Kirk Thoughts

The first World Plone Day event is now finished. New Zealand WPD organizer Tim Knapp was pleased with the results:

Just so you all know, we just had our first WPD Plone Day event (in the world) in Wellington, New Zealand and about 31 people turned out, we had 6 presenters and a grand old time.

What you can do to join in the efforts to showcase Plone:

1. Digg this article TODAY: http://tinyurl.com/worldploneday and post it to Facebook.
2. Vote up this Slashdot article TODAY: http://tinyurl.com/wpdsd
3. Write a blog post sharing what you love about Plone and the Plone community. Tag it with worldploneday2008.

Don’t forget to catch the LIVE coverage - video, IRC, live blogging, Twitter posts and Flickr pics - http://tinyurl.com/worldplonedaylive

Catch all the action as World Plone Day travels across the globe!

• Live video streams - http://www.ustream.tv/channel/world-plone-day
• IRC - #worldploneday at irc.freenode.net
• Follow http://www.twitter.com/worldploneday

Twitter

Older Twitter posts

Photos on Flickr

What the blogs are saying about WPD

Digg this post Plone is an open source CMS (Content Management System), recently awarded the Best Other (non-php) Open Source CMS award.

Plone, together with an array of add-on components is used for a variety of needs:

• Websites, extranets, intranets
• E-commerce
• Workflow management
• Blogs, podcasting, videocasting
• Collaborative workspaces like Open Plans

As part of World Plone Day, Friday, November 7, here are 10 compelling reasons for choosing Plone as a web site solution:

1. Stable future. Plone is owned, supported and protected by the Plone Foundation, similar to the Apache Foundation. Growth of Plone in code and community has risen at a steady pace since inception in 2000.
2. Avoids vendor lock-in. Plone uses the same open source license as Linux. This avoids vendor lock-in, expensive licenses, and gives you a predictable future — and the freedom to innovate.
3. Easy to use. Plone’s focus on usability makes it easy for users to manage content. Watch a video to see for yourself.
4. Secure. Security is considered one of Plone’s key strengths. Fine-grained role-based security model secures your content. Plone’s sandbox architecture ensures that intruders will not have access to your server or your network.
5. Standards compliant. Optimized for search engines, works in all major browsers, supports Open ID, support for web services and relational data storage.
6. International. Translated into over 35 languages, including Chinese and right-to-left languages like Russian and Arabic.
7. Solid documentation. Hundreds of how-tos and tutorials. Screencasts on plone.tv. Seven books published on Plone, including an end user manual. A new book on how to get the most out of Plone without touching code on its way. No other Open Source CMS has an end user manual.  You can buy the hard copy or download the PDF for free.
8. MS Desktop integration. No other Open Source CMS has a Microsoft Windows Desktop integration for free. Enfold Desktop enables everyone to have a first class Windows desktop experience.
9. Nestle Plone inside an MS shop. Enfold Proxy enables people to deploy Plone in a possibly hostile to linux IT department. How many Microsoft organizations want to run Apache? Enfold Proxy is *not* free.  It costs money.  But you get support.
10. Separate content management and delivery. Use *any* software to deliver the content from the Plone CMS. Java, .NET, PHP, Ruby. Whatever presentation-tier technologies the customer is most comfortable with can be used.
    Static publishing. Look at http://www.cia.gov/ and http://www.fbi.gov/
    Dynamic delivery.  Look at http://www.povertylaw.org/ and http://www.aci-na.org/ for examples of Entransit.  Using very very simple and fast technologies to serve Plone content dynamically.

Want to know more? See if there is a World Plone Day event happening near you, or visit online:

• Plone.org – is the main site to read more information, download copies, access documentation and products (add-on functionality)
• Plone.net – find a provider that supports Plone, read case studies and press releases, browse the directory of Plone based sites.
• Plone.tv –  a diverse collection of training and interview videos about Plone
• Plonegov.org – a collaborative software ecosystem where government organizations, NGOs and private enterprises work together to share the cost of enhanced capabilities.

Let's make some noise

World Plone Day is almost here. This is one day of the year we celebrate and promote Plone worldwide as a community. Are you ready to make some noise for your favourite CMS? Come on everyone, gimme a P, L, O, N, E!

Before Friday, Easy Ways to Promote Plone

1. If you are on Twitter, follow twitter.com/worldploneday and encourage others to do so.
2. Post a link to worldploneday.org on Facebook, Twitter so people can see if there are events happening in their area.
3. There is a Facebook event. Join and invite people you think might be interested. Show your pride by becoming an official fan on Facebook.

On World Plone Day, Ways to Promote Plone

Today I had the opportunity to share about my work passion, Agile and Scrum at the monthly TAG (Telematics Advisory Group - an outlived name for a bunch of people interested in IT topics) luncheon.

For those of you who attended, I am interested in your feedback and further questions. Please leave your comments below.

My search for a video / slide presentation tool succeeded! Now you can watch it again (nothing else to do?) or catch it for the first time.

Here are useful links for people who attended the presentation:

Fun learning

• Scrum cartoons
• Learn Agile by playing scenario games
• Scrum, the board game

Reference

• Agile Manifesto
• Scrum diagram and overview
• This poster captures the essence of Agile software development. I have it on my wall.
• Scrum glossary of terms

Tools

• Play planning poker online, or order some cards
• Agilito, a Django Scrum tool we developed at ifPeople
• Assess the Agile practices your organization is ready to adopt.

Agile Community

• Agile Alliance (I’m a member) and Scrum Alliance (my member profile)
• Scrum discussion list is a great place to ask questions and get answers from prominent people in the Agile community. I’m subscribed.

Books

Book recommendations, in order of preference:

• Agile Estimating and Planning by Mike Cohn
• User Stories Applied: For Agile Software Development by Mike Cohn
  
• Agile Retrospectives: Making Good Teams Great by Esther Derby, Diana Larsen, Ken Schwaber
• Implementing Lean Software Development: From Concept to Cash by Mary Poppendieck, Tom Poppendieck
  

• Pop!Tech - The Impact of Technology on People

  They hold an annual conference in the fall each year. Similar to TED

  tags: conference

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Know Your Web Site: An Hour A Day with Google Analytics | NTEN: The Nonprofit Technology Network

  Google Analytics is undoubtedly one of the most powerful web analytics packages out there. In fact, it’s so powerful, it’s difficult to know how to begin understanding all of the information it makes available. NTEN wants to help you unlock the power of Google Analytics. In this hands-on webinar, Avinash Kaushik, Google’s Analytics Evangelist, will teach you how to use web analytics reports to understand the performance of your web site in terms of measuring progress toward your organizational goals, but also to help you understand who your web site visitors are, where they come from, and what they’re doing on your site. You’ll leave the webinar with actionable tips and tricks you can use right away, regardless of your skill level.

  Presented by Avinash Kaushik, Analytics Evangelist for Google and author of “Web Analytics: An Hour a Day”

  tags: analytics

• Google Analytics screencast

  screencast for helping people (especially non-profits) get started with Google Analytics

  tags: analytics

Posted from Diigo. The rest of my favorite links are here.

• Praized Media, Inc. - Trust your tribes

  The Praized platform is like local search in a box. It comes pre-loaded with over 17 million US and Canadian local business listings, complete with contact info and location maps. You get social features like friends, favorites, voting, sharing, user-generated tagging, and commenting. In sum, the Praized platform allows you to aggregate and organize local conversations within your community. And best of all, it’s free!

  tags: directory, wordpress-plugin

• SocialText 3.0 blends Facebook, Twitter, and the Enterprise

  an enterprise mashup of Facebook, FriendFeed, enterprise microblogging, and the wiki.

  tags: no_tag

• Agile-08 Repeat Performance and Slides | enthiosys agile product management

  tags: agile-08, prioritize, backlog

• Buy a Feature - An Innovation Game

  An online game to help customers prioritize product features.

  tags: prioritize, backlog

• Apple USB keyboard repair | Applefritter

  tags: no_tag

• Project 10^100

  If you could suggest a unique idea that would help as many people as possible, what would it be?

  It’s a question worth considering. Never in history have so many people had so much information, so many tools at their disposal, so many ways of making good ideas come to life. Yet at the same time so many people (in all walks of life) could use some help, in small ways and big. In the midst of this, new studies are reinforcing the timeless wisdom that beyond a basic level of material wealth, the only thing that seems to increase individual happiness is… helping other people. In other words, help helps everybody.

  tags: no_tag

• Use Google Moderator To Crowdsource Group Questions

  a simple tool that helps groups determine which questions should be asked at all hands meetings, conferences, Q&A sessions, etc. The idea is that there are always lots of good questions to ask in a limited period of time, but it’s hard to know which questions the attendees are most interested in hearing discussed. Moderator lets users add questions and vote on the questions of others, so the cream rises to the top.

  tags: crowdsource, vote

• Find and learn about people

  Scours social networks and web sites for people you are looking for. Great way to find and learn about someone.

  tags: people

• Tasty Cupcakes - Tasty Cupcakes

  “experiential learning games that accelerate the adoption and understanding of Agile principles in a fun and interactive way.”

  tags: agile, learn, game, fun

• Charting Change

  effective charts to communicate scope, schedule, cost change to a client

  tags: reporting

Ok, time to start figuring out what sessions I want to go to at the Plone conference. I work mainly as a project manager / scrum master, so I tend to avoid the techy stuff. Here is my preliminary list:

Wednesday

• The 10% manifesto and further — Methods for organized contribution to strategic development of Plone. I need to get better at this, interested in approaches to “building in” time to contribute back to Plone.
• Usability Testing: From High End to the Dirt Poor. An area I don’t have formal knowledge in, always interested in how to better capture what users need.
• Real world intranets. It’s Joel Burton. ‘Nuff said.

Thursday

• Hybrid Vigor: Plone + Salesforce Integration. We (ifPeople) have done a couple of Salesforce + Plone projects, thanks to Andrew and ONE/NW’s fantastic contributions. Interested in doing more of these projects.
• What Makes a Great Development Team? I’ve heard great things about Michael, who works with Martin Aspeli. I’m passionate about Agile, so interested to hear his talk, which I expect will have an Agile flavour to it.
• The Future of Plone’s User Experience. Being Alexander Limi, I expect something entertaining and visionary.
• Simplifying Plone. Some bleeding edge thought and real examples from Martin Aspeli and those attending.
• Using Deliverance to Theme a Website. Ok, finally getting my geek on here. I’ve been wanting to understand Deliverance better, never got my head wrapped around it. There is your challenge, Mr. Bicking, one really smart cookie.

Friday

• Repoze.bfg - a Zope explosion. Geek fix #2. Probably won’t ever code with it, but want to understand when it is a good solution.
• Plone.org Documentation Team Panel. Interested in how the panel wants to make documentation on plone.org rock even harder. Hope to contribute some thoughts.
• High performing teams: What’s the secret sauce? Good idea to attend my own presentation in case no one else does.

So that’s my list. What interests you? Let’s get some discussion going.

Of course, the discussions that happen outside of sessions are valuable also. I’m looking forward to seeing *so* many people, this being my first Plone conference after 5 years of being in the Plone community. Lunch anyone?