Joomla in Faces. Donato Matturro (President of the Joomla! Lombardia Association)

I discovered our famous CMS in Florence in 2011 during the fourth edition of JoomlaDay Italy. Since then, 15 years have passed, during which I have been a presenter at JoomlaDay Turin 2012, founder of a JUG, organizer of Joomla! events, instructor in various CMS courses, and a speaker at many events such as SMAU, Accessibility Days, and the Joomla! World Conference. I have also given lectures to students at the University of Pavia and the Politecnico di Milano.

I am a digital pioneer, and I was already building websites in the 90s. I recognize the freedom of communication that the internet offers, and I believe it becomes more resilient through the use of non-proprietary and open-source technologies. This is why I love Joomla!, and also because from the very beginning it has been oriented toward digital accessibility, a topic I work on both professionally and academically, also contributing to several scientific publications in Italy.

The Italian Joomla! community is truly lively. Over the years it has been, at times, one of the most active and high-performing communities.

It has gone through a generational change and is now ready for a new period of glory!

Joomla! Festival was an exciting experience born from the presence of EXPO 2015 in Milan. It was one of the Italian Joomla! events with the highest number of participants and the most engagement. It would be a great pleasure and honor for me, or better, for all of us in the Italian Joomla! community, to organize another one. It was also one of the first conferences with a track entirely dedicated to digital accessibility.

JUG Lombardia is a regional Italian Joomla! local community, rather than a city-based one, and it naturally collaborates with all Italian and international JUGs.

From my point of view, digital accessibility is a fundamental requirement and an essential topic for the evolution of the web and of our society.

Fortunately, Joomla! is already highly accessible by default thanks to the Joomla Accessibility and Usability Team (JAT) and the efforts of many Joomlers, as well as template, component, and extension developers who have always been very attentive to this aspect. As for the WCAG, which for the sake of accessibility I will expand as Web Content Accessibility Guidelines, I am part of the team that translated the recent 2.2 version into Italian.

The Italian e-commerce market is very developed and growing, and it has become much more attentive to digital accessibility after the entry into force of the European Accessibility Act.

We organize social dinners with the Joomla! Lombardia association and networking activities with various partners we have met and nurtured over the years.

Accessibility, accessibility, accessibility, and… open source.

With Joomla! 6 we are on the right path. I truly think something is changing for the better in the way we create our open-source CMS, and I hope this will bring us many advantages.

We are organizing a dinner with all our Joomla friends to celebrate. Would you like to join us?