If you are studying computer science, software engineering, web development or anything else involving computers, I have a suggestion for you: take a few days away from university.
No, I haven't suddenly decided that education is a waste of time. Quite the opposite. I'm suggesting that you spend a few days doing something that will complement what you are learning in lectures, seminars and textbooks in a way that university simply cannot.
From 16–18 October 2026, the Joomla World Conference takes place in Potsdam, Germany. It brings together developers, designers, accessibility specialists, agencies, open-source contributors and people who spend their working lives building websites and software. There are sessions covering development, PHP, APIs, accessibility, testing, security, AI, system architecture and plenty more.
If you are a university student studying a computer-related subject, I think you should be there.
You already know the theory
University is very good at teaching you the theory. You learn about algorithms, databases, software architecture, programming languages, networks, security and human-computer interaction. You learn how computers work, how software should be designed and how different technologies fit together.
All of that is important. In fact, it is extremely important. A good computer science education gives you foundations that will remain useful long after whatever particular programming language or framework happens to be fashionable this year has disappeared.
But there is a rather large gap between knowing how something works in theory and knowing how somebody actually builds something when there are users, deadlines, legacy code, security vulnerabilities, accessibility requirements, APIs, browsers, servers and other people's code involved.
That gap is where conferences can be incredibly valuable.
At the Joomla World Conference you won't just hear people explaining what software development is. You'll meet people who actually do it. You'll see how developers approach real problems, what compromises they make, what tools they use and, perhaps most interestingly, what happens when things don't go according to plan.
You can ask them questions. You can disagree with them. You can show them something you've built and ask what they would have done differently.
That is a very different kind of education.
Put your university knowledge to work
Imagine that you've spent an entire semester learning about software architecture. You understand the principles, you've read the books and you've probably written an assignment explaining the advantages and disadvantages of different approaches. That's useful knowledge.
Now imagine spending three days talking to developers who are responsible for designing and maintaining a large, open-source application that has been evolving for over 20 years. Suddenly those architectural principles aren't abstract ideas in a lecture anymore. They are decisions that somebody actually has to make.
Perhaps you've been learning about APIs. At the conference you'll encounter people who build and consume them every day. Maybe you've been studying software testing and wondering how those principles translate into a large codebase. You'll find developers discussing exactly that. If you've encountered accessibility as part of your studies, you'll be able to hear from people who have to make websites accessible to real users rather than simply answering an examination question about WCAG.
The same applies to AI, security, PHP, JavaScript, databases, system design and pretty much every other area where the academic theory eventually has to meet reality.
The important thing isn't that a conference can replace your university education. It can't, and it shouldn't. The important thing is that it can connect what you are learning with what people are actually doing.
That connection can change the way you understand your entire degree.
You will learn things that aren't in the textbook
There is another reason I would encourage students to attend a conference, and it has little to do with the conference sessions themselves.
The most valuable things you learn at a conference are often the things that happen between the sessions.
You might sit next to a developer over lunch and discover how they got their first job. You might show somebody a university project and get advice from someone who has been solving similar problems professionally for ten years. You might discover a tool you've never heard of, an open-source project you could contribute to or a completely different way of approaching a problem you've been struggling with.
You might even discover that something you've been told is incredibly important at university isn't nearly as important in the real world as you thought it was.
That is valuable knowledge too.
University is necessarily structured. You have modules, learning objectives, lectures, assignments and examinations. A conference is much less structured. You are suddenly surrounded by people with different experiences, different opinions and different approaches to solving problems. You can follow the conversations that interest you rather than simply following the syllabus.
And you can ask questions that don't have an answer at the back of the textbook.
Your degree tells employers what you studied. Your experience tells them what you can do.
Your degree matters.
But when you eventually start applying for jobs, employers are going to be interested in more than the title of your degree and the marks on your transcript. They will want to know what you can actually do.
Can you work with somebody else's code? Can you understand an API you've never seen before? Can you find and fix a bug without somebody telling you exactly where it is? Can you make a website accessible? Can you write secure code? Can you use version control? Can you collaborate with other developers? Can you explain why you made a particular technical decision?
Those are skills you develop by doing things.
With open source software like Joomla you don't have to invent another imaginary application for a university assignment. You can work with software that real people actually use. You can read the code, investigate an issue, propose a solution and learn how professional software development actually works.
Joomla is a large, mature open-source project, and its contributor community includes people at every stage of their careers. You don't need to be a senior developer before you can participate. Learning how to contribute while you are still a student can be one of the most useful things you do.
There is a great example of this at the 2026 conference. Krishna Gandhi is a Computer Science Engineering undergraduate who is a 2026 Google Summer of Code contributor working on Joomla, while also contributing to the project's Bug Squad. He is taking what he is learning through his degree and applying it to a real, widely used open-source project.
That is exactly the relationship between theory and practice that I'm talking about.
Three days can change how you think
You could probably learn more about actually developing and building for the web in three days at a conference like this than you will learn in an entire semester of university.
Before any of my university lecturer friends complain, let me clarify what I mean.
You won't learn more computer science in three days. You won't learn more mathematics, algorithms or theoretical computer science. You won't somehow absorb an entire degree while eating conference sandwiches.
What you can learn is how all that knowledge gets used.
You learn about databases at university and then discover what it means to maintain one that contains real people's data. You learn about software architecture and then discover what happens when an application has been evolving for twenty years. You learn about security and discover the kinds of mistakes developers actually make. You learn about accessibility and discover that making something technically compliant and making something genuinely usable are not necessarily the same thing.
You learn programming and then discover that programming isn't simply about making the computer do what you want. It is about writing code that another human being can understand, maintain and improve six months or six years later.
That is the education you will not get from a lecture slide.
And yes, it can help your career
Let's not pretend that attending a conference is going to magically get you a job. It won't.
What you do with the opportunity, however, can make a difference.
Don't simply attend the sessions and collect the conference badge. Talk to people. Ask questions. Show them what you've been working on. Find something of interest and make a contribution. Take something you learn and build something with it.
Then, when you are sitting in a job interview six months or a year later, you have something much more interesting to talk about than the fact that you passed a module.
You can say, "I went to this conference, I met developers working on this problem, I learned how they approached it and then I went away and built this."
That's a much more interesting conversation.
So ask your university
If you're a student, ask your department whether they will support you attending.
Ask whether there is a professional development budget. Ask whether conference attendance can count towards your placement, employability or professional development requirements. Ask whether your lecturer would be interested in bringing a group of students.
And if they say no, ask them why.
Because this isn't three days away from your education.
It is three days of education.
The Joomla World Conference takes place in Potsdam from 16–18 October 2026. There will be technical sessions, workshops, networking and the opportunity to spend several days surrounded by people who build websites and software for a living.
If you're studying computer science, software engineering, web development or a related subject, don't wait until you've graduated before discovering how the industry actually works.
Go while you're still learning.
Then go back to university with a much better understanding of what all that theory is actually for.
Find out more about Joomla World Conference
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