Just got back from a great two days at the 2009 Chicago CMS Expo, the 3rd CMS Expo in the US since inception in 2007. It was great to see dev's from Drupal and Plone rubbing shoulders with the Joomla regulars. As were the previous two , the event was another successful, well orchestrated event. We even had Joomla and Drupal songs!

There seemed to be interest in my session on Socializing Your Joomla Site and I was able to give away some pre-release copies of the Joomla! 1.5: A User's Guide (2nd Edition) and Fundamentals of Joomla! (Video Training).

Of particular note was the one of the key notes by Wilco Jansen, the Joomla Development Coordinator and an OSM board member talked about the importance of engaging the community. He also answered questions about 1.6 on the experts panel, and talked a little about the GPL in his SDRnews interview.

You can also check out the CMS Expo 2009 Wrapup from John and Linda Coonen, also on SDRnews.

The tech media coverage on the event was excellent. Its been interesting to see the growth of some open source CMS orientated news sites at the same time the CMS expo has grown in popularity. If you have time, I definately recommend checking out some of these CMS news sites: