BRATTLEBORO — The sun is shining on this last Saturday in May, as just over 100 people scramble for a spot on the grass bordering the Marlboro College Graduate Center parking lot downtown. Lack of outdoor seating is one of the few indicators that the Joomla!Day New England is a homegrown event, organized by volunteers.
So far the sold-out event has run smoothly. Attendees have come from Boston and Quebec, as well as rural Vermont and the Pioneer Valley. They mingle and talk shop excitedly, balancing plates of barbecue on their laps.
Kristen Wilson, a dark-haired woman in an orange-flowered shirt, is delighted when a neighbor can quickly answer her question about creating menu links. She is here to learn more about the open-source Web technology known as Joomla.
“The community behind Joomla is gigantic,” says Wilson, owner of Sun Spot Graphics in Jamaica. “It allows for so much creativity.”
Over the past two years, Web designers have been quietly switching to Joomla and other content management system (CMS) tools. Such systems allow users to edit and update their own sites with no knowledge of html or programming. Other programmers contribute add-on software to extend the system's capabilities, letting users configure their Joomla sites with e-commerce, social networking, and blog features, multimedia, contacts management, and scores of other Web features.
A technically savvy end user can install a Joomla site with a pre-existing template in a matter of hours - paying only the cost for Web hosting. Even a custom-designed site - one created by professionals modifying the free software to meet a client's particular needs - typically costs no more than the previous generation of static html Web sites.
The difference is that rather than being dependent on an outside designer to update the content of a site, clients can make changes themselves by filling out a form on a restricted part of the site.
For small businesses and nonprofits who lack dedicated technology staff but frequently need to update their sites to reflect sales, specials, news, and events - the technology can be truly liberating.
Bed and breakfast owner Lynda Graham, of Sutton, Quebec, built her village's tourism Web site, www.infosutton.com, initially with the help of a Joomla consultant. Now she and three other women update the site's event and restaurant listings weekly, at no additional expense.
Open source
Like many such systems, the Joomla software is free, open-source software developed by a cadre of volunteers worldwide who share their work with the world.
If this business model sounds different from your standard hot new tech trend, there is a reason. Joomla (Swahili for “all together”) is produced, maintained, and distributed not by a corporation, but by a global movement encompassing thousands of volunteers.
According to Sam Moffat of www.joomla.org, the software has been downloaded 10 million times. Clients using Joomla include MTV, Al Gore, the United Nations, and Citibank.
“I just love that it's open source. Most of my clients are small businesses, so they need an affordable solution,” says Anne Campbell, a Web designer based in Shelburne Falls, Mass.
How is this possible? No one has a single answer.
The open-source software movement, which allows users to freely distribute and modify a program's underlying source code, has produced some stunning successes - most notably the Linux operating system and Apache, the software that delivers most of the world's Web sites.
Yet Linux and Apache hold appeal for only the most technically sophisticated of users. Other open-source CMS platforms such as Drupal and Plone offer more robust features than Joomla in some areas, but require a steeper learning curve.
“Nobody had ever tried to build a CMS before that was easy to use,” says Joomla project co-founder Mitch Pirtle, a co-founder of the Drupal project who spoke at the Brattleboro event.
Usability is more than a point of pride within the Joomla community. It is the community's defining feature. Online and offline, hard-core techies mingle with graphic designers, marketing professionals, and ordinary people who never dreamed of touching a line of code.
The Joomla Web site estimates the global community at 20,000 users and contributors who provide documentation, bug checking, online support forums, and technical enhancements on a scale comparable to commercial-grade software.
“Humans are inclined to collaborate,” says Joomla core team developer Rob Schley, who traveled from New Orleans to speak at the Brattleboro event. “We're social beings. We want to work together. We want to learn.”
Why volunteer?
Schley cites the appeal and challenge of the work, as well as programmers' ideal of freedom of information, which inspires them to forego highly paid jobs and put their time into open source instead. He acknowledges that the project has faced challenges from scheduling and internal politics, but is optimistic about the movement's long-term future.
“It's really special because it's really community-driven. That's very different from the benevolent dictator model,” says Elin Waring, a sociologist at the City University of New York who also serves as president of Open Source Matters, the nonprofit managing financial, legal, and organizational issues for the Joomla! project. “We want enterprise users and we want grandmothers.”
She notes that Joomla is the CMS of choice for developing countries. “What open source is about is sharing. That 'all together' idea -- people really take it seriously.”
A regional hub
Brattleboro has become a regional hub for this technology, in large part due to the efforts of Keene, N.H., Web developer Jen Kramer McKibben, founder of the New England Joomla User Group, director of the Information Technology program at the Marlboro College Graduate Center, and organizer of the day's event.
At a time of global financial crisis, the Joomla movement offers a balance between the motives of cooperation and profit, between building global communities and local ones.
“By teaching people what you know, not only do you learn it better, you strengthen your community,” says McKibben. “People ask me, 'Why are you training your competitors?' I don't see it that way. We pass each other work.”
At present, the Joomla economy is not built on venture capital funding or Silicon Valley glitz, but sole proprietors and small shops like McKibben's 4Web or Barrie North's Joomlashack of Norwich. Many customers are local as well - farms, small businesses, and nonprofits. Technology professionals earn their livelihood from a software platform that never gained a stock symbol or sold a single copy.
As conference attendees finish lunch outside, an Amtrak train rumbles by on the tracks below.
“There is such a huge amount of creative energy up and down this valley,” Wilson says. “I hope it lasts.”