Everyone told me that this was the "Must Attend Event" of the year for Joomla CMS developers. Every time I spoke to another friend in the industry we heard the same thing, "you just HAVE to go". With so many people telling me the same thing I figured there just had to be some truth to the hype of the JandBeyond conference in Bad Nauheim, Germany. Well, now that we have just returned from this conference, the only thing I can say is, WOW! WOW! WOW!

The JandBeyond Conference is an even that is targeted towards people that use Joomla as the core of their business. This means extension developers, training consultants, implimenters, and designers. This was the first confernce that wasn't trying to sell me something. This was truely an event of my peers. Being a joomla CMS developer since 2004 I have gotten to know so many others in the industry via other events, forums, Skype chats, and such. However, meeting some of the people I have known online for years was the icing on the cake. There were about 225 people at the conference and I made it a point to not talk to people that I have previously met in person. I got to connect with so many new people that I have not had the opportunity to meet before.

This conference gave me a new optimistic outlook for our web design framework of choice, Joomla!

The learning sessions were very good and it was great that all the Rockstars of Joomla could learn from each other in so many ways. From learning new technologies to who is working on the "next big thing". I truely cannot wait until next year's event.