I'm excited to read that the crew at Enfold are organizing Ploneability Higher Ed, a free, one-day event in Houston, Texas, on November 8th that will introduce and showcase Plone for the academic sector. 

Ploneability Higher Ed is a one-day conference for college and university Web content managers, developers and site administrators to connect and share success stories involving Plone, the open-source content management system.

• Alan Runyan, Plone project cofounder, on what’s next in open-source content management
• Kurt Bendl on the University of Louisville’s Plone rollout (more than 150 sites and counting), which has produced benefits for content managers, marketing and IT
• Christian Vinten-Johansen and Mike Halm on Penn State’s WebLion, a customized version of Plone plus consulting, development and training services
• Cameron Cooper on Connexions, the collaborative, Plone-powered course materials repository that was launched at Rice University and has received substantial news media attention
• Josten Ma on how nearly 40 Plone sites and a custom skinning product support the University of Houston’s effort to reach the top tier of U.S. research institutions

Ploneability Higher Ed is free, but seating is limited.

In addition, there will be two related events, on the day before and after.

Full details are here.

We had 23 participants from all over the country, including two European sprinters from Berlin and Finland.

One of the sprinters was Rocky Burt, the lead developer of the Plone4Artists products. Hailing from Canada, Rocky conducted two days of Zope 3 training right before the sprint.

If you missed the course in Boston, you're in luck! This unique class Zope 3 Training for Plone Developers will also be offered again right before the Plone Conference in Naples.

There were also 8 remote sprinters from far away places such as Japan, Australia, Italy and Switzerland, who tuned into the live video stream and collaborated via the #plone4artists IRC chat channel. See the full list of participants and photos from the event.

The focus of the sprint was to improve the multimedia capabilities of Plone, and in particular to fix bugs and prepare the Plone4Artists suite of products for a new release.

I'm happy to report that thanks to the hard work of the sprinters, we successfully made new releases of many Plone4Artists products: Plone4ArtistsAudio, Plone4ArtistsVideo, Plone4ArtistsSite, Plone4ArtistsCalendar, etc.

Sprint reports

There were several teams dedicated to working on various topics including the Plone4Artists products as well as syndication, licensing, RESTful interfaces and iPlone, an iPhone optimized theme for Plone.

• Audio
  
• Video
  
• Calendar
  
• Uploading
• Large files
  
• Syndication
  
• Licensing
  
• RESTful interfaces
  
• iPlone

In the press

There was a journalist from IDG who attended the sprint, and published two articles about the event which appeared in several IDG publications.

LinuxWorld and InfoWorld magazine articles about the Plone4Artists sprint:

"Sprinting to create open-source content management"

"You're never alone with Plone"

Screencasts

Jonathan Lewis made an excellent screencast introduction to the Plone4ArtistsAudio product Thanks Jonathan! We still need screencasts for the calendar and video products if you'd like to help out.

Online Demo

If you want to try out the Plone4Artists products but don't have time to install them yourself, you can demo them on the http://plone4artists.com site. Please report any bugs you find to the trackers!

Want to help?

There are many ways to get involved in the project, even if you are not a developer. We need you to download the products and test them out, reporting any bugs that you find to the issue trackers.

Join the mailing list and ask questions in the #plone4artists IRC channel. We can always use help in writing documentation and making screencasts - short videos which demonstrate the software's functionality.

Lightning talks

There were a number of very interesting lightning talks given at the sprint. These have been video recorded and will be made available in the near future. Subscribe to the Plone4Artists mailing list to be notified when they are published.

Sponsors

Many thanks to our sponsors without whom this sprint would not have been possible: Christian Science Monitor, The Nature Conservancy, Oxfam America, Friends of the Earth International, Potsdam Institute for Climate Impact Research, New England Wildflower Society, Abstract Edge and Jazkarta. ShinyWhiteBox.com also donated two licenses for its excellent iShowU software for making screencasts.

If your organization is using the Plone4Artists products, please consider sponsoring the Plone4Artists project. Your financial contribution makes it possible to continue developing the products and having sprints to grow the community.

The Future

We are planning to continue the work at the post-conference sprint in Naples. There will be a multimedia track and we hope to get 1.0 final versions of all the products out at that time.

We are also working on some new products (Plone4ArtistsPodcast, ContentTagging, Plone4ArtistsRevverVideo, Plone4ArtistsImage, Plone4ArtistsTheme), which you can read about on the Plone4Artists products release announcement.

And we are working on a buildout to make it easier to install and setup a Plone4Artists site.

Thanks again to all of the sprinters who came to Boston and made the sprint a success!

-Nate

The word from Wichert Akkerman, Plone 3.0 Release Manager is out: Plone 3.0 has been tagged, installers are being built over the weekend, and Plone will be formally released on Tuesday, August 21st!

Plone 3.0 is a big release, perhaps the most ambitious Plone release ever, the product of over a year of work from the Plone team. For a quick overview of the highlights, see "8 Really Cool Things About Plone 3.0" which I wrote a few weeks back.  Alex Limi has also written more in-depth information on Plone 3.0's features.  Long story short: it will blow your socks off. :-)

Congraluations Wichert, Martin, Alex, Hanno, and to the hundreds of other folks who have helped deliver Plone 3.0 to the world.  I'm looking forward to the honor of introducing Plone 3.0 with Martin and Wichert at Plone Conference 2007 in Naples this October.

The Regional Free Software Conference takes place August 7-11 in Cordoba, Argentina.http://jornadas.grulic.org.ar/7/ The conference themes are Business, Society, and Technology. Plone had a strong showing, and has 12 sessions! Everything from Plone 3, PloneGov, to Plone performance and product development.  Check out the full program of Plone, Zope, and Python sessions.

Other interesting-sounding talks include the "Django vs Zope 3 deathmatch", an appearance from Grok, and programming for One Laptop Per Child.

Congrats to the Plone Conosur (or Plonosur, as I like to call them :) community for showing such a strong presence of Plone and Zope in the region! I know several of the people involved in organizing the event (and used to live in Cordoba) and really look forward to participating at the event!

The Plone Conference 2007 crew at Abstract Open Solutions have been flying a bit below the radar the past few weeks, but there's been a ton of action in the past few days...

Plone Conference 2007 registration is now open.  October feels like a long time from now, but we sold out last year, and Plone is huge in Europe.  So get yourself signed up now.

The call for session proposals is open! Session proposals are due July 23rd.  You absolutely do not have to be a Plone expert to present or lead a session -- last year's most popular sessions were case studies from "just plain folks" who had led a Plone project in their organization.  If you're a Plone integrator or consultant, come teach us about a trick or technique something that you've found useful in your work.  Stuck for ideas?  The organizers have got a few ideas for you.

Finally, and perhaps most excitingly, registration for the pre-conference training classes is open!  Four of my most favorite Plonistas, Joel Burton, Darci Hanning, Rocky Burt and my ONE/Northwest colleague Veda Williams are each teaching a low-cost two-day class right before the conference.  These classes made the conference for a lot of folks, and they were a great way for Plone newbies (and experts!) to get up to speed and hit the conference running.  Plus, they were a heck of a lot of fun. 

See you in Napoli in the fall!

The Plone Conference 2007 team has opened the call for proposals for Plone Conference 2007. You've got until July 23rd (soon!) to submit a proposal for a session you'd like to lead.

Vincenzo and crew have a great list of criteria by which sessions will be evaluated, and some excellent suggestions for sessions they'd like to see proposed if you're looking for ideas. 

... for selling out 125 seats for Joomla!Day West, to be held May 12-13 at Google HQ in just a few days.  Looks like it's going to be "un-conference" (e.g. community-organized sessions) style.

Who is going to step up and organize a North America Plone Symposium this year?  I'm guessing we could get space at Google. ;-)

Vincenzo Barone and the rest of the Plone Conference 2007 team are eager for your input as they start planning the agenda for this fall's conference in Naples, Italy. 

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.asp?u=16563684237

(They've also announced the dates: October 10-12, with pre-conference trainings on October 8-9 and a post-conference sprint October 13-15.)

It's official. By vote of the Plone Foundation membership, Plone Conference 2007 will be held in Naples, Italy, and hosted by Abstract & Redomino. Date TBA, but expect sometime in late September or October.

There were four excellent proposals submitted to host Plone Conference 2007.

Plone Foundation members, don't forget to vote for your favorite by Wednesday, March 14, midnight GMT, by email to Paul Everritt (paul at agendaless.com)!

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/

Chris Calloway is once again organizing what sounds like a fantastic Plone eBoot Camp + Sprint.

The Triangle (NC) Zope and Python Users Group invites you to register for Camp 5
and the BBQ Sprint:

http://trizpug.org/boot-camp/camp5/

This is a Zope 3 boot camp followed by a Plone 3 sprint. The boot camp is taught
by Philipp von Weitershausen, author of Web Component Development with Zope 3.
The training has previously only been offered in Europe and is now available in
North America for the first time. The sprint includes several sponsored and
invited sprinters.

TriZPUG hopes you will participate in Camp 5 in Chapel Hill, NC.

Camp 5: Saturday March 10 - Tuesday March 13, 2007

BBQ Sprint: Wednesday March 14 - Saturday March 17, 2007

I'm fascinated to watch which Plone Conference 2006 videos are turning out to be the most popular.  (Wanna see the raw stats yourself?)

So far, our top 7 videos are:

1. Eben Moglen's Keynote -- with over 950 downloads (plus over 13,000 views on YouTube)
   
2. A Sneak Peek at Plone 3.0, Alexander Limi - 587 downloads
   
3. b-org: Creating Content Types the Plone 2.5 Way, Martin Aspeli - 233 downloads
   
4. Top 20 Plone Pitfalls -- And How To Avoid Them, Stefan Holek - 195 downloads
   
5. High Performance Plone, Joel Burton - 188 downloads
6. 100 Hours or Less: Creating a Scope of Work for a Simple Plone Website, Patrick Shaw - 187 downloads
   
7. Graduating from Spaghetti to Sushi: Plone for PHPers, Sean Kelly - 185 downloads
   

It's no surprise to see Eben and Alex's talks at the top of the pile.  Martin, Stefan and Joel are both well-known Plone community members, and they all gave bang-up presentations. 

It's particularly gratifying to see Patrick and Sean's talks rounding out the top 7, though.  Both Patrick and Sean are relative newcomers to the Plone community.  Both of their talks were relatively non-technical talks aimed at fellow Plone newbies.  I think we're seeing strong evidence here of a thirst for solid information aimed at the everyday concerns of people who are implementing Plone projects.

Last week's Plone Conference was truly phenomenal - provocative, intense, and fun (big thanks Jon and ONE/Northwest!).

One of the most amazing things I experienced last week was alluded to in Eben Moglen's keynote (to be posted soon)- the manner in which this community has managed to bring together people who don't ordinarily interact.

Throughout the breakout sessions, I continued to question dividing us up according to our respective vertical sectors - Corporate, Non-Profit, Educational, and Government. As I have begun to write about elsewhere, systems like Plone can help balance the flow of communication and power between people in a variety of situations and settings. Content, collaboration, and community are contexts which exist across sectors, and the tools we all need cross over as well (sometimes with slightly different tunings).

In many ways lumping together all the folks involved with education is odd. Universities are microcosms of cities, and their IT needs are as diverse as the the rest of the world. However, there are still structural and social similarities that form the basis for common language and culture. After engaging with my fellow educators a the educational panel session and the BOF session I understood the value of us sharing and strategizing, beyond just commiseration.

But through it all, there was one thing that united all of the different attendees - a piece of general purpose software called 'Plone'.

It is worth dwelling on this mixture of participants and the varying forces they apply to the software. Lessig and Benkler have both been writing a great deal about hybrid economies lately, trying to understand their rhythms, and how we might be able to design them to succeed. They have been writing generally about the "commercial economy" and the "second economy" (sharing, social production, etc), but the lessons may cross over directly to our community.

I realized in Seattle how beneficial diversity can be for software production.
Most of the consultants using Plone are there strictly for traditional market considerations - to make a profit. They are helping to keep the software honest. Unlike some other open source projects which exclusively service the educational world, Plone is not sheltered from the raw, harsh forces of the commercial market. This means that some of the people using Plone use it because it helps them get their jobs done efficiently. Others have called this "productivity arbitrage", and it is a concept that may hold the key to designing successful open source projects.

It is challenging to imagine working backwards and trying to design a software ecology which captures the hearts and minds of such a diverse following. No small task.

As Rheingold said "There's been an assumption that since communism failed, capitalism is triumphant, therefore humans have stopped evolving new systems for economic production." - Is Plone's ecology an example of one of these new systems, and if so, what are our distinguishing characteristics?

At Plone Conference 2006, Martin Aspeli led a workshop session entitled "Improving Plone's Add-on Products Story."  I think this may ultimately turn out to be one of the most important sessions from the whole conference in terms of its long-term positive impact on the community.

One of the coolest things about Plone is its library of over 400 add-on products.  It's one of the many signs of our community's vibrancy, talent and productivity.  Many add-on products are fantastic, and in fact ultimately get incorporated into the Plone core.  But, this sprawling effevescence of software also presents challenges.   Community-contributed software varies widely in quality.   Some of gets abandoned.  There are multiple tools for some common functions (e.g. blogging).  It's hard to know what to use, what to avoid, and what to jump in with and help.

While I couldn't attend the session (much to my regret), I was really pleased to see that they got out a bunch of notes, and also immediately formed a working group to carry the effort forward.  They're using OpenPlans.org to power a workspace, listserv, etc.

Check it out.  There are lots of ways to get involved for both technical and not-so-technical folks.

I think a lot of good is going to come of this.  I'm looking forward to participating.

Likewise, great topic ideas are starting to emerge and the following look likely:

• Continuing to improve the Plone membership/user management story (i.e. PAS, membrane, remember, teamspace, etc.)
• Mapping in Plone (i.e. PrimaGIS)
  

In the meantime, I'm hoping to ask the following of those interested:

• Keep this in mind as you start looking for flights, we'll get this confirmed as soon as possible so you can move forward.
• Consider whether you would like to help coordinate the sprint.  Already needing to prepare for the conference, I can guarantee that Jon and/or myself won't be able to contribute much to this.  We're hoping to setup a few details that would be tough for an out-of-towner (like location and maybe food), but after that we're hoping those interested in sprinting can take the lead on recruitement, topics, etc. 
• Be thinking of topics that might be good for new sprinters, we're hoping to attract a lot to the conference.  And involving those that stick around is a must.