As I mentioned two weeks ago I became a kind of “partner happiness volunteer” in the Joomla project (CloudFest: Become a Partner for the Joomla Project and I’ll make you happy). My first task was to find partners for Joomla at this very unique conference in an amusement park in Germany. The conference itself has a long history as an the event for “the hosting industry” which basically consists of everything that is related to data centres, storage, servers, operating systems, cables and all the software that is needed to run it in a proper way. In the past this industry earned, let’s be honest, a shitload of money. Nowadays they earn only a lot money. With the invention of “cloud computing” companies like Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud got a huge piece of the “hosting business cake”. I assume the growing cloud business was also the reason to change the name of the conference from World Hosting Days to CloudFest.
How was the conference ?
Simply amazing. It was perfectly organised, everything worked well, each evening were cool events, lot of food, even more to drink, people were happy!
Is it a Volcano 🌋
No, it’s #cloudfest 🤔
/@cloudfest pic.twitter.com/rvh294Rqhj— hagengraf (@hagengraf) March 15, 2018
About Joomla
We had a nice little booth …
And ready :) … looking for partners for @joomla with @Omegatcu @ufuk_avcu @jayjoomler @sorenbeck @holgerkremers and special guest @RobertJacobi #joomla #CloudFest pic.twitter.com/PuyCqeQ8W1
— hagengraf (@hagengraf) March 14, 2018
We, that means Soren Beck Jensen, Holger Kremers, Jason Nickerson, Michael Klein and Ufuk Avzu. David Jardin, as “The German Joomler” was at the CMS Garden booth. Members of the Joomla leadership team like Robert Jacobi (Perfect Dashboard), Mike Demopoulos (BoldGrid) and Alexsander Kuczek (Perfect Dashboard) were also at the conference but the represented their own companies, which confused me a bit … but, well … it’s like it is.
I arrived the second day of the conference. The plan was that Jason and Soren were talking the whole day with potential partners and Holger, Michael, Ufuk und I speak to visitors at the booth, tell them about the wonderful Joomlaverse and try to convince them that it would be a wonderful idea to become a Joomla partner. To my surprise, plenty of attendees visited our booth, asked about Joomla and liked the idea to become a partner. The name Joomla seems to be still very strong. Everybody knew the name and it was easy to talk to people.
The biggest problem for us at the booth was that it wasn’t quite clear what we are exactly selling. The whole “partner thing” seems to me like a
<If you want to invest money, we will find something in the Joomla project that will create a win-win situation for both of us>-System
That is totally ok, but sometimes it would have been much easier for us to say
Hey, we have plan a, b, c and the VIP solution. If you wanna go for a, b and c, you can order and pay here. If you want to go for the VIP solution, talk to Jason or Soren.
My impression is that the conference was successful for the Joomla project. I heard that, if everything works out well, Joomla receives more than 150,000 US$ from it’s partners which would be an extraordinary success to me. My job as the “Partner Success” volunteer will start when the contracts are signed (let’s see what will come out in reality ;) ), so for me it was interesting to see the Joomla team live and in color :)
What is this Tattoo thing?
Christopher Nielsen and his wife Sony Fernandez got a CloudFest Tattoo last year while Joomla World Conference in Rome. The basic idea was marketing for Joomla and CloudFest. They were invited to the conference as VIP guests with a special program. To be honest, I find it a bit strange to get a brand tattoo but hey … why not :).
Here is a photo of the Christoper and Sony together with Soeren vonVarchmin, the CEO of the event.
CMS Garden
… is a wonderful idea bringing open source Content Management Systems together. http://www.cms-garden.org/
Team #joomla and #cmsgarden (#plone, #wordpress, #drupal) at #CloudFest with nullbytes, luckow, veitschiele, sorenbeck, Kilopurzel, Omegatcu, ufuk_avcu, cnpsupport, hagengraf, SniperSister and a few more
/@cloudfest @joomlaofficial https://t.co/QetxR4noJ2 pic.twitter.com/34CRZ0fve3— hagengraf (@hagengraf) March 14, 2018
And was it fun?
A big Yes, Yes, Yes. Beside people, events and the posh VIP service (remember, I was the lucky winner of a VIP Package) I enjoyed two attractions in Europapark. The Rollercoaster BlueFire and the Voletarium. I talked to many people and learned a lot about Joomla :)
And … I tried to install a mail server while Bierfest with my telephone, unfortunately the screen was too small (Greetings to the wonderful Axigen team)
Installing “the mail server” from @axigen while #bierfest at #cloudfest via an iPhone 6+. Everything worked fine but unfortunately the screen is to small – I need an iPad 🤔
/@cloudfest pic.twitter.com/4NsVUapy8T— hagengraf (@hagengraf) March 15, 2018
Next steps
Unfortunately I cannot attend J and Beyond in Germany but I want to do something for/in the project. I still like Joomla because it is quite unique. There is still not one company behind the project. WordPress has Automattic and Drupal Acquia. Joomla is such an interesting mixture of so many different people, cultures, characters and mostly smaller and medium sized enterprises and … it’s not only still alive, it seems to get more attention :)
Have a look -> https://www.joomla.org
and -> https://www.cloudfest.com
Update 2018-03-27:
In the meantime this blog post got some attention and I wanted to clarify the part with the Joomla leadership team.
As I said, I was confused :) I knew that these people are in the Joomla leadership team but I didn’t know the names of the companies where they work for. As mentioned in the Facebook comment, Robert Jacobi was sometimes at the booth and brought some potential partners (see embedded tweet on top), so I was totally happy with that … just confused. While lunch I met “accidentally” Alexander Kuczek and I didn’t know that he was at the conference too. Same with Mike Demopoulos. I saw him sometimes with his small luggage talking to people. So the confusion was totally on my site :)
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