event

April 12th Christine and me attended the first Joomla!Day in Mashhad, Iran.

The JoomlaDay team around Saeed worked one year to make this event possible. Due to ongoing sanctions against Iran it was not possible for Open Source Matters to support the event with 500 US$ as they usually do for an official Joomla!Day. I announced the event personally in several chats, meetings and JoomlaDays (last time in New England) but people had concerns about the political situation and often fear to get involved in that. For our company cocoate which is based in France exists regulations too that make it impossible to support the event financially. At the end of the day we decided to have a look by ourselves, fly to Iran and attend the event.

First problem was to figure out how to get a visa. For getting a visa you need a confirmation of a hotel reservation with a price in. Especially in Mashhad the hotel staff speak Farsi and Arabic but very little English. Confirming a price longer than a few weeks/days is hard for them because of a rising inflation in the last months. At least we found the Bahram Hotel which is located near Iman Reza shrine and near the house where Ali Khamenei سید علی حسینی خامنهای  was born.

We had to add our names to a list of the German "Auswärtiges Amt" and they told us to be very careful, don't take personal computers, cameras and other equipment with us and several more security advices. It is not possible to use our credit cards in Iran so we had to bring in cash for the hotel and our expenses. The money has to be changed somewhere (be careful when carrying high amounts of cash in your pocket ...).

We got more and more unsure whether it was a good idea to go to Iran but the curiosity and the hope that people are nearly the same in the whole world was still bigger.

Barcamp Bodensee 3 will be on Saturday June 9th and Sunday June 10th 2012 on the Campus of Zeppelin University at Friedrichshafen on Lake Constance. (We plan do a get together on Friday nite for those already present.) The event series (barcamps around lake Constance) has the tag #bcbs. The camp in 2012 has the tag #bcbs12

Barcamp Lake Constance is (besides Berlin) one of two international Barcamps in Germany.

That means that international visitors are explicitely welcome, that the organization language is English and that all sessions, where non-German speakers are present, are expected to be in English.

The idea is to bring the net and Barcamp crowds together on a European level - and beyond.

Former camps have been in 2008 and 2010 in Friedrichshafen (which has an airport) and Constance (which is easily reachable by train from Zurich Airport). Up to now we had barcampers from Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Denmark, France and Serbia. We are looking to expand this range.

The historical backdrop for the idea to create such a camp in this location is that Lake Constance was a European center in the Middle ages. (Council of Constance, 1414-18 and Reichenau Island)

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Council_of_Constance
• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reichenau_Island

So: let's geek

Cleveland, OH, January 25, 2012

"Joomla! 1.7: Beginner's Guide" and "Joomla! Development: A Beginner's Guide" has been nominated for a 2012 Small Business Book Award in the category of Technology.

Joomla! 1.7 Beginner's Guide	Joomla! Development - A Beginner's Guide

The Small Business Book Awards recognize business books that were published in 2011. Small business owners often seek advice and information through books. While there are many thousands of books published each year, it's those of interest to small businesses and entrepreneurs that the Small Business Book Awards seek to honor.

"With so many books being published each year, we wanted to recognize those that made a difference to small business owners and managers and startup entrepreneurs," said Ivana Taylor, Book Editor at Small Business Trends, which produces the Awards. "Our annual Small Business Book Awards are a way to highlight the books that entrepreneurs are reading and learning from."

The Awards are an honor to the authors who write books for the small business and entrepreneurial community. Says Anita Campbell, CEO of Small Business Trends, "For many of the authors, writing a book is a labor of love. Often they get up early in the morning before the rest of the family awakes, and they devote their evenings, weekends, holidays and vacations to writing. They deserve recognition."

Join us in Fitou from April 4th - 8th 2011 by taking part in the course "All is linked together in the web – How to communicate, manage and learn".  We'll bring together teachers, trainers, managers and non-educational staff from around Europe to share experiences, try new tools and learn new methods.
The course is listed under reference number FR-2010-318-001 in the Comenius-Grundtvig Training Database

2010 is the European Year for Combating Poverty and Social Exclusion in adult education. To start his year, the European Commission organised a conference in Brussels, Management Centre of Europe, over three days (26-28 January 2010).
It was the first time I attended a conference like this, and I wanted to take the opportunity to not only meet people and new potential partners, but also to promote eduate.eu. I was the first one to arrive at the Centre and, hence could see who was coming in, and who'd be my first target. :-)
Over the three days, I learned a lot about what those people would like to have and what they need. I questioned and listened to them in the plenary, in workshops and, of course, one on one.
I noticed what people want is a tool to disseminate their projects and outcomes, a tool to network and to see what others are up to, a tool that is simple and easy to use.

The venue is Rummet. It is an open office space, where you can rent a space for working. Morten gives an introduction and it seems that it will be a more or less theming heaven :-)
In the room are around 70-80 people. 15% of them are non danes, so they decided to speak english.

What I have seen?

magecamp is an event around the ecommerce platform magento, organized by On Tap Creative. It is a part of Internet World 2009 and the first European english based magento camp!

Unfortunately, Internet World 2009 has no possibility to go online for free via WIFI :-) It's always the same. Why isn't it possible to provide a free or low cost wireless access at these kind of exhibitons? In the magecamp presentation room is enough space for around 60-80 people. The room is full and the listeners come from 16 different countries. Dan Garner, the founder of On Tap Creative gaves a first welcome. On Tap Creative decided to organize this magecamp after they have seen successful camps in USA, Germany and France.

State of Magento - Roy Rubin