LOCATION: Crackskull's Books & Coffee, Newmarket. Our first meeting at this location. WiFi available. (side note: Crackskulls is a pretty decent location to hold a meeting.)
ATTENDEES: Kathy (host), Dean Zanello, Liane Haslauer, Donna Chick and welcome to new members: Lois Wolter of Dover, NH and Lori Metevier of Kittery, ME
Announcements:
- Joomla! NH User Group Website:
- Justin upgraded CB and core
- will post meeting notes & get CB rolling
- move members from Ning site - SIGN UP AT OUR NEW SITE!
- Joomla! NH User Group is now on Facebook and Twitter
- Developer Conference, livestream Dec 4-5, 2009 - Is anyone interested in getting a space somewhere and watching this together? http://community.joomla.org/blogs/community/1038-joomla-developer-conference.html
- Next Meeting ~ Wed. Nov. 18, GMPDC, Manchester School of Techonology: Who is going?
- Carpooling for next meeting: Lori Metevier and Dean think they can attend and Kathy and Donna can pick Bill up where it may be convenient for him. Write to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it if you need a ride.
Introductions:
- Lois, brand new to the group, has been a technology gal for ages. Moved from NJ to NH approximately 3 years ago, she and her partner run a Web Design business, www.wittywonderfulweb.com. She has a Bachelor's Degree in Computer Technologies (I think!) Lois is a wonderful addition to our group and brings loads of knowledge and assistance to us all.
- Lori, who works for a local chimney sweep and designs websites on the side, is tired of paying the big bucks for the programs she has been using. She's hopped onto the Joomla!-holic bandwagon and is brand new to Joomla! Lori has an Associates in Information Systems, and is well-versed in Dreamweaver and many of the Adobe products which will be a big boost to our club.
- Dean, past attendee, looking to move forward with the Timberlane School District site (Tech Director). He's hoping to incorporate his graphics background to help adapt a template specifically branded for Timberlane. Integrating social networking technologies - using tweetdeck as a mode for front office to post important notices to home pages (snow days, cancellations, H1N1 notices, etc).
- Liane, originally an ESL teacher, is the owner of various degrees. She now is responsible for Technology Integration at the Greater Manchester Professional Development Center for the Manchester School District. (This is the site for our next meeting.)
- Thanks to Kathy, our Joomla! NH Users Group is on Facebook and Twitter. Please check it out and sign up! She's been following Justin's upgrading of Community Builder and is hoping it turns out to be what we need to build our JUG community. Among other things, Kathy filled us in on the JEvents calendar being used on our site and the necessity of migrating from the NING site as soon as possible.
- All right Donna, where's your intro? Donna has been helping me with the group organization and moral support! she's awesome, keeps me laughing. She's got boundless enthusiasm for Joomla and the group and wants to soak up as much as she can. ~ Kathy
Other topics discussed:
- Promote Joomla in the community? Excellent choice for cash-strapped towns/school districts . . . should NHSTE.org promote Joomla! a little more?
- Directory of member resources - expertise to draw upon for potential meeting topics
- Resources mentioned:
- Dean very excited about his use of Vimeo.com for the Timberlane school site. (suggested at a prior meeting by Jim Kennedy . . . Thanks!). All Vimeo videos must be original work and has more content control than "YouTube," thus being more appropriate for public school uses. Safer to send kids to view videos rather than risking undesirable "related" videos on "YouTube." Dean uses a paid version which allows larger weekly uploads. Vimeo also offers the feature of creating separate channels within an account, which is well suited to a school district's needs. Trick - he also shares Vimeo with school's Twitter account to link directly to videos.
- Extension "All-Videos" is a handy plug-in and can use for vimeo and youtube videos, among others.
- purplus.com for cheaper priced software
- Corel's Paintshop Pro® also uses layers, and is cheaper than Photoshop® . . . Kathy and Donna wondered if anyone had used Gimp, a free open source graphics program
- Lois uses FireFTP - a Firefox add-on
- Liane has used http://www.doverpublications.com/ and openclipart.org for some of her needs.
- Suggested reading for novice Joomla! users: Barrie North's book and videos, Joseph Leblanc's DVD from Lynda.com and Lynda.com! Jen Kramer coming out with new book also.
- The differentiation between content and modules in Joomla! There are plugins that allow you to mix and match (modules used within articles, and articles used within modules).
- The 3rd annual New England 2009 Christa McAuliffe Technology Conference http://nhcmtc.org/
- Kathy and Liane suggested topic for next meeting to present some favorite extensions; maybe install and configure one on our joomlanh site. Liane will demonstrate DT Register - need more volunteers!
Door prize won by Dean! Congratulations! Barrie North's video DVD - Fundamentals of Joomla!
Next meeting: Wed. Nov. 18, GMPDC, Manchester School of Techonology.
Meeting notes submitted by Donna Chick.
