Michael Russell
Australia
A Joomla hobbyist and former member of the Kunena community for more than 8 years—a substantial contributor to the original Kunena documentation project with over twenty thousand messages posted at the Kunena forum. In a nutshell, his career in Information Technology spans over 40 years, nearly all of that working in various Australian Government departments and agencies. For the last 15 years of that time, he’s had a keen interest in developing intranet sites and this naturally evolved into the Internet space. His experience covered most activities in the IT field: systems analysis and design, programming, testing, project management, customer relationship management, knowledge management—you name it and he’s probably had something to do with it (or he managed teams of people who had the subject-matter skills). He retired from the workforce in January 2007 and, if he thought he was busy when he was working, he’s been busier now than ever—mostly he’s busy having a great time! When he’s not thinking about world events, Australian politics or making sure he’s not far away from coffee, Michael is involved in helping people make the best use of Joomla. Formerly one of the site administrators of Joomla! Australia.
My introduction to Joomla was coincidental with two things that occurred in my life in 2007: (a) I had just retired from the workforce and I was looking for a way to keep abreast of developments in the IT space and have a worthwhile hobby and (b) I was building a website for a small internet community (a couple of hundred people) and I was looking for a forum product that I could use with that activity. It was my brother who introduced me to Joomla—when I heard the name I asked, "What's that? Some new-fangled type of cheese?"
After spending a day talking things over I headed back home determined to find out more about this Joomla thing. First thing I did was to scout around for some books on the subject. I found Dan Rahmel's book Beginning Joomla!, did the research to obtain a domain name and webhosting provider and, within a short space of time, I made a ham-fisted job of building my first Joomla website.
For the forum product I found something called Fireboard which then transformed into Kunena. A few hundred websites later, several more books added to my library, tens of thousands of hours participating in discussions with fellow Joomlers and tens of thousands of forum posts, I've come a long way (I think).
Most people will recognise me by my forum handle: sozzled.
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