By Cyril Reze on 2026-07-31 11:17 in Marketing Team

Date: 23 July 2026 - 18:00-20:00 CEST (4:00pm - 6:00pm UTC) 
Attendees: Cyril Rezé, Emmanuel Lemor (part 1), Mike Kritzer, Nadja Lamisch. 
Guest: Elisa Foltyn, President OSM (part 1: sponsoring) 

 

Sponsorship Strategy and Revenue Diversification

• State of the sponsoring
  • Current ad partner generating low income, likely replaceable
  • Sponsors listed on the site is not up-to-date (Elisa contacted all the past sponsors on the list to revive their sponsorship)
• Our current sponsorship offers are neither attractive nor prominently displayed.
• Affiliate programs discussed as alternative revenue stream
  • ScalaHosting partnership model: subdomain, content placement, commission per contract sold
  • Caution on brand-unsafe affiliates
• Multiple hosting sponsors currently: Rochen, ScalaHosting, Cloud Access
  • Consensus: focus on diversifying beyond hosting
  • Logo-only listings should be cleaned up or converted to paid tiers
• Sponsorship tiers proposed: Gold, Bronze, logo-only paid listings
• “Pay with time” model floated: agencies contribute staff days instead of cash
• Capital team relaunched to pursue corporate sponsors
  • Target: corporations actively using Joomla
  • Also targeting Open Source Program Offices (OSPOs) in academia and large companies
  • Next capital team meeting: Monday 4PM CEST, channel: #od-capital

 

Sponsorship Package and Stats Gap

• A sponsor interested in sponsoring but deal stalled: no visitor stats, newsletter numbers, or magazine metrics to share
• Sponsoring page currently mixes corporate sponsors and supporter club on one page, needs separation
• Cyril’s JWC sponsorship document is praised as a model: Elisa and the Marketing team would like a compiled version adapted for the website.
• Sponsoring page redesign to clearly separate corporate sponsors from supporter club
• Elisa is working on a proposal for a sponsorship page.

 

Community Supporter Club and Donations

• Current donation system: small amounts via GitHub and PayPal, hard to find, inconsistent pricing ($5 vs. $10 discrepancy recently fixed)
• Goal: unify into one simple system with better design, Wikipedia-style (always accessible, not intrusive)
• Supporter Club would offer a badge and recognition; free donations kept alongside it
• GitHub credit card rejections reported by at least one would-be donor

 

Website Redesign Priorities

• Marketing team leading joomla.org redesign with a sponsor/advertising-first perspective
• Key pages prioritized: homepage, download page, sponsors page, donate page
  • Download page: confusing, too many CTAs, download count from API is broken (missing Joomla 4 and 6 data)
  • “Heartbeat” donation concept proposed: animated counter that rises with donations (by a volunteer designer)
  • Elisa is working on a proposal for the downloads page.
• Miro site structure created (with AI assistance) by Josean, well-received
• Redesign mantra: simplify
  • Proposed consolidation: trademark, certification, Joomla 4/5/20th-anniversary sites all candidates for removal or redirect
  • Wildcard redirect strategy discussed: magazine.joomla.org/* → joomla.org/magazine/*
  • Benjamin building an auto-redirect plugin for Joomla core (alias/menu changes trigger redirects automatically)
• Navigation/menu structure still being debated
  • Four main sites proposed: Joomla.org, Community, Developer, Resources
  • CDN-based approach discussed for syncing menus across subsites

 

Trademark and Volunteer Coordination Issues

• Trademark team critically understaffed: Claire is the sole active member
• Some contact emails sent to joomla.org sites go unanswered
• Contradictory information appears from one page to another.
• Impact: sponsors, extension developers, and companies can’t get logo/usage guidance
• Broader pattern: any contact email on the website must have someone actively monitoring it
• Proposed: migrate trademark content to main site if no one can maintain a standalone site
• Social media and marketing merger (6 months ago) cited as a positive model for team consolidation
• Volunteer report (AI-generated from meeting reports): 82 volunteers total, heavy team overlap
  • Some teams are 80-100% the same people
  • Proposal: unify or sunset redundant teams

 

Social Media Tooling Transition

• SocialPilot replacing Hootsuite; transition was rocky
  • Richard connected only 3 accounts; others lacked permissions
  • Trial expired unexpectedly, causing a day of lost posting access
  • Ufuk confirmed SocialPilot license now paid
  • As of the publication date of this report, SocialPilot is operational, although we do not have access to the old post-editing interface—which is more advanced than the new one (based on a comparison with the interface of Louise's own account, which offers more features via the old editor). It is reasonable to expect SocialPilot to improve the new version by drawing on features from the old one.
• SocialPilot issues: Instagram/Threads multi-account login conflicts; Bluesky reconnection required
  • Bluesky issue likely caused by using default handle instead of domain-based handle
• Monday meeting: Louise to demo SocialPilot best practices (link-in-first-comment strategy, platform-specific rules)
• Platform link visibility rules discussed:
  • X/Twitter and Facebook penalize posts with links (reduce reach)
  • Bluesky: no penalty for links
  • Instagram: links in posts are not clickable; first-comment strategy may still apply

 

Canva Templates and Content Workflow

• Cyril created a new Canva template (shared after meeting); goal is one consistent look across all posts
• Safe-zone guide for image text in progress for post visuals, banner, avatar
• Plan: onboarding PDF for new social/marketing volunteers covering post format, visual sizes, safe zones, best practices
• Collaborative working-session model proposed: small groups working live on shared screens (precedent from 2016 content cleanup sprint)

 

JWC and Future Event Model

• JWC ticket sales very low; publishing the programme had no impact
• German-language outreach sent to explain bilingual tracks (2 German, 2 English), still no significant uptake
• Virtual/streaming option cancelled: too much work, not enough capacity, low demand (only 4-5 video tickets sold historically)
• Broader shift discussed: World Conference model may be obsolete
  • J Days (regional, ~150 attendees last year) outperforming JWC
  • Proposal: World Conference goes fully virtual; J Days become the in-person community gatherings
  • Economic context: flights, hotels, and tickets too expensive post-COVID; war in Ukraine and global inflation cited
• JWC “Make It Happen” sessions planned: groups of 6-10 working on non-code tasks
  • Candidates: sponsorship concept and document, social media templates, website content review
  • Sigrid preparing a leadership document for teams to submit task ideas

 

Next Steps

• Recreate today's missed social post (Cyril)
  Post today after the meeting to avoid the gap from the SocialPilot transition.

• Publish the call for RFP post tomorrow (Nadja)
  Nadja confirmed she can handle this tomorrow morning.

• Adapt JWC sponsorship document into a shorter sponsor package (Cyril)
  Elisa and team want a condensed version for the joomla.org sponsors page.

• Separate corporate sponsors and supporter club onto distinct pages
  The current single page is confusing; needs to be split before outreach resumes (community site).

• Gather website stats for sponsor outreach
  User Centrics deal is stalled without magazine visitor counts, newsletter volume, and engagement figures.

• Investigate BuiltWith paid plan for Joomla site lead list
  Could identify corporate Joomla users to target for sponsorship; one sponsor could offset the subscription cost.

• Share download page heartbeat/glass concept in Figma
  Send the proposal so it can be incorporated into the overall redesign concept.

• Submit Make It Happen session ideas to Nadja via Mattermost
  Proposed sessions: sponsorship concept, social media templates, website content review.