian. Christmas? Maybe.
Despite being involved in Joomla! and volunteering time on the forums and wiki since 2005, this was our first attendance at a Joomla! User Group Meeting. It could not have gone better. For example, I was introduced to Cider Donuts for the first time. Thank you, Canada!
But the big surprise for me was the incredible meeting space for JUG SWO, the Personal Computer Museum in Brantford, Ontario.
The very nicely arranged museum and meeting space included an early Steve Wozniak-signed Apple, a collection of Sierra games, and just about every rare and cool old computer system and software/game you can imagine. (Photo from PCMuseum.ca Archives)
My first computer, an Apple IIGS was there. Also in the museum was a boxed copy of Oregon Trail ( quite different than the remake, Organ Trail, as seen in the above photo). At this point my mind was essentially on nostalgia-overload. Then things got even better.
Syd Bolton, the proprietor of the PC Museum offered to give us a quick tour of his video game collection. As an old-school gamer and early TuboGraphx collector, I heartily agreed.· ··Best. Decision. Ever. At this point, photographs can tell this story best.
Yep, that's a Pac-Man Coffee Table.
Syd has a small PS2 Videogame Collection.· This is just one feature of many.
Microvision, anyone?
Game room, courtesy of Lens Bubbles Blog.
The Arcade Room, courtesy of Lens Bubbles Blog.
There was also a small but impressive collection of Star Wars and Star Trek items. Syd's arcade was even better than the Museum of Soviet Arcade Games in my opinion. The arcade features a MAME Cabinet with hundreds of games, and a number classic arcade staples. To sum up: videogame(r) heaven.
We arrived for a Joomla! User Group, had a great time, and then had an awesome videogame tour. Thanks Syd!
Consider this post a challenge my fellow Joomla!-philes - I dare you to show me a better JUG meeting space. :)
