JAndBeyond aftermath
Monday, 07 June 2010Last week, some of us from Yireo attended the international developers-congres JAndBeyond in Wiesbaden (Germany). The event was for three days filled with exiting talks on extensions and extension development. Here's a short overview.
Fun, but no free beer
The event was attended by a lot of different people from various countries, but overall most attendees were making money with Joomla! - either by selling commercial Joomla! extensions (like us) or by making money with services around Joomla! (site implementations, templating, trainings).
Those of you who are familiar with Richard Stallman (founder of the Free Software Foundation and author of the GPL) perhaps also know his explanation of free software, not being free as in free beer but as in free speech. During JAndBeyond there was a high demand for beer, either free or paid - and that marked the whole event: Alcohol and geeks combined.
Technical highlights: FLEXIcontent and Nooku
Two major subjects were clearly present during the three days in Wiesbaden: The concept of CCKs like FLEXIcontent and K2. But also technical workshops and presentations on the Nooku Framework, which aims to be a better replacement of the current Joomla! Framework and serves as a rapid development environment for Joomla! extensions.
Johan Janssens and Mathias Verraes of Nooku were clearly present throughout the event, and many developers were inspired by their ideas to bring Joomla! development to the next level.
MageBridge and beyond
During the event, Jisse Reitsma of Yireo also gave a presentation on MageBridge - an excellent opportunity to demo the Magento/Joomla! bridge to other techies, for which we thank the JAndBeyond team. Besides MageBridge, competition from Tienda and VirtueMart was also available, which gave way to good discussions on what kind of functionality you would need for what type of e-commerce.
Besides promotion, we ended up having great ideas for instance when integrating MageBridge with the Nooku Framework and the Anahita Social Engine, but also adding MageBridge widgets to FLEXIcontent and K2. A lot of exiting stuff is still awaiting.