JUGT celebrated a year of Pub nights by revisiting the location of the first event, Scruffy Murphy's (West). A good time was had by all. So good, in fact, that we failed to take pictures.

Attendance was about eleven people. After a business card draw by Jessica (our capable and unbiased server), the two training courses went to Gilles Gagnon and Boris Ulcar. Thanks to the folks at Joomla Training for providing the tickets.

The evening's discussions ranged from general introductions to what Joomla can do for new users, to a comparison of member's experiences with various extensions, a list of favourite extensions, extensive discussion of the state of e-commerce in Joomla, and ideas for organizing future meetings and getting a broad range of Joomla enthusiasts out.

Speaking of e-commerce, our next event will be the meeting on February 27th. We look forward to seeing you there!

JUGT's latest Pub Night took place at Hemingway's (Yorkville) on August 26th. A dedicated core of JUGT members came out in the middle of one of the few weeks of actual summer weather to enjoy a lively discussion, highlighted by the presence of Jason Kendall, who recently re-joined the project as a member of the Security Team.

This event was attended by Bob Bloom, Vic Garbutt, Jason Kendall, Alan Langford, Suzen Sam and Joe Sonne (Joe Joomla).

JUGT's latest Pub Night took place at Hemingway's (Yorkville) on July 22nd and was another success! It is becoming clear that Hemingway's is our "home" as we have had the best attended meetings there so far. We got a nice spot on the patio and with the new signage on the tables we attracted attention from patrons who did not know about Joomla!, became intrigued about the logo and initiated conversations with us, which was exactly what we needed to spread some Joomla! love around. Some of us were wearing the Joomla! apparel and that also attracted attention of patrons who knew about Joomla! but didn't know about the JUGT meetings.

Several interesting discussions were going around the table last night. Some of them were: ways to deploy pre-packaged/customized versions of Joomla!, the always present discussions about Virtuemart integration, the latest news on the JBS, JUGT's plans for the formal meetings and other topics. We would like to see more of that happening next month so come on down everybody!

We do not charge to register or attend the Pub Nights but we do ask people to register so we have a more accurate count of attendees and therefore are able to reserve seating in advance. Please pass the word around about the meetings through Twitter, Facebook or any other medium to which you have access. The bigger our numbers, the better our Pub Nights and meetings will be!

We would like to thank Steven Sonne and the great Hemingway's staff who accommodated our group and our many requests throughout the night.

This event was attended by Alan Langford, Bob Bloom, Flavia Tarzwell, Jason Wells, Joe Sonne (Joe Joomla), Matthew Redican, Paul McLellan, Stacy Gilmore, Suzen Sam and Vic Garbutt.

The June Pub Night took was held on the 17th at the Frog and Firkin. We had fewer members than initially expected, probably due to the rainy weather, but it was still fun and productive! We thank all who braved the rain and wind from as far as Stouffville to participate on last night’s event.

During the evening we took steps to initiate the planning for the formal meetings and hope to be announcing the details soon. So please stay tuned for more information.

This site will also be undergoing some changes to become more community oriented. The JUGT has two separate groups of members:

• Joomla! site owners and managers who need to learn hot to use and support their sites.
• Developers who are interested in getting involved with the project as well as gain more experience with Joomla! extension development from the local team members.

We plan to cater to both by having formal meetings with specific topics to be discussed, explained from both front end and administration points of view.

User Group meetings will be open to requests on specific topics and those will be determined by priority based on demand. If you are interested in learning more about Joomla! administration, then this will be the time to get involved and voice your opinions.

Until then now we hope to see you at the social meetings where we not only discuss Joomla! related things but also have a blast with other people with similar interests and peculiar sense of humour. Meeting friends and mentors in the local community is very gratifying and fills the gap and distance left open by the sheer size of the international community. It’s nice to know that you can reach out to local members of this enormous community for support.

We truly hope to see you at our next Pub Night on July 22.