We are pleased to formally introduce Louis Landry, David Gal, Mateusz (Mat) Krzeszowiec, Richard (Ric) Allinson and Sam Moffatt to the Core Development Team. The work they have contributed to Joomla!™ over the past few months has created some amazing momentum within the project.
The project lead developer, Johan Janssens, said "fresh ideas and integration of new technologies into the core has created a great deal of opportunity and stability for the future of Joomla!."
"I'd like to personally congratulate all of the guys for their hard work," Johan said. "Their contribution, encouragement and spirit of teamwork has taken us to heights with the upcoming Joomla! 1.1 that could not have happened so quickly without their combined intellectual muscle."
Louis Landry has delivered the FTP layer, helped with the refactoring and introduction of the new framework in 1.1. Louis, 25, of New Orleans, Louisiana, works in web development and holds a Bachelors Degree in Computer Science from Louisiana Tech University. His first experience with computers was playing on a 286 with Basic at his father's office. Louis has programmed in many languages, ranging from low level x86 assembly to managed languages like Java and scripting languages like PHP. He was a founding member of his university's robotics team. Louis is a car nut, and enjoys working on them in his spare time.
David Gal is responsible for internationalisation, including UTF-8, RTL and also the introduction of the new PDF library in Joomla! 1.1 David, 57, is an organisational consultant and holds a Degree in Computer Science. His first computer was a Commodore 64 and he recalls connecting to Compuserve with a 300 baud modem. In his spare time he coaches in teenage leadership. David is also active on the Joomla! Hebrew forums.
Our Summer of Code (sponsored by Google) guys who were invited to join the team are Sam, Ric and Mateusz
Mateusz Krzeszowiec worked on the Media Manager during his stint on the Summer of Code Project. Mateusz is now working on Forge integration for Joomla! One of the first results from this will be a component which can fetch news from the Developer Portal. Mateusz 25, of Poland, says he is a confirmed Joomla! neophyte — love at first sight! He is an undergraduate in Computer Engineering at the Silesian University of Technology, Gliwice, Poland. Mat is interested in web development and 2D and 3D graphics. He's currently researching faces and iris detection software and learning OpenGL. Mat wants to have a career in web and/or game programming. He loves science-fiction and fantasy books.
Ric Allinson worked on caching technologies as his Summer of Code project, and he is currently researching and prototyping for Joomla! 2. Ric, 30, of Kent, United Kingdom, is an IT manager and discovered Mambo in 2003 while looking for a corporate CMS. He now spends his time coding Open Source systems for companies that don’t have large IT budgets. He says he is constantly in search of elegant solutions to coding problems, lives in the Object Orientated camp of coding and loves a good framework — Joomla! being his framework of choice. This comes from his corporate Java background which was soon dropped when PHP5 hit the servers. Apart from computers, he's worked as an illustrator designing collectibles such as Noddy and Thunderbirds and in the film and television industry as a CGI artist on several Hollywood projects and a handful of low budget satellite channels.
Sam Moffatt worked on installer technologies while working on the Summer of Code project. He is porting a unified installer to Joomla! 1.1. Sam, 19, of Toowoomba, Queensland, Australia, is the youngest member of the development team, is currently studying IT and has been working with Mambo (now Joomla!) since early 2004. His work came to the fore with the Google SOC and his update system, which will be further developed and included in Joomla! Outside of development and study, Sam enjoys the seaside, bush walking and good food.
Joomla! Project Leader Andrew Eddie joined Johan in congratulating the contributors. "The hard-earned respect these guys now enjoy from the community comes from their active participation with the core coders and the development community as a whole," Andrew said. "It is really worth saying that by showing a keen interest in Joomla! and working hard, talented people will get noticed and that, in turn, leads to opportunities within the Core Team."
Two of our contributors have decided to retire from the Core Team. Nicolas Steenhout, who has been our Standards, Usability & Accessibility leader has left as has Jean-Marie Simonet (Translations). Both Nic and Jean-Marie have indicated they will continue to participate with Joomla! as community members. Although no longer a Core Team member, Jean-Marie will continue working along with the Translation Team. Core Team member Andy Miller will be replacing Nic and David Gal will be replacing Jean-Marie.
We congratulate all of these hard working Joomla-ites. Thank you everyone.