I spent the day in Building 43 at GooglePlex in Mountain View for the 2nd annual Joomla Day in the Bay Area. The fine folks with the Bay Area Joomla user's group put together an energetic unconference that helped users, administrators, and developers better understand how to use the open source software, Joomla.

I was delighted to see Ryan Ozimek of PICnet, Inc and Leslie Hawthorn of Google. Their contribution to the Joomla community is significant.

Thanks to Anthony Ferrara I learned how to create secure sites for all my open source software. He is a proponent of VPS (Virtual Private Servers) and recommended a few VPS providers that offer their services at reasonable prices (send me an email if you want more info).

At the end of the day I had collected these extension recommendations:

• DOCman
• Expose 4
• Rok Bridge
• DT Register
• Bookmarks
• Xmap

I also learned from the participants that there are a few extensions that I should avoid. They are:

• Community Builder
• sh404SEF

The only criticism I have for the unconference is that it was not an inclusive event. If you don't know what I mean, please ask!