Here's what it looks like:

NuPlone is now part of the Plone 3.0 bundle, which should hit beta in the next few days.  It's still very much a work in progress -- there's a lot of detail work left to do, but the broad themes are pretty clear.

It's very clean, modern and subdued -- just like Plone itself.  Lots of whitespace to let things breathe.  Most of the rule lines are gone.  Things flow more smoothly.  Small splashes of color help important things stand out.  Arial is now the default body font, and Georgia/Times New Roman for the headlines. 

I like it a lot -- it's very "now" looking without indulging in "Web 2.0" design cliches.  I expect that it will be widely emulated, just like Plone 2.x's default theme.

Update: While NuPlone will definitely be bundled with Plone 3.0, release manager Wichert Akkerman hasn't yet decided whether it will be the default theme or simply an option. 

On Plone-users, Steve Nesbitt asks a popular question:

Can anyone provide a definitive statement of what the future looks like for calendaring solutions in Plone 2.5.x?

Looking at Plone Products I see a number of calendaring products - CalCMF, Calendaring, CalViews, Dateable, Plone4Artists, PloneiCalendar.

Some of these seem to be combinations of one another - CalCMF, Dateable.

Others like PloneioCalendar and Calendaring appear to be fairly old based on Plone 2.1 or with no activity for the past year.

Others look very new with nothing released - Dateable, CalPlone.

Now choice is great, but chaos and utter lack of clarity - at least to me - ain't so hot.

So which of these have a future and which don't? Where is the community heading on this?

Lennart Regebro replies:

• CalCMF, Plone4ArtistsCalendar and Dateable have a future
• The community seems to be coalescing around Dateable, but it isn't yet release ready.

The next few days are going to be a critical period for Plone 3.0 development work.

Hot on the heels of last week's Plone 3.0 Alpha 2 release comes the Baarn UI Sprint 2007.  An all-star team of 25 Plonistas has gathered in Baarn, Netherlands for a four-day sprint to polish up the user interface for the forthcoming final release of Plone 3.0.

Limi reports that first day progress was good.  They've got a pretty impressive list of tasks laid out and teams of folks assigned to each major task area.  If you're interested in following their progress up-close you can check out the ticket tracker for the UI sprint.

It's great to see UI issues getting this kind of intensive attention from such a large and talented team of programmers and designers.  It's also great to see sprints happening in conjunction with the Plone release calendar.  I'm really excited to see what emerges over the next few days.

If you've ever wondered where to find Plone Foundation board meeting minutes, wonder no more.  They are regularly posted online, and you can subscribe via RSS.

One thing the board might consider doing to increase transparency is to send out a brief note to the Membership email list when new minutes are posted. 

Martin Aspeli recently wrote to the plone-users email list:

It's recently come to my attention that some people are confused about
the role of Zope 3 in relation to Plone 3 and beyond.

The position is summarised here (and has been for a while):

http://plone.org/documentation/faq/zope-3-and-plone

The upshot is that Plone 3 will categorically not run on the Zope 3
application server. To move Plone to be a pure Zope 3 application would
require an almost complete rewrite, and there still technologies we
depend on from the Zope 2 world that have no Zope 3 equivalent (yet).

We are committed to backward compatibility and forward migration paths.
All the core developers have applications deployed on the existing
code-base, and no desire to see every add-on product or customisation
break when moving to Plone 3 (or 3.5 or 4 or 5). We do not want every
existing developer to have to learn a completely new set of technologies.

What is also categorically true is that Zope 3 is becoming more and more
important in our world. Zope 3 can be seen as a library of small
re-usable components. The "Zope 3 application server" (as a direct
competitor to the Zope 2 application server) is but one configuration of
these components. Since Zope 2.8 (and Plone 2.5) these have been usable
inside Zope 2 via an integration component called Five. In a sense, Zope
2 and Zope 3 are converging as some of Zope 2's internals are improved
by borrowing technology from Zope 3. Full convergence is still a long,
long way away, though.

In Plone 3.0, almost every new feature uses Zope 3 development patterns
and components (where appropriate). This is a Good Thing. It has made us
more productive, made Plone development more fun, and made us better
able to re-use technologies that we didn't have to (re-)invent
ourselves. Developers who've yet to learn about Zope 3: we can highly
recommend that you dip your toe in the water - if anything, you will
probably find it fun.

We hope this clears things up for those who were confused or may have
heard erroneously that Plone 3 would run on Zope 3 only. This has never
been in the plan. Plone 3 will be a great improvement over Plone 2.x,
but it is more of a rapid evolution than a complete revolution.

Please do respond to the plone-user mailing list (only) if you have any
questions.

Regards,
Martin and the Framework Team

Joel Burton has announced his first three Plone Bootcamp training courses of 2007.  They are:

• Bangalore, India: March 12-16
• Seattle, WA: April 9-13
• Houston, TX: April 16-20

At $450 for a full week of world-class training, it's not only one of the best ways to get up to speed on using and customizing Plone, it's also a tremendous bargain.

I'm really looking forward to welcoming Joel back to Seattle.

"Collaboration via the net does not necessarily require monolithic, expensive tool suites that aim to do everything under one umbrella. We will share and demonstrate the use of readily available, mostly free, discrete sets of "small" and "loosely joined" technologies - weblogs, wikis, instant messaging, audio/video chat. The loose joining means that how they are connected are not necessarily in the programming of the software, but the ways people can use them in a social context that is an environment of dynamic, changing relationships and connections, rather than the rigid, limited ones defined by computer code."

EMERGING TECHNOLOGIES Tag Clouds in the Blogosphere: Electronic Literacy and Social Networking

So what does this mean for the other sectors where Plone operates? I have been hanging out in Drupal land lately, and for a variety of reasons I don't consider that platform to be a serious threat to Plone, in the long term (more on that in another post).

On the other hand, and this might raise some eyebrows, folks maybe should take a peek at Gallery 2.2 . Yeah, its in php, and they don't have enough unit tests, but it does a really nice job of solving the "bucket" problem - that is, easily publishing a repository of digital assets on the web. Their next version will handle audio and video files, and the software is popular enough that people have built desktop clients for iPhoto and Picassa. They have a good story for multi-site installations, upgrades, and even a web based mechanism for upgrading plugins. Just imagine mashing up this backend store with a social-networking tool like elgg. Maybe you could create complex and elaborate views of your data with widgets coming out of the simile project (exhibit and timeline, in particular). You might even be able to use a visual programming tool, like Yahoo's pipes or IBM's QEDWiki to assemble this application.

The real threat here isn't Gallery. Its the loosely-joined, disconnected applications that are becoming connected through the component architecture of HTTP itself (plus a few decent patterns and standards). No one wants to be trapped in a silo, not even if its decked out with hardwood floors, leather furniture, and a marble mantle.

Plone can be a major provider in this hub of communications, maybe even sometimes at the center. But we do need to try to anticipate the future role of the CMS in the face of asymmetric competition.

As Laura Trippi once put it, Content Management Systems like Plone, are turning content produces into coders, and vice versa. We're creating monsters, and they might soon be outgrowing the tools they were weaned on.

(thanks to Biella for the video reference and the critical commentary).

We all had a great time at the most excellent Plone Conference 2006 in Seattle, Washington, USA. Many thanks to Jon, Andrew and all the others that helped make this happen. Where will the Plone conference be in 2007? The Plone Foundation hereby invites potential hosts for the Plone Conference 2007. Who will follow in the footsteps of Alan, Robert, Jon and all their associates that have given us these great events the last years?

This is a call for legitimate offers for hosting. Don't volunteer someone else to run the conference in the luxurious resort destination of your choice. ;)  Suggestions for someone else to do the hosting is best sent to them directly, not to the Plone Foundation.

Arranging the Plone Conference is no small task, so organizational experience is preferred. Also, it should be organized in a part of the world that is easy to get to for most of the Plone developers if it is going to be as much of a success as the previous ones. This does not necessarily mean Europe or the USA, but it should be near a major hub of transportation.

The arrangers of a Plone Conference have the responsibility of getting sponsors to help get the talk and tutorial speakers to the conference, make sure everyone gets food, and making sure everything proceeds according to plans.

The Plone Foundation will offer advice and recommendations in addition to officially recognizing the event, but does not have the capacity to get directly involved with the actual organizational issues - so be prepared to work as an independent unit if you want to organize the conference.

If you have a company or a band of volunteers that are interested in organizing the main Plone event in 2007, Plone Foundation would like to hear from you. Please include details about your effort, proposed location and any former experience in organizing such events.

Proposals will be accepted for 3 weeks from now, within the end of February 28.

The process further will be:

Feb 28   - All proposals due
March 5  - Proposals narrowed to a manageable list of finalists, usually three. Voting begins. Foundation members all get a vote among the list of finalists.
March 9  - Voting ends
March 10 - Winner announced.

If you are interested in submitting a proposal, make sure to at least address the guidelines listed on plone.org. http://plone.org/events/conferences/guidelines/  .Format your proposal in readable plain text (no attachments please), and email it to Geir Bækholt, baekholt@plonesolutions.com

For information on the previous Plone conferences, please see the conference section. http://plone.org/events/conferences/

Congratulations to the Lovely Systems crew on yet another fun, productive and successful Snow Sprint.

(Photo by Mr. Topf)