Symposium Conclusion: Slides Online and Outcomes

The North American Plone Symposium held between July 20 till July 22 in 2005 was a outstanding success.The focus was the Plone content management system and supporting technologies and community elementssuch as licensings, art theory and case studies.

Overview Over 120 participants convened in New Orleans on Bourbon Street for three days of informative presentations, socializing and shuckin n' jivin. Python and Zope lumanaries attended and presented information ranging from Windows COM integration with Zope to Selenium integration. Of course at nights there was lots of socializing time down on Frenchman street. Thanks to everyone who made it.

Links "Survey for Plone Symposium":http://survey.enfoldsystems.com/s?s=22 -- please only respond if you attended. "Online Presentation Material":http://plone.org/events/regional/nola05/wiki/PresentationMaterials -- presentation materials/slides from Plone Symposium "tutorials":tutorials and "talks":talks "Flikr (Pictures)":http://www.flickr.com/photos/tags/plonesymposium2005/ -- pictures taken at Plone Symposium "del.icio.us (Links)":http://del.icio.us/tag/plonesymposium2005 -- links regarding the Plone Symposium "Plone Symposium 2005 Homepage":/events/regional/nola05 Marketing One of the really fun aspects of the symposium was a schedule 1.5 hour long working Marketing Workshop. Out of this workshop came 7 case studies (I will be following up with the submitters - individually) as well as some rules for the coming plone.net site. The most amazing achievement was the foundation of the new marketing campaign for Plone! Which you will see if you are at "OSCON":http://conferences.oreillynet.com/os2005/ this year. It would not have been done without Gabby, Jackie, Whit, Jonah, Mike Combs and a ton of other people! Thanks! You have to check it out; its currently in B&W in PDF form. Its the "Plone Personal Ad":/about/mediakit/plone-bw1.pdf Conclusion Most everyone I spoke with had a really great time in New Orleans. I am very interested in what can be done better for the Plone Conference in Vienna. The biggest issue I found has to be the Survey per speakers. We have included (and will send emails out) to people who attended. People were quite talkative about the tutorials. And I believe the tracks that were presented show a natural evolution with Plone. Talks centering around integration such as Benjamin Sallers "Web Services Presentation":http://plone.org/events/regional/nola05/collateral/web_services_presentation.pdf or Kapil Thangavelu's "CMFDeployment":http://plone.org/events/regional/nola05/collateral/CMFDeploymentNola2005.pdf as well as Enfold Systems "Entransit Tutorial":http://www.enfoldsystems.com/About/Talks/entransit-tutorial.pdf - the talks seem to speak to larger organizations needs. Case Studies were particularly attractive to about 35% of the audience, whom were mostly interested in business applications and vetting the technology for their organization. I believe the Symposium will lead up to a spectacular "Plone Conference in Vienna":http://ploneconf2005.bluedynamics.net/ this year.