On October the 8th, 2009, the Joomla! User Group - Southwestern Ontario was kicked off. What a great start for a user group it was! It began with a question in the joomla.org forums (link here) to see if there was any interest for such a group. Shortly afterwards a Joomla! developer from Picasso Fish Corporation in Simcoe, Ontario responded. That was Corrie Sloot and he and I had a couple of phone calls behind the scenes to talk about it. It wasn't long afterwards that John Matecsa, the owner of Picasso Fish Corporation, got involved and took this to a whole different level. Picasso Fish organized everything and put together a great agenda with several speakers. They advertised the event with a poster and news release.

Launching Joomla! User Groups is something that I am only more than willing to help with. Last year JoeJoomla helped start the Joomla! User Group Toronto (JUGT). It's been steadily meeting monthly downtown Toronto mostly at Hemmingway's in Yorkville. You can see the events page for JUGT HERE. Now it's time to get something going west of Toronto and what a blast off the inaugural Joomla! User Group Southwestern Ontario meeting is going to be! With no less than FIVE speakers lined up for the meeting with yours truly moderating the evening.

If you are a .php developer or designer involved in Joomla!, or any other good open source content management system, the future is bright for you. You won't hear this from everyone but do yourself a favor and don't forget what I just said. Don't cave to the naysayers. They are wrong. If you are a Microsoft Certified developer who is near the end of your career you don't need to change. There's lots of business for you. However, if you are young and talented, early in your career and want to make a name for yourself, then you should get involved in open source.