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Would there be any interest in creating a Joomla User Group in South Central Pennsylvania? If the group covered Harrisburg, Lancaster, Lebanon, and Reading a good place to meet would be Lebanon which is in the center. If York was included, Lancaster might be a better meeting place.

I run several sites which use Joomla 1.5.

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John in Lebanon, PA

Greetings John:

I'm smiling because I see you are in Lebanon, PA. I lived in Womelsdorf for around a decade, and even when I moved (we are now in Lancaster county) visit Lebanon on and off (last time was trying to get into the town hall meeting with Senator Specter and failing to get in).

While I'm not a Joomla developer (my background and current work is in security and server administration), I would be interested in a group depending on location along with date/time (I'm on call 24x7).

Lancaster county -- Lancaster, Denver, Ephrata, Adamstown, Reinholds, Bowmansville, New Holland, etc. -- would probably work best (but I'm biased). Reading in the areas of Wyomissing, West Reading, Sinking Spring, and Shillington might work too. I would recommend though that for either Reading or Lancaster to stay away from pure downtown (some areas are not that nice to walk in the dark if you know what I mean).

http://www.lancasterchamber.com/ does have a number of web designers for which at least two use Joomla -- www.davenportdesign.net and axiomwebworks.com (the chamber may have others, but these are two that I know work in Joomla). I would think there are Joomla designers / developers in the Berks County chamber as well.

From the little I know about the designers in either chamber, I would venture that they don't visit this forum often (at least I don't see them posting in the forum in any section... but then I don't live here <smile>). So it may pay to contact them individually outside the forum to see about interest levels.... unless the user group would be mainly individual admins, developers, designers... not sure (I apologize if I'm rambling).

Thank you.

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Peter M. Abraham
http://www.dynamicnet.net/ - Dynamic Net, Inc. - in business since June 1995; a PCI Compliant, managed hosting provider.

Peter I know what you mean about Lancaster downtown. I used to live in center city Lancaster back in the Seventies. I have also lived in Reading even earlier. I am not sure if there are even places to have meetings in center city Lancaster or Reading.

I did not get into the Specter meeting either. I live right around the corner from the HACC building where it was held. When I went the line was already around the block. They bussed in people to harangue him. I was lucky though. As a member of the local Democratic party I was invited to a private meeting with Senator Specter before he went to the public meeting. I have met both Specter and Sestak and still have not decided who to support. I told both of them I will decide based on how they vote.

Back to a Joomla group. I will keep you in mind. I want to see where the interest is. If it is centered around Reading, Lebanon, and Lancaster then Ephrata would be a good choice.

I have studied computer programming in the past but am not a professional. I develop web sites for our political candidates and am interested in learning how to do thing more quickly and professionally. I have used Drupal but find Joomla 1.5 much more useful.

If you know of anyone else have them add their names or get in touch with me.

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John in Lebanon, PA

Greetings:

I didn't know much about Sestak until he had a town hall meeting that I watched on TV. Based on how he ran it, he gained my respect.

While I've not worked with Drupal or Joomla from a developer, programmer, designer end.. I've worked with both on installations and upgrades along with other system administrator tasks. Joomla just comes across as being cleaner (not by leaps and bounds, but just enough).

Please do keep my name in mind.

I'll point others to this forum post as they come up.

Thank you.

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Peter M. Abraham
http://www.dynamicnet.net/ - Dynamic Net, Inc. - in business since June 1995; a PCI Compliant, managed hosting provider.

Since we have gotten several responses I will see if I can organize a meeting sometime early in 2010 to see if we can get something off the ground. Peter Burns, where are you located?

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John in Lebanon, PA

Heya all! I live in Marietta, west Lancaster County, and would be very interested in connecting with some Joomla developer types. I do most of my own work in WordPress but administer a Joomla site and would love to connect with Joomla folks locally. Have you already met? Definitely let me know! I'm also at