Shishir asks "What we can do as part of Joomla community to make it number one?"

This is my response to a discussion started by Shisihir entitled Why Joomla still not the number one open source CMS?, and specifically, to repeat a very good question Shishir raises when he asked, "In short, I want to know what we can do as part of Joomla community to make it number one."

To begin, I want to gently correct the misconception that Joomla! has never won the Packt Award. Such is not the case. In fact, Joomla! was the first first ever award recipient in 2006. And trust me, we were dancing in the forums with great pride when that announcement was made!

In 2007, 2008, and 2009 , we have, indeed, played second fiddle, to Drupal. Those who know me know know I am a big, big, big fan of the Drupal community and have celebrated right along with them as they worked together to advance that CMS and accomplish great things. Their success comes from real commitment to stay true to their community mission and values which call for collaborative teamwork, openness and sharing of information and code, and a flexible, extensible collection of software.

This year's PackT Winner, WordPress has completely dominated the blogger space during the era of blogging, and now, with v 3, intend to position themselves squarely as a flexible CMS. It is certainly correct to acknowledge that past year's PackT contest excluded former winners, but, given the strength of their installed base, blowing off WordPress as just a little blogger would be seriously missing the very powerful point that knowing how to keep it simple while consistently meeting the needs of users is not only a strength of that community, but it's all that really matters. Mark my words, that community will continue to do great things as they expand into broader markets.

All of which brings us back home to the dust collecting on our Joomla! award mantle. What happened to Joomla!? We stood at the top of the Pack(t) in 2006. And since that time, Joomla! 1.5 was released thus replacing old Mambo spaghetti code with brilliant, extensible code built on design patterns taught in higher education today, the kind of stuff developers long for! And yet, always the bridesmaid, never the bride.

Certainly, it is encouraging that we have consistently stayed in the top three in most media articles and claims. Doing so is not an easy feat considering the mass adoption of open source and with it, the flood of new OSCMS offerings on the market.

It's also worth considering that both of the other two top CMS's have benefited from single leaders whose companies have been fueled by massive influx of finances and thus provided an ability to better support operations of the community project. Conversely, Joomla! is 100% community powered and overseen by the dedication, expertise, and what must be a ridiculous number of volunteer hours of effort by those who accepted the call to serve as OSM board members.

While the project's ability to stay competitive says very good things about Joomla!'s accomplishments, it's equally important to stop and acknowledge that in Joomla!, we simply have not distinguished ourselves in ways that make it clear to others the solid truth that Joomla! is flexible, extensible, and powerful software and that our community is working towards the future.

So, what happened? To me, it is no coincidence that in June 2007, less than one year after our big PackT win, the Joomla! core team issued the Open Source Does Matter announcement. Bear in mind that this announcement came after several months of hand to hand combat in the Joomla! forums which culminated in the near destruction of the Joomla! community.

In that announcement, the Joomla! project team said that this change will mean "it's a long, slow road"' and their prediction was right on the money. As someone who stayed involved, it is my observation that it has only been since the completion of the four steps laid out in the announcement last year that this community started to rebuild a solid foundation completely based upon a free software ecosystem.

When it comes right down to it, it matters very little whether we individually support these changes announced in 2007, like I did and still do, or we only see the obvious enormous cost that this community has paid for opting to take the long slow road to implement this change. We all know that the truth is, this deal is done and our future lays ahead of us, not behind.

And so, after nearly three years since this announcement, it has only been in these past several months that I have had moments of great hope as I observed what appears to be the budding regrowth of a strong, unruly, passionate, opinionated, geeky community producing great Joomla! software.

In fact, today, my pride in our community has never been greater as JandBeyond, our first ever International Joomla! community event, 100% community powered, is holding sessions in Germany for nearly 200 of our people who have traveled from over 25 countries to learn from one another and listen to over 60 of the world's foremost Joomla! experts talk about our powering Joomla! forward.

Kudo's to the Joomla! Community Working Group for providing our community with People.j.org. Thank you for recognizing it's important to allow community to gather, to self organize without the project's permission, and to speak freely with one another. With the backing of a project that views it's role as a coach and it's job as one that must inspire community engagement and participation and get out of the way of community as they lead, fully empowered, driving in directions we need to go.

Through our community efforts, it will become indisputable how valuable our own personal involvement is to our own professional and business standing. And, some time after that, the awards will reappear as others realize the software built and used by the Joomla! Community is, indeed, second to none.