Greetings From Your 2007-2008 Plone Foundation Board!

We're excited to have the opportunity to serve the Plone community; here are some of our thoughts about where we stand, and what lies ahead in the coming year.

Dear Plone Community:

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:

  • Implement a sponsorship model for the Plone Foundation, with contributors being recognized through Plone.net.  This will bring the Plone Foundation a steady income stream, which will allow us to begin spending money on activities that benefit the wider Plone community.  This is our highest priority item for the next few months.  We'll be working closely with Paul Everitt, David Sapiro and the other members of the Plone.net team.
  • Use revenue from Plone.net sponsorships to fund critical promotional activities for Plone, including:
    • Development of a solid set of base marketing materials that can be used and adapted by the Plone community.
    • Sponsoring participation by Plone community members at selected conferences where we can promote Plone to customers and integrators.
  • Organize a longer-term strategic planning process for Plone.


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