Recession Or Not, You've Got To Keep Up.

Written by John Coonen

Monday, 05 October 2009 17:54

"Stop Right Now!" Jump back for a few minutes with me, to the fall of 2007. Think back, before the US Presidential election, before July, 2008 when our oh-so-wise Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke proclaimed "Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae aren't in danger." Tap into those memory banks, before we knew the name Bernie Madoff and before we had first doubts about the future of Merrill Lynch.

Did you know before the crash, there were only 20 million US users were on FaceBook? Twitter was just getting out of the gate after a launch down at South By Southwest; Dries Buytaert had just attracted about $7 million US, back when a dollar was you know - a dollar (and not 65 cents) to ramp up Acquia.

Sure, the crash hit us all hard. A lot of folks thought innovation would suffer; that fear would drive away venture capitalists and investment in new technology; however, do your own mental inventory, and look at it with fresh, 20-20 eyes, and there's some great anecdotal evidence that we're in for a very interesting ride over the next few years, as the economy recoils and re-starts itself.

Back then, had anyone heard of a "Drupal-like" CCK for Joomla? Now there are four or five (K2, Zoo, SOBI2, etc);
Back in 2007, Magento was either a color or a comic strip character, but not a revolutionary Open Source E-Commerce solution;
WordPress was defiantly calling itself a blog (but we all knew where it was headed, and we knew the folks at WordPress knew too);

Now, there are over 5,000 new and updated apps, add-ons, plug-ins and modules for the Drupal-Joomla!-WordPress Community alone;
There are well over 5,000 new themes and templates to choose from - some with a whole new framework to build on;
Hundreds of new companies have launched in the CMS marketplace;
Forced to down-size, adapt and survive, Enterprises are taking a stake in more efficient proprietary and Open Source technologies, retrenching for the future

With that in mind, it's even more important now to stay informed.

Not necessarily on the latest technologies, but the relevant technologies. With thousands of upgrades, extensions, modules, plug-ins, templates, themes, themelets, widgets, doo-dads and whatchamajiggers to choose from in the Joomla!-Drupal-WordPress CMS Community alone, there's just no possible way to wade through it all. So, it's more important than ever for you to find a resource (like CMS Expo) to help you determine and decide what's relevant and what's fluff; who's credible and who's full of consultantspeak; what's coming and what's just vapor; what's relevant and what's just plain useless.

It was only two short years ago when Ben Bernanke - just two days into his appointed position - opened his mouth and claimed Fannie May and Freddie Mac were not in danger. Since then, the collapse of the US economy and subsequent worldwide recession have wiped plenty of businesses from the face of the earth; but like a forest fire clears away the canopy for seedlings planted years before, so too go the seeds of innovation.

Now we've witnessed about two years of scorched earth, yet the CMS and Social Media worlds continue to grow (with no bail-out, or Cash For Clunkers program either). That's good news (to simply survive). But the great news is, it's been spurred not by supply, but by good, old-fashioned demand. Now ain't that refreshing?

This spring, it just may be the perfect time to get face-to-face with some of the world's best and brightest to help keep you on the best path.