JoomlaDay™ DACH 2025 – The Highlights

The JoomlaDay™ DACH 2025 is already history again, even though the days in Bad Krozingen were truly wonderful. Here are my highlights:

• The Encounters: For me – even though I tend to be on the introverted side – the encounters are always the heart of such events. Whether you already knew each other or met for the first time doesn’t matter. You’re among people who think alike. The audience is wonderfully mixed: some run design or marketing agencies, others are developers or offer hosting services, and then you keep running into extension developers you know from some support forum. For example, the entire YOOtheme Pro team attended JoomlaDay. The Joomla Association Switzerland was also present, which of course caught my eye immediately as a Swiss person. And as a woman, you definitely don’t feel «alone in the field». The only downside: I could have used a third day to talk to everyone I still wanted to talk to. 🙂
• The Talks: After the welcome session, a keynote, and a few programme items, there were five time slots on Friday and six on Saturday, each with three talks running in parallel. One was always held in English for guests from other language regions, and at least one was not Joomla-specific, so you could spend two valuable days there even if you work with another CMS. All talks I attended were very inspiring. Personally, the following contributions were particularly relevant to me (in chronological order 🙂): the talk on CSS View Transitions by Marc Dechèvre, the one on Accessibility Testing Tools by Christiane Maier-Stadtherr, the introduction to Content Types in Joomla with YOOtheme Pro by Hanna Znanewitz, and Thorsten Bastian’s presentation on the Psychology Behind Websites.
• The Joomla Roadmap: Lessons were truly learned from the chaotic transition from Joomla 3 to 4. A comprehensive roadmap for upcoming Joomla versions was created. Just last month, Joomla 6 was released, and the roadmap gives us a clear outlook all the way to Version 8, planned for October 2029. The focus is now on meeting deadlines rather than fulfilling an endless feature wishlist. I think that’s a great development because it avoids situations like the Joomla 4 release, when the date was postponed again and again. That unsettled many users, including myself. Actually, more than unsettled – but let’s leave it at that. Today, I can say with complete confidence that my trust in Joomla has been restored.
• Another thing I really enjoyed seeing was that Google is supporting Joomla above average in the Google Summer of Code project. As I learned in Martin Kopp’s talk, Google co-funded four Joomla projects in 2025 that will improve the CMS in the future.
• The Supporting Programme: The welcome sessions and keynotes were engaging and entertaining. On Saturday morning, we even started the day with a breathing-technique session. There were plenty of breaks, and everyone was very well taken care of.
• The Speed-Dating: At first I was a bit sceptical. Was this really a singles’ event? I wrote above that I was «among people who think alike». Anything is possible. 🙂 But in the end, it was simply a classic opportunity to meet as many people as possible in a short time. Classic, but very effective and exciting.
• The “Make it happen” Session: I didn’t know this format yet, but I loved it. There were different topics, and people jumped straight into action. As a coder, you could join a group working on bugs; otherwise, you could help with documentation, for example. Or take a quick break to assist clients who suddenly needed urgent support (Hi M.! 😁).
• The J!Otto Awards: These are awards given to Joomla websites in various categories. For the first time, a website was honoured in the new “Accessible Websites” category. The winner was Angie Radkte with her work for Hagener Entsorgungsbetrieb: heb-hagen.de. All other winning websites can be viewed at jotto-deutschland.de.
• Dealing with AI: It sometimes bothers me when AI triggers an unreflective wave of enthusiasm. That wasn’t the case here at all. In the various talks, AI was neither demonised nor glorified as the only truth, but seen as an opportunity. Sebastian Mohila’s talk on using AI in Joomla! websites in particular got me thinking. He’s developing an AI chatbot, and chatbots always give me a slightly uneasy feeling because they remove a bit of the human touch from the first contact. On the other hand, one shouldn’t shut oneself off from this technology either. In the end, it’s like almost everything: you just need to find the right use case, and then it becomes an asset. Even with AI, you can trust your gut feeling.

After the closing session, those who wanted could meet for dinner at a restaurant. Since I had already missed the pre-event, I was happy to join. And so I ended the evening with a delicious Syrian tagine and the best company. It was one of those moments when I simply felt grateful for having such a good life. Thank you, dear Joomla community, and thank you, dear organising team – JoomlaDay™ DACH 2025 was truly fantastic, and I’m already looking forward to next year!