A wrapup of Plone Konferenz München 2012

by Matt Hamilton, President, Plone Foundation

This month, the Plone Konferenz München 2012 took place. I was invited along to the event by the organiser, Philip Bauer from Starzel.de to present a keynote talk. I was only able to make a very quick visit to the conference, and arrived at lunchtime on the second day of the conference, and had to leave towards the end of the third day. The Plone Konferenz is a predominantly German-speaking event aimed at the German, Austrian and Swiss Plone user base. That said, there were attendees from as far away as South Africa and Seattle.



The conference was organised and arranged by the Munich Plone User's Group with support from the Python Software Verband. This community has a long history of running its own events, with the DZUG (German Speaking Zope User Group) conferences that were held annually.



As I arrived at the venue I was blown away by the level of professionalism in the organisation and marketing of the event. There were banners, table covers, door signs, literature stands, and a giant wall mural all emblazoned with the Plone logo and the Plone Konference München logo. Neatly prepared welcome packs were given to us on arrival containing a printed booklet all about the conference, with maps, speaker biographies, and talk descriptions.



There were two parallel tracks running over three days with lightning talks and open spaces scattered liberally through the programme. With over 150 attendees and over 30 talks it was a very nicely sized event. Talks ranged from case studies to more in-depth technical talks on various aspects of Plone.



Keynotes were delivered by Elizabeth Leddy (Old Dogs, New Tricks), Prof. Udo Helmbrecht (Reducing IT security risk) and myself ("... It's Like Buying a Relationship").



In my keynote I asked the audience how many people were at their first Plone event, and over half the hands in the theatre went up. This is an amazing statistic to show that events like this are reaching out to new people and bringing them in to the community. One of the aspects that always amazes me about the reach and power of the Plone community is the number of localised community groups there are. Groups aimed at providing information and support in local languages, regions and markets show just how mature the community is.



One of the highlights for me, was the Plone vs. Typo3 shootout. Typo3 is a PHP-based CMS that has a very active following in Germany. The two 'opponents' were Timo Stollenwerk (Plone) and Sebastian Böttger (Typo3) and was a series of real world scenarios put forward by the compère for each to answer. I have to thank Sebastian for his bravery in stepping into the lion's den, and it was great from a Plone point of view to see a bit more in depth of another system. I was surprised that, despite it's German fan-base and being in a German speaking conference doing a shoot-out in German, that Typo3's admin interface was all in English. Plone, of course, was showing its internationalisation strengths and was in German.





The conference dinner and party was held at a restaurant not far from the venue, and was a great chance to catch up and chat further to everybody at the event. The beer, as usual, was certainly flowing freely for the whole night. A big thanks to the sponsors!



The first videos from the conference have started to be put online already, and the quality is some of the best I've seen for a Plone event, with good editing moving between slides and the camera on the presenter. The rest should be up very soon.



Alas, I couldn't stay for the sprints afterwards, but people had already started working on things before the conference was even over. As I left, Elizabeth Leddy was taking on the task of whipping the Plone bug tracker into shape and closing out a load of old tickets in there. Nejc Zupan and others were working on a new Plone API which looks very promising. A good sign is they are starting with writing the API documentation first, before even the tests and the code.



This has overall been a fantastic event, and if such a thing existed, a model conference for the Plone community. I hope it is an event that is re-run in future years. Thanks to all the organising team for a great event.



Vielen Dank, und Auf Wiedersehen!





George Gogo Bernhard and Paul Roeland Chosen Plone Foundation Members



The Plone Foundation Board of Directors has announced the selection of George Gogo Bernhard and Paul Roeland as the newest members of the Plone Foundation.

Gogo Berhard is a long-time Plone developer who now works BlueDynamics (formerly "Philosoft"). His contributions to code include BoaDebugger, XMLForest, GoReplace and his current project, AGX2. He's been involved in Plone since its beginnings, and has been involved as an organizer and speaker in many Plone events such as the First Plone Conference in Europe, Budapest 2009, and San Francisco 2011. He is not organizing the second aRTSprint in Vienna.

Paul Roeland was recently elected a member of the Plone Foundation Board of Directors for the 2011-2012 term and serves as their secretary. He works for Clean Clothes Campaign in Amsterdam. Paul has been involved with Plone since version 0.99beta3 and the first Vienna Plone conference. He has worked tirelessly as an organizer and "cat-herder" serving to get programmers, open-source activists and non-profit activists to cooperate. He also has a long history of helping get larger nonprofits to choose and use Plone as their CMS.

The Plone Foundation is the organization formed in 2004 to serve as a supporting organization for Plone and its community. Members of the Foundation are chosen by the Foundation's Membership Committee on the basis of merit - specifically that they have made significant, enduring contributions which benefit the general Plone community. (The membership guidelines are available here.)



The Foundation is happy to welcome Gogo and Paul as our newest members.

World Plone Day 2012 Announced



The Plone community will hold the fifth edition of World Plone Day (WPD) on April 25, 2012.



WPD is a day of events held around the globe to spread awareness of Plone, a free and open source Internet publishing system that combines web content management, social software, collaboration and enterprise portal features.



The World Plone Day (WPD) is organized by global Plone community to promote the benefits of using Plone. Indeed, WPD is much more than a single event, is a series of events held by companies, organizations, user groups and individuals. In four previous editions of the WPD more than 170 events were held in 36 countries around the world.



This year we will have more seminars, training sessions, and meet-up groups to help spread global awareness of Plone. Since Plone is an open source project, it relies on its community. Enthusiasts are encouraged to show up in full force to ensure Plone continues to grow.



If you are interested in hosting, sponsoring or organizing a event, please get in touch with WPD team or just add your city in 2012 host page on Plone.org.



In the next few days we will release materials, presentations templates, tips and ideas for events organizers. Stay tuned to the Plone.org news section and WPD twitter account: @worldploneday for more information.



The date for World Plone Day 2012 was decided based on a survey which included an evaluation of the previous events. Plone community members from the Americas, Oceania and Europe provided feedback on the WPD organization process, made suggestions and identified challenges for future editions.



For more information on World Plone Day, contact World Plone Day Organizer Andre Nogueira at andren@gmail.com

Plone Welcomes New Contributors



We'd like to welcome the newest members of the contributors group and say how much we appreciate your deciding to be involved and sign up to add your code to Plone



The latest contributors are:

Mikel Larreategi

Brayton Osgood

Plone Conference 2012 website now online

The new Plone Conf 2012 website now has information for everyone wanting to find out more about this event.

We proudly present the new website for the Plone Conference 2012 in Arnhem, the Netherlands. The website will provide information about Arnhem, the venue, the conference and much more. We are still constructing some pages, features and registration. So keep your eye on the ploneconf.org website for updates, changes and notes.



Rebel X, a Dutch Plone company volunteered to do the design and created an awesome logo and website. Even though they are a relatively small company, the result is just great. The lead designer, Rita Varga Kiss, combined blue (Plone) and orange (Four Digits), into a sophisticated and snappy design.







Registration Open for Plone Symposium East 2012 - Coming May 22-23



Registration is open for the 5th annual Plone Symposium East 2012. This event will be held in State College, Pennsylvania, May 22 and 23, 2012. Your hosts will be the indefatigable WebLion group of Penn State University.



We keep our costs low by cunning and craft. Register by March 19, and pay a discounted fee of $285, and only $360 thereafter.



Proposals for presentations at the Symposium are also open, and if yours is selected, your registration fee is reduced to $210. Proposal accepted through March 12, 2012.



Just prior to the Symposium - May 19-21 - training workshops will be held (propose a workshop here). Training proposals are due by February 13th, 2012. So time is running out.



After the Symposium, May 24-26, we'll gather for development and PloneEdu sprints.



See you in State College!

Got a story you'd like to see in next month's News from the Plone-iverse? Send a note to news@plone.org and we'll do what we can to include it.