Mike Halm

Founder of the WebLion development group at Penn State University and Plone evangelist for the use of Plone and other Open Source technologies in the Education sector. Host and primary sponsor of the Plone Symposium East at Penn State University.

Who you are

Mike Halm is the Director and Senior Strategist for the WebLion development group at Penn State University.  We are active members of the Plone community with eight full-time developers. Our primary mission is to develop applications and integrate Plone and Zope technologies into the core infrastructure of the university.  Thus, our major effort are focused on getting greater participation within the education sector.  We have collaborations with a number of other Higher Education institutions world-wide that contribute to our software development efforts.

Member of our team actively participates in the the Framework team and one of our developer is currently the release manager for Plone 4.0.

In addition to the software development effort, the WebLion team host the an annual Plone Symposium East every Spring.  This will be the third year for the Symposium at Penn State in May or 2010.

Why you're interested

I would like to work on efforts to develop stronger Education sector ties.  There is a growing interest in collaboration on specific needs related to the Education sector.  We are currently working with groups in the western US and Mexico on products that support the mission of research, teaching and service.  This is an under-developed area of broad interests.  

We have developed a stand-alone hosting solution, I would like to see this solution promoted broad as a solution for ISPs and Universities.

Additionally, I want to focus greater emphasis on usability, internationalization and accessibility.

What you think you can add to the Plone Foundation

WebLion group has contributed in a number of areas already to the community.  Our experience in community development has been extremely successful.  I would like to develop similar strategies for growing the Education sector within the Plone Foundation.  In addition, I would like to use my skills as a designer and marketer to help the Plone brand to have broader appeal as a solution to the general public in need of CMS capabilities.

 Seconders: Alex Limi, Steve McMahon, Erik Rose, Eric Steele