The Plone Conference 2004 was an excellent success, with over 300 participants from all over the world. It was a great chance to meet people using Plone in interests as varied as scientific research to e-commerce. The city of Vienna itself was beautiful with many cultural experiences to be had by the willing. Many thanks to BlueDynamics for organizing the conference this year.

Unfortunately, the conference didn't end on a happy note for everybody. On the last day of the conference, the discotheque that the conference was being held at was transformed back into its natural state, in preparation for the evening's end of conference gala. After the final keynote speech, all conference attendees got together for photos and soon afterwords split into smaller groups and headed out for meals. A group of about 15, including Whit Morriss, headed out for Asian food, but upon their return Whit was horrified to discover that his laptop had been stolen.

Whit (known as brcwhit or whit on IRC) is a Plone developer with the Burning Man Project (http://www.burningman.com/) in San Francisco. Burning Man is an annual arts festival and temporary community based on radical self expression and self-reliance in the Black Rock Desert of Nevada, drawing crowds in excess of 35k. They use Plone to help with decentralized collaboration and organization in the production of the event and in their ongoing operations. Whit, as a developer for Burning Man and in his own time, has contributed to Archetypes, CMFMember, and TeamSpaces, he frequently provides assistance to others on IRC, and, well, he's also a genuinely nice person.

Whit's laptop, a 12" PowerBook, had been charging along with several other laptops on a table at the discotheque. When it was discovered to be missing, power cord and all, several folks spent an hour looking around, hoping against hope that it was all a misunderstanding. Alas, it did not turn up, and the inevitable conclusion was reached that a crime had in fact taken place.

Having your laptop stolen is one of the worst things that can happen to a geek, perhaps even worse when at a conference surrounded by friends and colleagues. Needless to say Whit went to bed early that evening, the festivities having no appeal.

I'm writing this up because I think the Plone community can come together to help Whit, by contributing to a fund drive to help him replace his laptop. I'll start it off by contributing $50usd right now. Can you help the community right this wrong?