I think you bring up some great points, Csaba, and I hope we're all able to carry the momentum forward and produce some results in these areas as well. Nate (and Alan, and Alex, and Calvin, and Chris Johnson) and I were all at an open source CMS Expo recently in the Chicago area, and I think it was a great experience for many reasons, but on this subject, especially from the standpoint of learning from what the other communities are doing - whether it is making Plone more easy to test out via the click of a button on some new 'demo.plone.org' site we should have setup, or via a cpanel or plesk integration that most mass hosting companies use, or whether it's building up the niche-specific collateral/teams to help get the word out about Plone4Education, Plone4Government, etc., etc.
One of the things I've heard from existing clients, that I think you allude to below, is: How do I wade through all the 3,000+ extensions on Plone.org and figure out which ones are still maintained, recommended, widely used, and which sites are using them? I think that one thing the other communities do really well - that we could certainly improve upon - is the use of tagging and rating of extensions. Take, for example, http://extensions.joomla.org/ The Joomla community treats this area about as well as visiting the App Store for the iPhone, with more information about: Ratings of the product by users/developers, URLs using the extension, presenting the site as though it's a software product type website (recently added and featured products sections on its landing page) instead of more of a closet of applications we're stuffing away somewhere. This area has improved a lot over the past few years on Plone.org as well, so don't get me wrong - we have nice tagging by feature area and Plone version, but we could still improve. People want to know who is using this add-on and where, as well as how recently it's been deployed. I think that the SugarCRM project takes this even a step further by providing an entire portal around their extensions: http://www.sugarforge.org/ and giving props to developers that are most actively releasing add-ons, showing the 'top downloads', and they have a monthly email newsletter that showcases some of the recent/featured products. Plone has some 'killer add-ons' as well (Salesforce, SOLR, and LDAP integration, the e-campaigning tools you mention, etc.), and just as most people who have an iPhone do so for the apps, not for the phone capabilities, we could do a better job of bringing people to Plone as a vibrant platform for the 'things you can do with it', not just as a true CMS. -Ken Csaba Madarász wrote: > Hi, > > Some of you might remember me - I am Csaba, used to work with Balazs, > and made an interview with Steve (do your remember?) now out of Plone. > > But what you are talking about now, makes me to give some feedback, > although I do not make any business with Plone ;) > > I am one of the user testing categories, who has been following the > Nate mentioned line of getting touch with Plone: > First was with local governments, later with NGOs and later again with > e-democracy. > I wanted to find out what kind of products are do exist, if I imagine > Plone as something that can roll out fast, just as wordpress with > additional functionalities for specific cases .... > I have found pretty interesting things - in some areas, Plone moves a > bit beyond the others (Wordpress, joomla, drupal) if we look at the > above mentioned usecases. Ecampaigning was a great product, although > did not gain the needed interest in the developer community to upgrade > it. Many e-democracy related stuff, half or full developed does exist, > but it is not even visible to the community. > It is a bit about tagging and semantics and as correctly you wrote > before: kniting together and packing an egg. > > The recent collaboriative sprint in Oxford, where several European NGO > representatives, responsible for e-campaigning (it is both good for > business, ngos and local govs! ) showed some instersting things - > Drupal and Plone developers were working together for investigating > and migrating systems to Plone, like CIVICRM, and companies sent > people and sponsored food for the event. Not surprisingly, the > learning experiance of the developers was a key element. > > But in most areas working functionalities not "budled" under Plone for > specific usecases - (have a look at OpenAtrium) such as NGOs, for > example e-campaigning. It is not because there are not too many - but > from the community communicational point of view, it migh has not been > thought this way before...and it is really high time to do it! Happy > to see your moves! > > Let me suggest an issue: Delib is doing a great job in developing > online consultation and opinion gathering products under Plone. > /What about applying the new paradigm and tools for community > engagement to the developer community?/ > Of course it needs more communication, and some kind of an > ethical-business role to play, when you are put under Plone's flag, > that in this year, we would like to improve the NGO > support..etc....(Sorry if it is not correct). > Drupal fellows making quite good examples (of course, with some > funding) and the wordpress developer community is really responsive in > this way. > Sometimes I do feel, that one of the forward moving experiance could > be to learn from other communitites. But in this case, I do think it > is about leadership. > So please continute to improve the community works! > > Cheers from Budapest, > > Csaba > > > > > > > > Madarász Csaba > tel.:+36703643482 > > > > Google Talk: madarasz.csaba Skype: bpanther360 > Linkedin <http://www.linkedin.com/in/mcsaba>Facebook > <http://www.facebook.com/csabam>Blog RSS > <http://pep-net.eu/members/civkol/activity/feed>Twitter > <http://www.tiwitter.com/kiazami>del.icio.us > <http://delicious.com/kiazami>Blog RSS > <http://nyilt.org/main/rss.xml>Blog RSS > <http://pep-net.eu/members/citizensnetwork/activity/feed> > > > 2010/5/17 Nate Aune <[email protected] <mailto:[email protected]>> > > magine if you are from a university, government agency or non-profit, > and the first time you download Plone, there is an installer profile > made just for you, that guides you through the benefits of why Plone > is right for your particular industry and shows you the value-add of > these additional modules. I think this could be incredible beneficial > in helping Plone to get greater adoption in these markets. > > Nate > > > ------------------------------------------------------------------------ > > _______________________________________________ > Evangelism mailing list > [email protected] > http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism > _______________________________________________ Evangelism mailing list [email protected] http://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/evangelism
