My adventures at CMS Expo 2012

Guru wins “Best Joomla LMS” at CMS Expo!

So the CMS Expo got off to a pretty good start. The CMS Awards, in which developers were recognized for outstanding work in a number of different categories, were held on the first day… and Guru, our new learning management system for Joomla, won the an award for Best Joomla LMS! We are super excited because a lot of sweat went into this one, and it’s nice to see your work rewarded.

It’s even nicer though to see all the great things our customers have been doing with it. Take a look at some of these examples:

• OSTraining.com
• PhotographersClubHouse.com
• TheOnlineTrainingSite.com

Since Guru’s release nine months ago, we’ve been able to convert it to Joomla 2.5 and to release twelve new versions with lots of new features. Our goal is to make Guru not only the best LMS for Joomla but also the best LMS of any platform. We think we’re getting there.

If you haven’t looked at Guru yet, check out the demo and our live learning center.

Weever Apps Make An Impression

Have you noticed that many of your visitors are stopping by on their mobile devices? The guys from Weever Apps are ahead of you. They’ve got themselves some serious funding that allows them to take mobile for Joomla and other CMS to the next level. They have a super slick component for Joomla (1.5 and 2.5) that allows you to have a very professional mobile version of your site in minutes. It’s very cool.

I met up with Andrew and Rob of Weever and spoke with them about how they can help our customers by adding mobile support to our extensions. We’ll be starting with Guru, DigiStore and Surveys. This could be a very exciting thing for us and our customers, and we will let you know how we get on.

Weever Apps Presenting at CMS Expo

If you’d like to see a live example of Weever Apps, go to seo.ijoomla.com using your mobile device.

Meeting Paul Orwig, the new OSM president

Paul Orwig, OSM President

Definitely one of the highlights of the Expo for me was meeting Paul Orwig, the new president of OSM. Although we’ve met previously, I got a better chance this time to have a meaningful chat with him about Joomla, its future and, of course, usability. My old friend Kendall Cabe and I composed a list of easy to fix usability issues in Joomla 2.5 and discussed it with Paul, and we hope that the team will take the time to fix them. These are mainly cosmetic changes that are very easy to fix, even within a day! I will try to post this list here on our blog shortly.

80 Learning Tracks

This CMS Expo was the biggest yet, with 80 learning sessions about topics ranging from SEO, design, social media and of course, my own Usability Testing workshop that was super fun and interactive.

Giveaways

Once again, some of the sponsors gave away iPads and other goodies. I didn’t win this time either but a new friend won — and on his birthday too, so well done to him!

The best part…

Expert Panel at CMS Expo

The best part about CMS Expo is always meeting customers and developers and getting to know them on a personal level We all spend way too much time in front of the computer and we tend to forget that behind every name or email there is a real person, CMS Expo helps us remember that every year!