We all know that 2021 will be the year of Joomla 4, that is now approaching the Release Candidate phase and will be released during the year. But while the Production Department and many volunteers are working hard to get the release done, other members and teams of the Community are working towards other goals and achievements. In this article, we had the chance to collect some of the goals defined by teams within the Operations and the Programs Departments.
Operations Department Teams
Community Magazine Team
The Community Magazine Team, rebuilt during 2020, would like to continue publishing the JCM on a regular monthly basis with at least 10 articles per issue. The team aims to work on a long-term (6 months) editorial plan, featuring special or dedicated issues for particular occasions like the release of Joomla 4 or the Joomla birthday. One of the goals of the year is also to increase the number of regular and non-regular authors who contribute to the Magazine and keep the team engaged.
Volunteers Portal Team
The main goal of the Joomla Volunteers Portal team is a major cleanup of the custom code of the Joomla Volunteers Portal. This cleanup will prepare the portal for Joomla 4. Among this cleanup, we will add smaller and bigger new features that are requested in the Volunteers Portal issue tracker on Github.
Joomla Extensions Directory Team
The team self-imposed a 7-day deadline for processing tickets and extension listings and would like to enforce this timeframe in 2021. The main goals of the year are to encourage extensions developers to support Joomla 4 and continue the development of the JED4, the new version of the Extensions Directory, as well as continue to improve JED Checker, implementing modern guidelines related to security, privacy and coding standards.
Webmasters Team
The working group consists of members of other teams and will continue to improve the “infrastructure” of the Project’s websites and assets. The main goal is to keep the infrastructure up to date, stable and secure.
Programs Department Teams
Joomla Certification Program
The Certification Program Team is continuing the work on the migration to Shika LMS, that will replace Moodle as exam platform, this activity should be completed by the end of Q1 2021. During the year the team aims to provide a last update to the Joomla 3.x Administrator Exam, aligned with the latest updates of the Joomla 3.x series of the CMS and to provide the brand new Joomla 4 Administrator Exam that should be delivered roughly 6 months after J4 is released.
Volunteers Engagement Team
VET will continue the work started in 2020 on the three R’s (Recruitment, Retention and Recognition). The first goal for the team is to establish a proper workflow to handle the recruitment of new volunteers and their onboarding, with particular attention to onboarding pathways from specific “programs” like Pizza Bugs and Fun, GSoC and the local Joomla Users Groups. Some activities have started to analyze the reasons why the organization is not able to retain all the volunteers, the team developed also an “Exit interview” that is going to be implemented when volunteers leave teams or the project as such.
Education Outreach Working Group
The working group defined its mission and motto during 2020 and is going into the implementation phase in 2021. The motto is “Entice, Engage and Educate” and reflects the mission that was adopted: be a hub of teaching tools and resources for those who want to teach and learn Joomla around the world. The group is actively collecting materials and information from participants who held classes related to Joomla, aiming to prepare a curriculum to propose Joomla in classes for several education paths (schools, universities, continuing education for adults).
