Coming back from the CMS Expo in Denver, one very clear message is that there's an enormous opportunity for communities and neighborhoods and municipalities to use Joomla to communicate their content on the web.

I think this is an especially interesting proposition for the Chicago community -- after all, we are the "City of Neighborhoods."

BTW - Click here for a very cool poster of Chicago

Yesterday we installed a trial version of JomSocial on the Arc Technology Group site, and today made it available to a select group of testers (n=25), as the basis for a "Evanston Business & Technology Community."

Initial observations are on my Arc Technology Group blog post.

Joe Scarry is head project manager for Chicago Joomla web developer and web design firm Arc Technology Group.

Andy Angelos gave an eye-opening talk about Web 2.0 and Social Networking to about 50 members of Joomla Chicago yesterday. The word of the day was "conversation" -- as in, "your website and other web communications should be directed at generating conversation with people -- not just talking at them!"

Instead of doing what I usually do -- writing an exhaustive blog post that tries to cover ever

I'm currently in the process of evaluating Azrul's JomSocial extension. Detailed observations are available on my blog on the Arc Technology Group site.

My question for the Joomla Chicago community: what requirements do we envision for a Joomla Chicago social networking functionality, over, say, the next year?

Please leave your comments about Joomla Chicago's social networking needs, or about

Joomla Chicago members are in for a treat on Wednesday, November 12, when Andy Angelos addresses the group on the subject of Web 2.0 and Social Networking. Andy gave me a preview of his talk in the email interview reproduced below.

JS: Why should people who care about Joomla also care about Web 2.0 and social networking?

AA: Joomla Chicago members have all decided to participate in Web 2.0

The web is all about interaction, and the next monthly meeting of Joomla Chicago is all about how to put social networking and Web 2.0 together with Joomla.

Will you do something to help make that discussion as valuable as possible? Please respond to this blog post with comments about what works best for you. What types of social networking do you engage in? And also -- and this is the hard part

Now that the economy is giving everybody the jitters, we at Arc Technology Group are seeing a big opportunity to help our clients - including many new clients.

In a nutshell, everybody is worrying about where future revenues are going to come from while, at the same time, clamping down on advertising spending.

Our message to them is: Now more than ever, you should be using the most

Ever notice how being unable to access something makes you all the more curious about it?

Nick Martinelli's post about online community best practices got me thinking . . . so I poked around a little and found out about a social networking guru named danah boyd (uncapitalized is the way she does it), and I got interested in some of the things she's said about the differences between MySpace

Found another great article that I'd like to share with everyone. This article is about 12 best practices for customer driven online communities. What the author talks about really makes since and can apply to many businesses. Are you a company that sells a widget? Any easy way to build buzz and customer interest is to create a site or section of an existing site that will let other widget fans

Hey Joomla Chicago readers. A friend sent me a link to a great article about leading CMS platforms for creating online communities. Joomla was praised very highly and given the #1 slot, with Drupal a mean #2.

The article has some interesting points about membership lifecycles and Web 2.0 sites. This would be a great resource to share with your clients as well.

 Enjoy!

Ten leading platforms for