This Month in Plone - October 2009

A roundup of news in the Plone world for October 2009.

HIGHLIGHTS

Upcoming Events

World Plone Conference 2009 Coming to Budapest in October
Next World Plone Day to Be Held April 28, 2010

Foundation News

Plone Foundation Board Nominations Open

New Plone Sites

Harvard SEAS Launches New Plone Website
Plone Powers New European Network and Information Security Agency website

News on New and Upcoming Releases

Plone 3.3 Released
Jarn Hosts Sprint on Collections, Contentlistings and Search

Plone in the News

Zope News Publishes Interview with Eric Steele

TOP NEWS

Plone IRC Superstar Contest Winners Announced

Congratulations to David Glick and Rob Porter, our amazing IRC superstars!

The Plone Foundation and PloneBootcamps are pleased to announce the results of our first-ever "Plone IRC Superstar" contest. The contest honors the world-class support available, 24 hours a day, every day of the year, in our online support channel at #plone.

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:

Alex Clark (IRC nickname: aclark)
David Glick (davisagli)
Josh Johnson (jjmojojjmojo)
Andreas Jung (MacYET)
Mikko Ohlamaa (Moo)
Rob Porter (robzone)
Israel Saeta (dukebody)

Our panel of judges evaluated these nominations and, using our observation of #plone, has awarded our superstar award to:

David Glick. David, a Plone developer and integrator at ONE/NW in Seattle, Washington, was recognized by his nominator and by the judges for his clear technical support and willingness to jump in. Particularly, as one of our most technically-accomplished core contributors, David's help in #plone is critical to providing support for other advanced integrators and developers.

Our first-place runner up is:

Rob Porter. Rob, a developer, integrator, and trainer at Penn State University, is part of the fabled Weblion Team--bringing Plone to many departments at PSU. Rob was particularly credited for his willingness to help out with theming questions and other integrator questions. We especially appreciate how he answers some of the most frequently asked questions in a cheerful and welcoming way.

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:

The Plone Foundation Board of Directors
PloneBootcamps, donors of both our grand prize and runner-up prize, represented on the project by Joel Burton
All of our judges: Joel Burton (joelburton), Chris Calloway (cbcunc), Steve McMahon (SteveM), Jon Stahl (jonstahl), and Matthew Wilkes (matthewwilkes)
Everyone who nominated an IRC superstar

Plone Named Finalist in Open Source CMS Award

Packt Publishing announced September 21st that Plone had once again reached the finals of their 2009 Open Source CMS Award in the category of "Best Other Open Source CMS." Also named as finalists were DotNetNuke, dotCMS, mojoPortal and WebGUI - the top chosen from among over 12,000 nominations.

You can find out more by visiting http://www.packtpub.com/award

You can vote for Plone in this competition between now and October 30th by going to: http://www.packtpub.com/best-other-open-source-cms-finalists

PloneGov named finalist in the European e-Government Awards 2009

The open source initiative PloneGov has been selected among the 52 best European e-Government projects, and is invited to present the project at the 5th Ministerial eGovernment Conference, - a joint event organised by the European Commission and the Swedish EU Presidency, which aims at monitoring progress in eGovernment, accelerating the adoption of eGovernment policies in Europe and identifying research priorities for the future.

>> About PloneGov

While being open to any public organization, PloneGov is one of the few projects, initiated by and focusing on the smallest local administrations while remaining open to any kind of collaboration. This original point has been highlighted by the EU-funded‚ Public Sector and Open Source Software‚ report:

‚ÄúThe PloneGov model had a spatial and societal dimension right from the beginning, as it aims at integrating more and more municipalities and commercial partners across Europe‚Äù. www.publicsectoross.info

Thus, PloneGov target group is not restricted to a region, a language, a culture or a type of organization. In this sense, it aims at and to give anybody the opportunity to benefit from e-government's advantages.

Find out more about PloneGov at http://www.plonegov.org/

>> About the European eGovernment Awards

The fourth edition of European eGovernment Awards, organised by the European Commission, selects good practices on the use of Information and Communication Technologies (ICT) in public service.

At the Ministerial Conference, high-level speakers and 1 000 delegates representing Member States, EFTA and candidate countries, the European Commission, international and regional organisations such as the United Nations and the OECD, leaders of the ICT industry and its main organisations including Digital Europe, as well as academia and others will meet in more than 20 sessions to discuss topics of particular interest to actors in the field of eGovernment.

During the Conference, a major display of 52 real-life eGovernment solutions and applications will be organised to highlight new developments in Europe and to build upon these in order to stimulate the take-up and dissemination of good practices.

The European eGovernment Awards are organised every two years. The aim is to identify and select good practices in the use of ICT in public services and highlight the benefits of ICT to society, including:

Improved quality of life of citizens
Increased public trust in government
Increased competitiveness of European enterprises

Following the eligibility screening, each submitted case has been evaluated by a panel of independent experts. The experts work separately in a first phase of the evaluation process and agree on a ranking in the second to ensure the highest standards and complete impartiality. The result of the first two phases of the evaluation was the selection of the 52 finalists. The winners of the 2009 Awards will be announced the 19th November at the Awards ceremony.

Find out more at http://www.epractice.eu/en/awards

UPCOMING EVENTS

World Plone Conference 2009 Coming to Budapest in October

The 7th Plone Conference will be the first one to be organized outside of the United States and Western Europe. Due to the geographic location of Hungary, Budapest is easily accessible from both Western and Eastern Europe, as well as from the Balkan and from the former member states of the Soviet Union. To help attendees to participate the conference from all over the world, and especially from the Eastern European region, the Open Society Institute offers Participation Grants that supports grantees with covering their registration fee for the conference, and part of their travel expenses.

The conference is being presented by Greenfinity, LLC, a web development company located in Budapest specializing in design and development of internet based software systems, web portals and application servers built with Python, Zope, and Plone. Their website is http://greenfinity.hu/?set_language=en

You find out all the details by visiting the Conference website at http://ploneconf2009.org/

Since in the region the prices are below the European standards, we offer a lower registration fee than in the past years: Early Bird registration costs 150 EUR, while the full registration price is 200 EUR. Budapest offers good prices for accommodation, food and entertainment. Hungary also has a wide range of touristic and cultural values, which allows the participants to prepare for an exciting conference with various social activities.

As usual, the three conference days (October 28-29-30) are preceded by two days of training, organized by Joel Burton, Plone Bootcamps, and will feature three courses at the same location as the conference itself. It is an excellent chance to learn Plone in depth from world famous trainers, and a unique opportunity for companies to train their employees.

During the conference, besides the traditional conference tracks that will follow the best tradition of the previous conferences, for the first time, we will have Open Space sessions. OpenSpace will complement the traditional talks allowing new possibilities for interaction between the presenters and the listeners.

We will also have a Conference Party where we invite all conference participants. Entry is free for all registered conference attendees, extra tickets will also be available for sale.

The conference will be followed by two days of Sprint, which will be on the same venue as the conference. Sprint participation is free; we suggest everyone to join the sprint and contribute to the development and documentation of Plone, as well as learn from the experienced plonista and meet the members of the community in person.

The language of the conference and all programs is English.

Next World Plone Day to Be Held April 28, 2010

The Plone open source software community will hold the 3rd annual World Plone Day (WPD) on April 28, 2010. WPD is an day of events held around the globe to spread awareness of Plone, a free and open source Internet publishing system that combines web content management, social software, collaboration and enterprise portal features.

This "follow the sun" event is a global initiative by user groups, developers and Plone integration companies. Previous WPDs have featured over a hundred local events around the Globe.

This year boasts more seminars, training sessions, and meet-up groups to help improve global awareness of Plone. Since Plone is an open source project, it relies on its community. Enthusiasts are encouraged to show up in full force to ensure Plone continues to grow.

Roberto Allende, creator and champion of the original WPD in 2008 is inviting Plone organizations and users groups to get involved by bring a WPD event to their own corner of the world.

The date for World Plone Day 2010 was decided based on a survey which included an evaluation of the previous events. Plone community members from the Americas, Asia, Oceania and Europe provided feedback on the WPD organization process, made suggestions and identified challenges for future editions.

More information and event details about WPD 2010 will be posted on the Plone.org website in coming months.

FOUNDATION NEWS

Plone Foundation Board Nominations Open

With the approach of Plone Conference 2009 in Budapest next month, we
are fast approaching our next election for Plone Foundation board of
directors. Several current board members (including me!) will be
stepping down this year, so we need the next generation of Plone
community leadership to step forward and help lead Plone into the
future.

Full information and instructions for nominating yourself are at:

http://plone.org/foundation/meetings/membership/2009-membership-meeting/nomination-directions

Nominations are due by Monday October 26th, and voting will take place
online and in-person at Plone Conference 2009 October 28-30th. Hanno
Schlichting will once again serve as our Director of Elections
(thanks, Hanno!).

NEW PLONE WEBSITES

Harvard SEAS Launches New Plone Website

Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences recently launched a brand new public web site, intranet and faculty/lab subsite infrastructure all based on Plone and developed by Boston-based Jazkarta. The public website can be visited at http://www.seas.harvard.edu/ .

After initially attending Plone developer training from Jazkarta, SEAS engaged their team on a larger site redesign project involving:

A new information architecture and visual design to increase awareness of research happening at the school.
A new intranet site that would offer the SEAS community easier access to important resources.
A scalable Plone software architecture that would:

include central authentication and an LDAP-based used directory
provide faculty and staff organization tools
aggregate and distribute news and events syndicated through other university systems.
Support multiple faculty/staff-managed 'subsites' within a common infrastructure.

Michael Trachtman, the Jazkarta product manager for the project commented on how Plone helped Jazkarta deliver for Harvard on these projects. "With Plone, SEAS has achieved its vision of building a capable platform for promoting its mission of educating the community about engineering and science research at the school and establishing lasting connections within its community of students, faculty and research partners. Plone's flexible and scalable architecture ensured it could meet current and future integration needs within their existing technology infrastructure and provide high availability at reasonable cost."

Jazkarta has put a lot of effort into making information about how this project was pulled off available to their community via posts to their website, user group meetings and in case study presentations such as the one done at the recent Plone Symposium East 2009 - held at Penn State University. For more information on the project, visit their website at http://blog.jazkarta.com/2009/09/01/plonified-harvard-seas-hits-plone-site-trifecta/.

Plone Powers New European Network and Information Security Agency website

Adding to the list of high-profile government websites who have chosen Plone to power their public websites, ENISA (European Network and Information Security Agency) recently launched a new web presence featuring the "Powered by Plone" link.

ENISA is a Centre of Expertise for the EU Member States and EU Institutions in Network and Information Security, giving expert advice and recommendations. The organization acts as a switchboard of information for best practices and facilitates contacts between the EU-institutions, the Members States and the private business & industry actors.

ENISA consequently contributes to modernising Europe and securing the smooth functioning of the Digital Economy and the Information Society.

Visit their website at http://www.enisa.europa.eu/

NEWS ON NEW AND UPCOMING RELEASES

Plone 3.3 Released

Plone 3.3 offers several refinements, including much better facilities for building sub-sites.

Plone 3.3, the latest minor release in the Plone 3 series, is now available.

Windows, Linux and OS X installers for the new release and instructions for upgrading existing installations are available on the Plone download page. The documentation team has already updated the online documentation to cover new features.

Upgrades from earlier Plone 3.x installations should be simple, and add-ons should require no changes.

Highlights of the 3.3 release include the ability to localize navigation, tabs, sitemaps and searches within folders. This makes it much easier to develop autonomous sub-sites within a Plone site. The new Lineage add-on provides management facilities to exploit the new feature.

Other new features and refinements include:

Automatic redirection when accessing link objects;
Resource registry improvements that make it easier to organize IE fixes;
More consistent HTML that makes theming with collective.xdv or Deliverance easier;
Improvements to the Windows installer, so it asks for password when it doesn't have the right permissions when being run;
Improvements to document locking behavior and timeouts, as well as the ability to disable it entirely;
Fixes for Internet Explorer 8;
Default disabling of in-line editing, which is invaluable in some use contexts, but causes usability problems in others;
A new view to render calendar events using the iCalendar standard;
Improved access to content histories;
The ability to customize indexing strategies with adapters; and,
Auto-discovery of ZCML configuration directives for add-on products.

A list of new features along with links to full descriptions is available on the release page.

Development of Plone 3.3 was led by release manager Wichert Akkerman and the Plone 3.x Framework Team. Israel Saeta Perez led the documentation update.

Jarn Hosts Sprint on Collections, Contentlistings and Search

Four Digits Techblog covered a Sprint hosted by Jarn in Norway to deal with improving the how Plone deals with collections, contentlistings and search. The working involved both backend improvements and an updated user interface and resulted in some some major improvements in how these listings are handled in Plone.

http://blog.fourdigits.nl/collection-contentlisting-and-search

PLONE IN THE NEWS

Zope News Publishes Interview with Eric Steele

Zope News published an interview with Eric Steele of Penn State's Weblion, release manager for Plone 4 - due out late this year. The original interview published was published in German, but the Weblion website includes the a copy of the interview in English.

http://weblion.psu.edu/news/plone-4-an-interview-with-zope-news