Last weekend, June 12-14, I had the pleasure and honour to speak and present at Joomla!Days in the Netherlands.

Over large amounts of coffee, and some beer, I spoke to friends, old and new, and with (only a) little exception the topic of conversation was the same.

"I'm going to stick my head above the parapets now and say aloud what so many are thinking and saying in private."

Where is joomla going? What is the future of joomla?

When I say that I do NOT mean what will be the new features of joomla in 1.6, 1.7, 1.8 etc. what I mean is what are the aims for joomla.

In Mambo days, yes I have been around that long, the aim was always "Power in Simplicity". With Joomla 1.5 we saw the complete refactoring of the codebase with the aim to provide both a better solution for non-english speakers and an API framework that was suitable for the professional developer.

But what is the aim for joomla now?

It is great that there apparently is a code roadmap with ACL, nested categories etc, but they are just pit stops on the journey to a destination. What was really clear to me from numerous conversations was that the final destination for future versions was not known.

Now it may be that someone knows where the destination is but if they do then they are clearly not communicating it well.

Every great project has a vision, an aim, an objective. Without that vision then there can be no direction. Without a direction it is very easy to get lost along the way.

When I set out on my travels to speak at joomladays in Nieuwegein I knew exactly what I needed to do to get there.

• I needed a taxi to get to the airport.
• I needed a plane from Leeds to Amsterdam.
• I needed Wilco to collect me at Amsterdam Schiphol airport and drive me in a car to the venue.
• I needed a room in the hotel to sleep in.
• I needed a laptop and projector to display my slides.
• I needed a microphone so that the audience could hear me.
• And finally I was able to complete my aim and make the presentation.

The taxi, airplane, Wilco etc were all necessary steps to achieve my aim in presenting a talk on "Joomla's Hidden Secrets". But these were just part of the journey to achieve my objective, they were not the objective itself.

The same is true with joomla. It needs an objective.

New code for ACL, nested categories etc are just part of the journey they are not the objective or final destination. Is the objective is to make Joomla an enterprise class CMS or perhaps for it to be a drupal clone? I don't know, do you?

Does any single person or group of people know the final destination that we are all supposed to be working towards?

If they do know then they are doing a very poor job at "communicating" this otherwise I would not have heard Joomla core team members, past and present, OSM members, key Working Group members and committed Community members all pondering the same question.

While complete transparency is not realistic, things would be much clearer if the official joomla.org site was the primary point of communication with the community. Currently there is a hotch potch of communication on blogs and tweets from core developers and osm members on private sites that do not actually appear on joomla.org.

A colleague was recently contacted by the marketing director of Quark who commented about how fragmented and difficult Joomla's communication had become. He was aghast at the difficultly he was having at finding relevant and factual information about Joomla's future.

"I've been through the Mambo split and the Joomla 1.5 migration, now what?"

Dries Buytaert of Drupal may jokingly describe himself as a benevolant dictator but that statement alone clearly says to the world that he leads the project and that what he says is directly applicable and relevant to its future.

Joomla needs a leadership voice.

It needs someone, or some people, to step up and take that role and clearly and concisely communicate with the community the vision for the future of joomla.

With a clearly communicated vision joomla could easily become.....

[before commenting please think carefuly what you say and keep it relevant to my article and don't just use your comment to repeat yourself "Agree or disagree...I don't care" but please refrain from the personal attacks or I will have to remove those comments]

Name
Mathias Verraes

On-Line name (Skype:Twitter:Joomla forums)
Twitter: http://twitter.com/mathiasverraes (also check http://twitter.com/nooku)

Joomla: mjaz http://forum.joomla.org/memberlist.php?mode=viewprofile&u=11437 (but I must confess I haven't been very active there lately)

Website
http://nooku.org

Location
Ghent, Belgium

Job
Software Developer @ Nooku

If I weren't talking to you right now I'd be ...
... coding, or writing music (New single 'Need Some Sleep' will be released this month: http://www.myspace.com/lizeaccoe and I'm very excited about that! )

I wish people would take more notice of ...
.. the licenses of the software they use. I know, it's often boring to read. There are so many misconceptions over what open source software actually is. And if people were to realize the sort of restrictions companies like Microsoft and Apple put on their stuff, they'd realize how revolutionary and disruptive open source really is.

The most suprising thing that has happened to me is ...
Four years a go I was merely looking for a CMS to build a small website with. Today I am working with Johan, the lead developer of the most popular CMS in the world, and we're building a new framework that we believe will generate a new wave of even better and more professional extensions. No way I could have known back then I'd be doing what I'm doing today, let alone that it would be so much fun.

The ideal night out is ...
Friends, music, and a nice 18yo single malt whisky.

The best age to be is ...
7, 18 and 30.

What did you dream of becoming as a child?
A musician, or a programmer, or a novelist. Really, when I was 9, that's what I wanted to be! 2 out 3, can't complain.

My philosophy on life is ...
All philosophies from before November 24, 1859 are inherently wrong. Since then we have been able to explain where we come from with science instead of superstition and hocus-pocus.

How did you get involved in Joomla?
I started using it for some small projects. I released some small extensions, which in turn got me more consultancy jobs. I took over DOCman development, and later got invited to help out with Nooku.

I am involved in Joomla because ....
...it's  impossible to turn away from.

What one feature would you like to see in Joomla?
Library installers.

What is the first extension you install in Joomla?
I don't really build sites these days, so when I setup Joomla it's a local install with Nooku Framework and whatever thing I'm developing at the moment.

Complete the sentance "Joomla rocks the world because ..."
...it made quality sites available to a much larger, non-technical audience than ever before."