While people start using Drupal 7 and Joomla! 1.6 for new projects and celebrated two big events in Europe this weekend, WordPress is a bit late with its 3.1 release. They released rc3 two weeks ago and furthermore they had to step back and dropped the AJAX list table which was one of the shiny new features. Removing a feature like this in release candidate 3 does not happen that often.

In Brussels, Belgium at DrupalDevDays (> 400 attendees) the atmosphere was fantastic and after more than 60 sessions (session plan - pdf 460 kb (7)) they produced the strangest group photo ever. Unfortunately, I could not be there and there was no live stream, so I watched the twitter stream. Most tweets mentioned Robert Douglass' session about selling code in the droopie app stores, one of mortendk's legendary sessions about designer vs. developer - the eternal struggle of ego tripping, the lack of bigger coffee cups and shiny new drupal shoes.

The JoomlaNight in Stockholm, Sweden (> 100 attendees) was, on the other hand, reduced in comparison. Three very important sessions were held. Ryan Ozimek, president of Open Source Matters about The Road ahead for Joomla! project, Marco Barbosa about the Molajo Joomla! 1.6 Distribution and Johan Janssens about Nooku - Evolving and Innovating Joomla!. Many people around the globe watched the live stream and I noticed a lot of discussions. There is a 3-hour video on that and it's worth watching. It really is a preview for the future of Joomla! and like a case study on how to organize such a big project.

Between Marco (molajo) & Ryan (Joomla!) there was a symbolic kissing and hugging situation - hope the best for the future. If only Joomla! would be able to combine these ressources ...

What about WordPress?

• the biggest event will be held in August, 12-14, 2011, the annual WordPress conference: WordCamp SF 2011
• the next European event is the first WordCamp in Switzerland, May, 7, 2011

• while the Drupal community talks about it and Joomla! is occupied working on other building sites, WordPress.com launched their premium themes store. They don't call it store and they don't even call WordPress a CMS :-). They started with two themes, Headlines for $45 and Shelf for $68. Both are also available to self-hosted WordPress users.

• At WordCamp Bumi Sangkuriang, Bandung, Indonesia (> 250 attendees) a WordPress Board game was presented. It occurs to me that the Drupal card game is available as a proof of concept online)

• WordPress for iOS 2.6.6 is out and they are calling for Xcoders

Summary: All systems are normal :-)