On Friday, October 29, a new board of directors for the Plone Foundation was elected by the membership. The Plone Foundation board for 2010-2011 will include:
The board will elect officers at its first regular meeting and is expected to name advisory members for the next term shortly.
Thanks to all those who stood for election, and to Hanno Schlichting for once again serving as the "Foundation Election Master!"
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On Friday, October 30, a new board of directors for the Plone Foundation was elected by the membership. The Plone Foundation board for 2009-2010 will include:
The board will elect officers at its first regular meeting and is expected to name advisory members for the next term shortly.
Thanks to all those who stood for election, and to Hanno Schlichting for once again serving as the "Foundation Election Master!"
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The Plone Foundation is pleased to announce that nominations for upcoming board election are now being accepted. Please review the following instructions -- in general, the process is unchanged from last year.
We seek a diverse set of skills for the next Plone Foundation board. We particularly need board members with experience and enthusiasm for marketing, community organizing and communications.
The nomination process will end the Monday before Plone Conference 2009, as explained in the instructions. That leaves you nearly four weeks to prepare your nomination together, and start bribing...ahem...convincing the Plone Foundation members about your qualifications and enthusiasm. Don't wait too late to start on your nomination!
Read more about how to nominate yourself for Plone Foundation board.
Please note that you do NOT have to be a Plone Foundation member to serve on the board!
]]>We had many nominations for the award from the community--a great sign of the people who help others in our channel. We want to offer congratulations to everyone listed as a nominee:
Our panel of judges evaluated these nominations and, using our observation of #plone, has awarded our superstar award to:
Our first-place runner up is:
Special recognition goes to Mikko Ohlamaa, who was very close to tie for our first-place runner up.
As our first place winner, David would receive our grand prize: $1,000 in travel to Hungary and conference admission for Plone Conference 2009 in Budapest. However, since his admission and travel is already being sponsored by a generous grant to the Foundation from Open Society Institute, he has graciously accepted a suggestion to swap prizes with our runner-up prize. Therefore, David will receive our runner-up prize (free admission into any PloneBootcamps Plone training course), and Rob will receive our grand prize, travel stipend and conference admission.
We'd like to thank everyone that helped with this project:
Congratulations, David and Rob!
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]]>Mark brings a wide-ranging background in marketing, journalism, political campaign work and consulting, and is actively involved in Plone's marketing efforts.
]]>With this in mind, the Plone Foundation has adopted a new Framework Components Relicensing Policy, which provides a way for us to enable limited relicensing of selected Plone framework components, without compromising our ongoing commitment to Plone as a GPL product. This policy allows Plone community members and package authors to request that the Plone Foundation board of directors relicense certain types of Plone framework components under the modified BSD license instead of the GPL.
For more information and frequently asked questions, please see the complete Plone Framework Components Relicensing Policy document.
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The Plone Foundation board has drafted a policy proposal, many of you have offered discussion and feedback (thanks!), we've revised the proposal and gotten advice from the Software Freedom Law Center. (They have no major concerns.)
We are now ready to bring a formal proposal to a vote by the Plone Foundation membership.
There is only one significant change from the draft we circulated to you earlier this year; after an excellent discussion (thanks to all of you who participated), there was a clear sentiment in favor of using BSD as our alternative license instead of LGPL, and so the final draft reflects this.
Please review a the final relicensing proposal and its accompanying FAQ at:
Then, please vote at:
http://www.surveymonkey.com/s.aspx?sm=yDnBydcyt3d9zO_2bwSqc57w_3d_3d
Only current Plone Foundation members are eligible to vote. Voting will remain open until Sunday, May 17 11:59pm GMT.
Technically, this is an advisory vote, which the Plone Foundation board will confirm at its next regular meeting; this is because our bylaws don't allow us to have a binding membership vote outside of our annual meeting unless we call a special meeting, which requires rather burdensome administrative procedures. However, the board is committed to standing by the results of the advisory vote.
We're really excited to be bringing this proposal forward, we hope it will foster an even deeper collaboration between the Plone community and our friends in the wider Zope and Python communities.
A special thanks to Martin Aspeli and Wichert Akkerman, who identified the need and championed the idea.
On behalf of the board,
Jon Stahl
President, Plone Foundation
The Plone community has grown tremendously in the past few years. It is time for the Foundation to step up to a higher level of activity and to more actively fulfill its mission of promoting Plone. In order to support this work, the Plone Foundation needs to develop a reliable stream of income that grows along with the community.
Plone.net was created to provide that stream of income to the Plone Foundation by showcasing the vibrant world of Plone consulting firms and projects.
We hope to raise a US$40-75k in 2009, which will allow us to fund professional marketing materials, sponsor sprints to drive forward key elements of Plone 4 development work, and more.
If you have questions about becoming a Plone Foundation sponsor, please see http://plone.net/about/sponsorship/faq for some frequently asked questions. If you have additional questions, please feel free to email the Plone Foundation board of directors: board@plone.org. (Messages are moderated to prevent spam; don't be alarmed if you get a moderation notice.)
The Plone Foundation is a US-based 501(c)3 nonprofit. Contributions, especially from US-based individuals and corporations, may be tax-deductible; check with your tax adviser for details.
As CEO of Zea Partners, Xavier manages the operations, strategy, and partner relations of this worldwide association of Plone consulting firms. Xavier is also involved with the Plone Foundation's Trademark & IP Committee. Specializing in management and active in open source since 2002, Xavier has an expertise in the organizational challenges facing SMEs to deliver professional solutions based on an open source shared technology.
Xavier is active in promoting the use of Plone in the government sector through the PloneGov project, and will serve as the Plone Foundation's representative to the EU Commission.
]]>Roberto Allende is a Plone trainer and commercial manager of Menttes, a Plone consulting firm that provides development, support and training in South America and Worldwide. He is a Plone activist, the cofounder of Plone Cono Sur user group, the South American contact for PloneGov and he made contributions to the CommunesPlone project. He was the creator and champion of World Plone Day 2008.
Joel Burton, one of the Plone community's best-known trainers and consultants, is a past president of the Plone Foundation and has served several terms on the board of directors. Joel's historical knowledge of Plone, the Plone Foundation and the Plone community are invaluable.
While the Foundation bylaws have always allowed for advisory board members, this is the first time any have been named by the board.
We've chosen to name advisory board members for two primary purposes:
1) To serve as strategic advisors;
2) To give them the ability to represent the Foundation as as community ambassadors in local regions.
Under the Foundation's bylaws, advisory board members are not voting members of the board, and have no official powers beyond the ability to attend board meetings that are not designated for voting members only. They may be appointed or removed at any time. The board has asked Roberto and Joel to serve through the current board term, which ends in October 2009.
Please join us in welcoming Roberto and Joel aboard!
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The board will elect officers at its first regular meeting on Thursday, October 16.
Thanks to all those who stood for election, and to Hanno Schlichting for once again serving as the "Foundation Vote-Bot!"
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It's that time of year again! The Plone Foundation is pleased to announce that nominations for upcoming board election are now being accepted. Please review the following instructions -- in general, everything is the same as it has been in recent years.
We encourage a diverse set of skill for setting next year's Plone Foundation course, particularly with people that have energy for community organizing and communication.
The nomination process will end the Monday before the Plone Conference, as explained in the instructions. That leaves not quite two weeks to make a decision, get your nomination together, and start bribing...ahem...convincing the membership about your qualifications and enthusiasm. Don't wait too late to start on your nomination!
]]>Hi there! We're your newly-elected Plone Foundation Board of Directors. As our term kicks off, we wanted to drop you all a quick note to introduce ourselves and to share some of our thoughts about the year ahead.
We are:
Darci Hanning (President)
Jon Stahl (Secretary)
Nate Aune
Geir Bækholt
Joel Burton
Alexander Limi
Steve McMahon
Toby Roberts is a non-voting member, serving as Treasurer.
(Toby is an unsung hero of the Plone community; since 2004, he has been
the steady hand administering the business affairs of the Plone
Foundation. We all owe him a tremendous debt of gratitude. Thanks,
Toby, for your quiet and vital work to keep the Plone machine running
smoothly!)
You can find this list, along with brief bios of each of us, at
http://plone.org/foundation/board
We've only had two meetings so far, mostly devoted to logistics and
"getting to know you." But we've already begun talking about our work
in the year ahead.
Here's where we stand:
Plone-the-software has never been better. We're coming off of a very
successful 3.0 release, which brings Plone to a new level of power,
ease-of-use and all-around polish. It's winning kudos from users,
implementers, and the media, and is spurring a wave of innovative add-on
products and tools. Plone 3.1 is already in the works, which will be a
small, feature-oriented release with zero migration effort, to be
followed by Plone 4.0, the next major release of Plone.
Similarly, Plone-the-community is vibrant and healthy. We just had an amazing conference in Naples. Two North America Symposiums are being planned, tentatively scheduled for March and June 2008. We have a strong community of local user groups around the world, and the calendar of sprints and training events is almost impossible to keep up with!
Not too bad. :-)
The Plone Foundation's mission is to protect and promote Plone. For its first four years, the Foundation focused largely on the "protect" part of its mission: putting in place the legal framework of our "software conservancy" and securing the Plone trademark. That work is now largely done.
Both the codebase and the trademark/brand identity of Plone are owned by the Plone Foundation. We, the Plone community, are in full control of our own destiny. We're not dependent on the whims of individuals, or upon the goodwill of corporate owners.
In 2008, we anticipate turning our focus to the "promote" part of our mission. That work will take many forms. Our agenda is still evolving, but the big ideas are already clear:
We'll also work on some smaller initiatives, such as fine-tuning the
Plone Foundation bylaws, improving our membership application process,
and ensuring that Plone.org has the technical resources it needs to
support the rapid growth of the Plone community.
Whew! Quite an agenda! Of course, we're not the key to making it happen: you are. Expect to hear from us often as we begin to put these initiatives in motion. We'll need your advice, your feedback, your support, and most importantly, your continuing participation in the amazing community that is Plone.
To send an email to the entire board, please email us at board@lists.plone.org.
If you'd like to continue the discussion in public, the Plone Foundation Membership list is probably the most appropriate place. http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/membership
We look forward to serving you, and to working alongside you in the year ahead.
With admiration,
Darci, Jon, Nate, Geir, Joel, Alex, Steve and Toby
Your Plone Foundation Board, 2007-2008
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The new board will have its first official meeting in the next couple of weeks, at which we'll begin discussing our vision for the year ahead. You can expect to hear a lot more from us soon!
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