Like most community groups they have events and activities on a regular basis so probably the first extension I've installed on their site has been JCal Pro, the most complete calendar solution for any Joomla web site.

JCal Pro has an extensive feature set and yet perhaps the most important feature for me is the one used the least.

Many sites use JCal for either its standard calendar layout or for a module of upcoming events. But for me JCal Pro is all about ensuring that event details in the content of my site are always up to date.

It's fine for a calendar to show details of past and future events but here is nothing worse than visiting a website to find a news article about an upcoming event that actually took place several months ago.

Of course this could be handled by effective use of the start and end publishing dates for every content article in Joomla but JCal provides another option.

JCal provides a plugin to insert events directly from the calendar into content articles. By careful use of this plugin you can easily create content articles that only ever show details of upcoming events. And even better your content creator will only have to create the content once, in the calendar.

If you visit:

• Upcoming Events
• Jewish Journeys
• Upcoming Festivals
  

you will see that each of these pages is actually dynamically created from content in the calendar and the site editor never needs to touch them as they will always be up to date.

[NOTE: these pages are all uncategorised content and the joomla search has been set no to search uncategorised content in order to avoid double hits in the search]

Yesterday JCal Pro reached a stable release for Joomla 1.5. It's been a long road but also a testament to the JCal community and the spirit of open source that a stable release could finally be achieved. There have been many issues along the way, notably the many time zone server configurations, that have all had to be addressed but now that they are development can switch to new features.

During the beta and release candidate stages of JCal's I had to hack together various modifications to make the calendar work the way that I wanted. But I'm really excited that each of these hacks was taken on board by the developers, re-written into better code, and implemented in the stable release so that others can benefit.

Some of the new features planned for JCal Pro 2 may include:

• multiple calendars
• import and export of data
  
• greater improved handling of repeat events including exceptions
• export the calendar to other applications such as outlook or iphone
• a client/server architecture so that data can be distributed from a JCal Calendar on one site to multiple JCal Calendars on  other sites

I'm pretty excited about the last option. Think of the NFL running Joomla and JCal and anyone being able to add NFL fixtures to their calendar automatically and ensure that they are up to date. Or TV Schedules, Band tours, etc.

JCal Pro is the calendar that puts time in your hands.

I am bored with powerpoint!

I am bored with sales presentations!

I am bored with slide-shows!

Just because you can make a powerpoint presentation with a thousand slides doesn't mean you should. If you can't say what you need to say in a few slides don't say it.

The chances of me staying awake and catching the important points of your presentation whilst you bore me with every miniscule aspect of your company/product are almost non-existant.

If you can't convince me to have an interest in your product/company in the time it takes me to fall asleep then you have no chance.

Pecha Kucha is the way forward.

With Pecha Kucha, Japanese for chatter, presentations can consist of a maximum of 20 slides each lasting no more that 20 seconds. That's a total of no more than 6 minutes and 40 seconds for a presentation.

This ensures that a presentation is concise and not full of unnecessary fluff.

The audience interest level is maintained, no more sleeping through presentations, and gives more people the opportunity to present.

If you want to see Pecha Kucha in action come along to CMSExpo in Denver where all new product launches will be strictly Pecha Kucha.