I am currently a programmer with netCorps (netcorps.org). netCorps is a 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization based in Eugene, Oregon USA that uses technology to assist environmental, social justice and community-based organizations. I have been deploying Plone based solutions for our clients since 2004. In addition I have contributed two products to the collective, SimpleCartItem and SignupSheet and have contributed tests and bug fixes to other collective products. Time and skill permitting, I have assisted individuals, usually beginners, on #plone with their questions.


I championed the decision to use Plone for our clients based on the superior usability for the non-technically inclined staff that is typical of non-profits. The second reason was the support of the larger community that allowed our own staff to multiply our energies by using Plone as solution.

My goals for the board would in part, be a reflection of the needs of the community that I currently serve. Specifically I would work to ensure that end user usability and web standards and accessibility compliance continue to be a strong focus of Plone. Secondly, I feel that the current developer pool is at a less than ideal size, and would like to assist in finding ways to bring new talent to the Plone community.

Thanks

Aaron VanDerlip

Second: Joel Burton

Our most important challenge going forward is the marketing side of Plone, in my opinion — making sure we're present at conferences, making sure plone.net becomes a success when it's launched in early 2007, making sure we have a good marketing infrastructure to talk to the press and supply material to our Plone companies.

In practical terms, two things are very important to me:

• Make sure Plone.NET (the provider listing and case study / marketing site) is a success, and create a revenue stream for the Foundation
  
• Create more visibility about what the Foundation is doing (the information is all up there, but not very well organized at the moment)
  

Seconded by

Martin Aspeli

I've not done much code recently, but did quite a bit in the beginning. I've been doing Plone training, development and other stuff for the last few years. Wrote and released under an open source license the Definitive Guide to Plone. Spoken at every Plone conference but one, due to work. Founded and ran Enfold Systems and worked with that Alan guy.

I come to the Foundation with no real agenda, just a desire to help out in an area where I can be useful.

Currently working at Blue Fountain Systems and moving to the United Kingdom, before the end of the year.

Seconded by: Alexander Limi

In the future, we will incorporate a number of additional Plone Products to expand the functionality of Plinkit while providing library staff with ongoing training on how to use these selected Products in their library environment.

I am currently serving on the Plinkit Collaborative Steering Committee  as non-voting member to assist other organizations that want to deploy Plinkit in their state for their public libraries as well. Currently the members of the Plinkit Collaborative include the Texas State Library (with over 500 public libraries in need of websites), the Colorado State Library, and the Illinois Alliance Library System.

Despite having only been involved with Plone for just under a year, I have become an active and contributing member to the Plone community. Last February, I participated in the Virtual Document Sprint and in May, I co-founded the Portland Plone User's Group. I have become a Plone advocate among the library community and can often be found on #plone (as geeklibrarian) providing assistance to those new to Plone.

I believe that I have a lot to offer the Plone Foundation and would be grateful to have the opportunity to serve on the Board.

Seconded by Joel Burton.

Seconded by

Joel Burton

At this moment, i have an Plone site, called www.fabiorizzo.com, where i put many articles (In portuguese) to help all that people who need learn Plone. I have a company too, ThreePointsWeb, that work exclusive in Python, Zope e Plone, given trainnings, develop solutions for many governments places.

I Belive that i can help the PloneFundation spread you power and energy across the sea, in South América, improving your contact and creating and helping events in this region. Actually, the brazilian government will use Plone for all government sites, but, miss one big responsible for the Plone, job that Plone Fundation Does.

My company can sponsor the Plone Foundation in Brazil, and help to realize it! To give more Protection and confidence to Plone in Brazil.

Thanks for the oportunity.

Fabio Rizzo

• Francesco Ciriaci (also known as ilBestio)   
• A Plone supporter and evangelist since 2001. Member of the community since, even though I'm not a developer so little code gets out from me. Passionate with UIs, usability, CSS, but also pretty hard struggling with workflow and versioning problems.    
• One of the main actors in the Italian Zope/Plone community, I contribute mainly organizing meetings, sprints, and barbeques :) I've fostered the creation of the Associazione Zope Italia.  
• Member of ZEA Partner since the beginning, I've worked with a good number of Zope/Plone companies around the world in many challenging projects.
• Fond of Free/Open Source software, studing Intellectual Property issues and OSS business models since 2000.                      
• My main hobby is to run Reflab, a Plone Business company in Italy, even though I really enjoy doing UI stuff and CSS.

    
Why I'm interested
     I think it would be a very good use of my "mixed skills" in technology, management and marketing. I'd like to help achieving foudation goals and keep Plone successful doing things I can do best.

What I think I can add to the Plone Foundation
     As above I think I could give to the PF my skills in economics, marketing and Open Source Models; I also wish my knowledge of the CMS market and Plone Business can prove useful. Due to my working experiences it's easy for me to make advocacy and promote the platform I choosed, yet I'm used to be realistic and balance developers constraints with users needs. I've also a quite good understanding of Intellectual Property management, though I'm not a specialist.
    
 Seconded by
      Paul Everitt
      

• I have been a Plone contributor in some form since the start of the project five years ago. During that time i have contributed user interface design, CSS, javascripts, bug fixes, core components in Plone itself and add-on-products.
• Managing director and co-founder of Plone Solutions AS, a Norwegian, but internationally oriented Plone consultancy and development company. My job involves managing a distributed workforce currently spanning 3 continents, 7 countries and 9 timezones. The company has close ties to the Plone community and contributes a fair share to the development of Plone and its surroundings. 
• An all-hands type person who enjoys working with people and organisations as much as writing code. I have a diverse background in marketing, design/art, sociology, film-science and web-applications. I worked 5 years with large scale web-applications in the gaming industry before i started doing Plone full-time.
• In April 2006, Arranged the Archipelago Sprint, gathering 40 developers from around the world, spearheding the development of what will become Plone 3.
• Speaker at all Plone Conferences but the first.
  
• Currently collaborating with a regional university college on introducing more Open Source and Plone/Zope development into their master-level-studies.
• Has a large interest in Open source business models, patents, marketing and licensing. Makes an effort of improving government- and general public awareness on Open Source in Norway.  
• Even though i probably represent developers and small businesses best, i meet and work with a lot of people in universities, government organisations, NGOs and larger companies, – and get to share their challenges and experiences with Plone, both on a technical and on an organisational level.

I am having a bit of a different background, coming from a large consulting company doing mainly Microsoft and Java development. About five years ago I joined Pareto, becoming one of the owners. I discovered Open Source in general and Zope/Plone in particular and started to explore. After some time I was convinced that the quality of Zope and Plone was really great and started to use it for client projects. In the end this has resulted in a nice and vibrant Plone group with Pareto (about 6 people). I was particularly happy with the fast growth and maturation of Plone. Having a Plone Foundation is one of the signs of this maturation, so now I want to contribute my 2 cents, because I really believe in the quality and I really like the community.

What I can add

I am not really a core developer, although I (and Pareto as a whole) are starting to be more active. Because of my background in the consulting industry and because my company is a little 'different' (mixed skillset: Microsoft Gold Partner, Adobe Partner, Plone, dedicated project management) and somewhat bigger (about 40 people) I think I can add some valuable expertise to the Plone Foundation Board.

Seconded By

Contributions:

• Assisted on a series of add-on products: eXtremeManagement, CompositePack, PasswordResetTool, RealEstateBroker (needs work)
• Dutch translations of Plone and a lot of add-on products.
  
• Attending lots of european sprints.
• Attending all Plone conferences and spoke on last one, unfortunately not this year
• Focus on intranet solutions for entreprises

Goals

In general, I want to boost the advocacy and promotion of Plone, and have a few ideas on how this might be done more effectively:

Develop a worldwide network of Plone user groups, which serve to support and promote Plone at the local level. The San Francisco Plone users group has already put forth the idea of Plone Lounges. I'd like to see user groups sharing RSS feeds and co-sponsoring sprints and bootcamps.

Improve the community marketing efforts, to explore ways of promoting Plone at the grassroots level. In addition to helping with the plone.net efforts, I'd like to:     

• increase the awareness of Plone in the blogosphere
• produce screencasts about cool Plone products and interview the authors
• aggregate all multimedia content about Plone (audio, video, screencasts, PDFs) so it's easy to find, tag and rate.
  
• create a calendar of conferences, seminars and technology events in which Plone should be represented and recruit local volunteers to assist with advocacy and promotion.
• create a "conference kit" with t-shirts, buttons, signs, banners
• develop a "media kit" for Plone with brochures and other marketing material targeting different audiences

Build different distributions of Plone, which are targeted for particular use cases or audiences. When you visit plone.org, you don't get the sense of how one can actual use Plone. We need to make it easier for people to see how Plone addresses their particular need, whether it be a non-profit, company seeking an intranet, educational institution seeking a courseware solution, or international organization seeking a multilingual CMS solution, etc. Some examples:

• Plone4Artists
• Plone4Multilingual
• Plone4Multimedia
  
• Plone4Intranets
• Plone4NGOs
• Plone4ResearchCommunities
• Plone4Education (opencourse.org, Connexions, eduCommons, WebLion)
  
• Plone4Libraries
• Plone4Government
• Plone4Commerce
• Plone4Newspapers

I would be honored to serve on the Plone board and will do everything I can to help Plone grow and prosper.

Seconded by

 Joel Burton

Process

1. The time for nominating yourself has passed. As the board only serves for one year, you might get a chance next year.
   
2. Voting will happen in October (exact dates TBD).
3. Every foundation member gets 7 votes. The votes are equally weighted.
4. Candidates may vote for themselves, or others, as they wish.
5. The 7 candidates with the top votes will be elected to the Board.
6. In the case of a tie for 7th place, a run-off election will be held between just those candidates that tied.
7. The Board itself determines and elects its officers (Chair, Vice-Chair, plus any other positions desired).

Problems?

If you have any technical problems, please email Hanno (plone@hannosch.info) or Godefroid (gotcha@bubblenet.be).

Goals

• Have a realistic set of goals for the board: what is in scope, what is realistic, who will commit to doing it
• Work with Alex to finish my long-overdue plone.net initiative and make it a positive example for the PF
• Grow the next generation of leadership in Plone, within the development side and also on the organizational side
  

Seconded By

I can't say I have any specific goals for the foundation other than seeing how we can improve the profile of Plone in a way that is health to both Plone itself and the Plone community. I am an addict of the idealism that is rampant in the Plone community and want to see that continue to thrive and infect the Plone development process. I also want to see that idealism shaped and tempered by a practical understanding of what the existing user base and the world at large needs from Plone.

Seconded by

Joel Burton

Sasha Vinčić a developer and businessman from Lovely Systems. I have been involved in the community since first snow sprint. Mostly silently and doing some commits but doing more development and Plone spreading to customers in the north (Sweden and Denmark). I have been doing Plone since it was available and today I am doing alot of zope3 development for Plone.

Why am I interested

As a developer and business man I live of what Plone gives. I have figured out that it gives more if I give back so it's time to give back so Plone can give more. There is heavy development with Zope3 and most of the development is around Plone. As a developer I am very interested in pushing Plone forward and be part of the roadmap for Plone's development. My strength here is that I have very good overview of what is happening in the communitty and around it when it comes to products and their development. I know little about alot :) Of course as part of Lovely Systems I will continue to work for our snow sprints in the Alps! Don't miss the next one. As a person I can add a social aspect of making the community stronger and bigger while we utilize new technologies as Zope3.

What I think I can add to the Plone Foundation

As a boardmember I want to encurrage and motivate community and members to realize our goal and vision :)

Second by

Jodok Batlogg