The first Italian mamboday was finally held and it was a great success.
The Italian Community and more specifically the people from supportomambo.it, criai.it and equal.it, organized the first Italian Mamboday and put the basis for a larger and aware use of Mambo.

Contradicting its name, the two-day event started on November 4th and it has seen more than 150 people arrived from almost every part of the country and interested in having news, sharing information, attending workshops, participate to passionate discussions and, last but not least, meet the friends known only on the forum.
The official beginning was at 9.30 with the welcome given by Prof. Giorgio Ventre, president of CRIAI, the research center of computer science and applications which offered us the hall and the structures to organize the meeting.

After some short salutations of the organizing committee here represented by Marcello Esposito (CRIAI.it), Giorgio Nordo (equal.it) and Marco Rossi (supportomambo.it), the works started with a very sharp and detailed overview of the accessibility problems for the web sites of the public administrations, illustrating the reasons, the “state of the art”, the law requirements and the possible panorama for a full application.

Another stimulating conference was given by Vittorio Pagani from CNIPA, the government center for the computer diffusion in the public administration (www.cnipa.it): He explained the growing interest of the italian government towards the Open Source not only as a simple use of software but also as a positive model of cooperative work and illustrated strategies and future targets with many concrete examples.
The following talk was given by Alessandro Marinacci who presented a very detailed overview of the accessibility prolems for the web sites of the public administrations. Many concrete case studies demonstrated that Mambo is the key product for full accessibility complaints that now are also required from a recent Italian law.

The school are an important branch of the public administration and they deserve a special attention in building accessible web sites. This was the key point of talk given by Marco Rossi (known as Mac in the Italian forum) which presented a very nice example of an accessible (and usable) portal that he and some other member of the community are realizing with Mambo, strictly cooperation with some high school professors (Severino Bigi, Francesca Campora and Valeria Raimondi) and a group of teenager students.

Marcello Esposito (known as supix) concluded the accessibility theme with his delicious talk about the importance of accessible e-learning platforms that are easily integrated with Mambo.

After this part, it was time for the lunch offered by the organizing committee. Also, this break was used by many people for intensive discussions about Mambo and to create new personal contacts.

The afternoon works, started with an interesting seminary given by Ferruccio Lindaver (known as ferruccio in the Italian forum) who presented a relevant case study concerning the transformation of the static site of a big company in a dynamic portal rich of features and functions. As concrete proof of the extreme scalabilty of Mambo.

The following talk given by Gabriele Barbato (of SSC, Pirelli & Telecom group), witnessed that some unique Mambo characteristics are particularly appreciated also in big companies that could be instead oriented towards some commercial CMS.

The last seminar of the first day was given by Roberto D’Alessio (aka ThePrincy) who presented a virtual walk around VirtueMart, the porting for Mambo of the popular open source e-commerce solution. In less than 50 minutes, he showed the main steps necessary for installing, correctly configuring and using this nice but complex software,
In the evening, many members met in Naples for the MamboDinner that was organized in a typical restaurant along the seaside, just in front of the famous “Castel dell’Ovo”. It was a good occasion to know better many friends, to discuss a little about Mambo, to joke and to eat many fantastic dishes.

The second day had a more technical taste and it was mainly devoted to developers, webdesigner and professional users. It started with some short salutations by Marcello Esposito (supix), Marco Rossi (Mac) and Giorgio Nordo (gin) who invited the participants to become active members of the foundation.

Martin Brampton, the leader of the Core Dev Team, given an interesting and long waited talk about the “Future Mambo”. After, a brief but sharp description of the recent events occurred to the Mambo community and of the role of the Mambo Foundation, Martin gave and extensive description of the organization of the new team and of the future trend of Mambo expected for the short and long period. In particular he announced that features as respect to accessibility standards, SEF improvement, group permissions and nested content folders are planned to be realized in a near future while some other features as database portability, multisite administration will be part of the next development step. Martin's presentation was greatly appreciated and it continuated with a long and enthusiastic questions session.

After another rich coffee break, Ferruccio Lindaver (aka ferruccio) gave a very nice seminar about the techniques for creating a simple but clean and accessible template for Mambo based on a careful use of CSS.

After another lunch offered by the organizers, the afternoon session started with Marcello Esposito (supix) which concentrated in less than one hour a very didactic course on writing components. It was a clear and step-by-step explanation that stimulated many people.

The following seminar was given by Giorgio Nordo, the only Italian person admitted to the Core Dev Team. He presented a very clear and step-by-step course on writing modules and mambots. Although the short time, with the help of a couple of concrete examples, he showed the general organization of the code, the use of the parameters and some useful programming trick. These two seminaries are really two mini intensive courses to mambo programming and for such a reason, the respective videos will be soon available on the mamboday site (www.mamboday.it) together with the slides, the source code and all the stuff uses for these and the other presentations.

The following talk was given again by Giorgio Nordo (because a last minute substitution) and it concerned MambelFish, the optimal solution to transform Mambo in a complete multilanguage site. Such a component (now at the version 1.5) is erroneously considered complicated and difficult to configure but Nordo, shortly showed how to easily install and configure, how to insert translations and how to extend ithe translations to new components and modules in order to get the full potential from its use.

The last talk was given by Marina Perotta (aka maresole), a journalist which adopted Mambo and some optimized modules for some complex online journals. Another proof of the extreme flexibility and power of Mambo for professional use.

At 6.30 pm of the second day, the first Italian mamboday was officially closed but we remain with some authoritative printed comments (one for all, the excellent full page article published by Tiziana Cozzi on Repubblica, the most prestigious and diffused newspaper) and the fantastic feeling to have realized something nice and useful, although the difficulties and the troubles that more or less naturally, arose.

It was a fantastic experience for us, an experience that we absolutely want to repeat and for such a reason we are looking forward to see you the next year for the second Italian Mamboday.

Stay tuned!