For those of you who don't already know Joomla! is the leading open source content management system. What's more it traces its early origins back to Melbourne where the original content management system from which Joomla! arose was developed.

JoomlaDay 2008 Melbourne was held at the same time and in close proximity to the Australian Linux Conference held at the University of Melbourne so that interested observers could participate in both events.

As an interested observer and Joomla! user I can say the event was an outstanding success, with participants ranging from beginners and enthusiasts through to experts and global developers.

In total 135 people attended the Melbourne JoomlaDay 08 which was a sell out.

The capacity crowd saw presentations on a range of areas to do with Joomla, including some exclusive demonstrations of Joomla! 1.5 features by Brad Baker and Sam Moffat from the Joomla Core Team. Norm Douglas walked through the basics of setting up Joomla! 1.0. Dinah Randall highlighted some of the issues that users will face in converting 1.0 templates into the new format for Joomla! 1.5.

Damian Hickey from Freeway Ecommerce (www.openfreeway.org) outlined issues being faced in regards to ecommerce in the coming months, and explained the path ZacWare were taking currently to integrate Freeway with Joomla.

Leslie Hawthorn from Google Highly Open Participation contest got the group thinking about mentoring students in the GHOP, where there's currently over 100 projects being run in conjunction with Joomla!.