[Evangelism] CMS smackdown

[Matt Hamilton]

Hi all,
I'm going to be representing Plone at a fairly informal local event, BathCamp who are running a CMS Smackdown:

http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/

I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5 things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the things I hate

So my draft list so far:

5 Things I love about Plone:

- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]

5 Things I hate about Plone:

- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).

Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in mind I have just two minutes per point!

-Matt

[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

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[Armin Stroß-Radschinski]

Hi Matt,
do not make yourself pain with hate. Avoid playing this game. Make it
proactive!

Hate is something not pointing to solutions so you should waste one
point for:

1. I hate that it makes pain to find something we really hate. But we
know challenges!

4 points the community is currently turning from flaws into solutions:

- Ripping out stuff is still a task not automated!
- The old documentation still does not match the standards recently
created docs meet.
- The value that comes from Plones evolutionary continous development
quality is not as obvious as it should be. (is that fake?)
- Former revolutionary Plone concepts are now very common. New
concepts are not recognized that well related to their genereal value
for the whole Software & CMS world (Transmogrifier, Diazo)

Armin

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
I'm going to be representing Plone at a fairly informal local
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5
things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think
of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally
be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical
aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5
things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the
things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg,
versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out
good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc.
Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as
ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the
ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing
in mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I
used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think
how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the
problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

--
Armin Carl Stro?-Radschinski, Dipl. Designer
acsr industrialdesign, Landgrafenstra?e 32, 53842 Troisdorf, Germany

Telefon [phone] / 94 69 94, FAX [phone] / 94 69 96
eMail a.stross-radschinski at acsr.de - http://www.acsr.de
UST. ID Nr: DE154092803 (EU VAT ID)

[Matt Hamilton]

Post by Armin Stroß-Radschinski
Hi Matt,
do not make yourself pain with hate. Avoid playing this game. Make it proactive!

Don't worry, I very much plan to. Maybe it was not obvious from the 'hates' in my list, that I want to spin them to positives if I can. btw in case it was not clear the format '5 Things you Love, 5 Thing you Hate' is specified by the event organiser. So whilst the word 'hate' is strong, it is what is being used in the event.

Post by Armin Stroß-Radschinski
1. I hate that it makes pain to find something we really hate. But we know challenges!
- Ripping out stuff is still a task not automated!
- The old documentation still does not match the standards recently created docs meet.
- The value that comes from Plones evolutionary continous development quality is not as obvious as it should be. (is that fake?)
- Former revolutionary Plone concepts are now very common. New concepts are not recognized that well related to their genereal value for the whole Software & CMS world (Transmogrifier, Diazo)

I especially like the latter two points. I mean, how many other CMS projects have CI clusters doing testing and the likes? (actually? that may not be a rhetorical question? I will investigate). And also the fact that Plone (and Zope) were so ahead of their time that many didn't quite understand them. Concepts such as NoSQL are now becoming popular.

I'm going to have to talk fast ;)

-Matt

Post by Armin Stroß-Radschinski
NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

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[Dylan Jay]

Take a look at http://www.slideshare.net/djay/plone-pwns
for positives. Personally I'd go for security and permissions model even
for a technical group.
For negatives perhaps not enough emphasis on ttw as talked about in
http://djay.posterous.com/template-customisations-are-evil but which is
being remedied with the three d's.
Or that it's democratic nature makes new ideas slow to get done however
that's really a good thing as it means a single company can't drive product
down a dead end by jumping on a band wagon.
I agree with a armin that negatives should be positives in disguise.
Everyone else will do that :)

Dylan Jay
Technical solution manager
PretaWeb 99552830

On 29/05/2012, at 1:04 AM, Matt Hamilton <matth at netsight.co.uk> wrote:

Hi all,
I'm going to be representing Plone at a fairly informal local event,
BathCamp who are running a CMS Smackdown:

http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/

I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5 things
I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of my list of
things. Many of the people at the event will generally be techies, so I
won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical aspects. However the
bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to
mention how we are improving the things I hate

So my draft list so far:

5 Things I love about Plone:

- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning
eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]

5 Things I hate about Plone:

- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good new
stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point out
it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point out
move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as ZODB is
pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB or mutate
things you don't mean to).

Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in
mind I have just two minutes per point!

-Matt

[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used to
first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to code that
in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT

Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk <iain at netsight.co.uk>

Telephone
[phone]


Web
www.netsight.co.uk

Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

*
*











_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism
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[Dylan Jay]

Post by Dylan Jay
Take a look at http://www.slideshare.net/djay/plone-pwns
for positives. Personally I'd go for security and permissions model
even for a technical group.

Actually there are two slides in there that need explaining.
The key point about the w2tech market share slide is plone enjoys high
market share in the top 100,000 sites. This graph is old, the latest
now shows Plone above drupal for larger sites. The important point is
that this explains why many people won't have heard of Plone. Using an
expression I stole from the drupal community, Plone is truely "the
elevator that goes all the way up".
The point about realstory map slide is that Plone is the ONLY single
product that features in three categories. All the others are large
vendors with multiple products, such as MS, Adobe etc. No other open
source CMS does this. This attests to Plone's flexibility. The fact
that it gets used widely for both internets and public websites also
shows it's flexibiliy. Again it is the elevator that goes all the way
up. "Don't get stuck when your needs outgrow your CMS".

With regard to security I think the @lulsec slide is really powerful.
Both fbi.gov and cia.gov sites would have been targeted heavily.
Neither were hacked. If they could have hacked them they would have.
Both are Plone.
The stats on vulnerabilities vs Drupal etc you have to be careful
about as you have to show that Plone is widely used and exposed
otherwise they will dismiss them thinking incorrectly that the
vulnerabilities do exist in Plone undetected.

Hope that helps.

Post by Dylan Jay
For negatives perhaps not enough emphasis on ttw as talked about in http://djay.posterous.com/template-customisations-are-evil
but which is being remedied with the three d's.
Or that it's democratic nature makes new ideas slow to get done
however that's really a good thing as it means a single company
can't drive product down a dead end by jumping on a band wagon.
I agree with a armin that negatives should be positives in disguise.
Everyone else will do that :)
Dylan Jay
Technical solution manager
PretaWeb 99552830

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
I'm going to be representing Plone at a fairly informal local
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5
things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think
of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will
generally be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of
the technical aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is
coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are
improving the things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg,
versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out
good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc.
Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as
ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the
ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas?
Bearing in mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I
used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think
how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the
problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

[T Kim Nguyen]

I'd be tempted to make security a top 5 item.

At PSE we did some brainstorming as part of the PloneEdu web site sprint and came up with this (raw) list. The starred ones the ones we thought were most important.

Kim

What Makes Plone Great
*Community
*High security out of the box
*education-focused ?products? (modules, add-ons, extensions) (eg. FSD, timeslot)
*intranets
*improving your business processes
*forms builder
*free and open source
*in-place editing
*accessibility
responsive / mobile-friendly
scaleability
file structure
accessible URLs
docs of various types
Plone user groups
accessibility compliance
modern technology framework
upgrade path
easy to theme
extendable
workflow
multilingual and global community
handles lots of content
publication workflows OOTB
built in search
fine grained permissions groups
auth integration
collections / reports / queries
robust
stable
installable product modules
zeo-enterprise scale OOTB
conferences for edu

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5 things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

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[Matt Hamilton]

Kim,
Thanks for making this list! I was actually going to ask you to do something similar for Plone.com. We did a brainstorming session in Sorrento and it will be good to correlate both lists and see what we each came up with.

Working in the sector you do I think you are probably a lot closer to users than many developers are. I know that there have been a number of occasions where I have seen Plone 3rd party products developed by those in Education which I've looked at with my developer hat on and said 'wtf?! but it is just something simple'? but in many cases that 'simple' thing exactly solves a specific need or requirement that a user has had. And it is often that specific requirement that makes or breaks the adoption or use of Plone.

-Matt

Post by T Kim Nguyen
I'd be tempted to make security a top 5 item.
At PSE we did some brainstorming as part of the PloneEdu web site sprint and came up with this (raw) list. The starred ones the ones we thought were most important.
Kim
What Makes Plone Great
*Community
*High security out of the box
*education-focused ?products? (modules, add-ons, extensions) (eg. FSD, timeslot)
*intranets
*improving your business processes
*forms builder
*free and open source
*in-place editing
*accessibility
responsive / mobile-friendly
scaleability
file structure
accessible URLs
docs of various types
Plone user groups
accessibility compliance
modern technology framework
upgrade path
easy to theme
extendable
workflow
multilingual and global community
handles lots of content
publication workflows OOTB
built in search
fine grained permissions groups
auth integration
collections / reports / queries
robust
stable
installable product modules
zeo-enterprise scale OOTB
conferences for edu

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5 things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

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[Maurizio Delmonte]

Post by Matt Hamilton
Working in the sector you do I think you are probably a lot closer to
users than many developers are. I know that there have been a number of
occasions where I have seen Plone 3rd party products developed by those in
Education which I've looked at with my developer hat on and said 'wtf?! but
it is just something simple'? but in many cases that 'simple' thing exactly
solves a specific need or requirement that a user has had. And it is often
that specific requirement that makes or breaks the adoption or use of Plone.

from this point of view you describe, I found this list quite interesting:
http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/tech-specs

the whole section here is interesting, actually:
http://www.liferay.com/products/liferay-portal/overview

hth,
Maurizio
--
Maurizio Delmonte - [maurizio.delmonte at abstract.it]

Abstract Open Solutions [http://www.abstract.it] - Tel: [phone]

*Join me at EuroPython* [http://goo.gl/mmV25]


http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/no-word-attachments.it.html

Ai sensi del d.lgs. 196 del 30 giugno 2003, recante disposizioni per la
tutela delle persone e di altri soggetti rispetto al trattamento dei dati
personali, si precisa che questa email ? inviata unicamente ai destinatari
sopra esposti, con espressa diffida di leggerla, copiarla, diffonderla ed
usarla senza autorizzazione. Se avete ricevuto questa email per errore, vi
preghiamo di distruggerla immediatamente e contattarci tramite uno dei
recapiti sopra indicati.
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[T. Kim Nguyen]

Thanks Matt - I don't think there is going to be much difference between this edu-focused list and the more general one for plone.com.

One item I did not think of before to add to the edu list is perhaps not specific to Plone but applies to open source software in general: that it is part of a university's academic mission to create and share knowledge, in this case in the form of software, documentation, classes that we contribute back to the community. We have also used Plone with great success in introducing CS and IS students to a world-class framework (a teaching example of how it's designed, developed, and maintained) and to a dynamic international developer/integrator/user community. We sometimes forget that the concept of sprints and users-helping-users is revolutionary; I myself only realized this the other week when I was explaining what happens at the Plone Symposium to a completely non-technical person, and she reacted with such amazement when I described sprinting.

On the idea of simple products: it's gratifying to see eyes light up when I explain the relatively simple idea of centralizing all info related to a particular meeting (in uwosh.meeting) and then demonstrate it. This is what gets me charged up. :)

Kim

Post by Matt Hamilton
Kim,
Thanks for making this list! I was actually going to ask you to do something similar for Plone.com. We did a brainstorming session in Sorrento and it will be good to correlate both lists and see what we each came up with.
Working in the sector you do I think you are probably a lot closer to users than many developers are. I know that there have been a number of occasions where I have seen Plone 3rd party products developed by those in Education which I've looked at with my developer hat on and said 'wtf?! but it is just something simple'? but in many cases that 'simple' thing exactly solves a specific need or requirement that a user has had. And it is often that specific requirement that makes or breaks the adoption or use of Plone.
-Matt

Post by T Kim Nguyen
I'd be tempted to make security a top 5 item.
At PSE we did some brainstorming as part of the PloneEdu web site sprint and came up with this (raw) list. The starred ones the ones we thought were most important.
Kim
What Makes Plone Great
*Community
*High security out of the box
*education-focused ?products? (modules, add-ons, extensions) (eg. FSD, timeslot)
*intranets
*improving your business processes
*forms builder
*free and open source
*in-place editing
*accessibility
responsive / mobile-friendly
scaleability
file structure
accessible URLs
docs of various types
Plone user groups
accessibility compliance
modern technology framework
upgrade path
easy to theme
extendable
workflow
multilingual and global community
handles lots of content
publication workflows OOTB
built in search
fine grained permissions groups
auth integration
collections / reports / queries
robust
stable
installable product modules
zeo-enterprise scale OOTB
conferences for edu

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5 things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

[Ken Wasetis [Contextual Corp.]]

One thing to not underestimate - Collections and collection portlets.

Anyone with at least moderate experience with a CMS and who understands
challenges with 'content reuse' will light up when seeing Plone
collections in action. And the fact that they've been part of Plone for
10 years (a.k.a. Smart Folders, a.k.a. Topics) is even more impressive.

And as far as being ahead of its time, how about the fact that Plone
(b/c of Zope) has had web services capabilities (via XML-RPC, not full
SOAP at the time) since Day 1 (over 10 years ago.) I recall Zope having
clustering and XML-RPC before (circa 1998?):

a) there was any open source Java or other language/framework
alternative offering clustering (this was before JBoss)
b) before a SOAP spec even existed

-Ken

Post by T. Kim Nguyen
Thanks Matt - I don't think there is going to be much difference between this edu-focused list and the more general one for plone.com.
One item I did not think of before to add to the edu list is perhaps not specific to Plone but applies to open source software in general: that it is part of a university's academic mission to create and share knowledge, in this case in the form of software, documentation, classes that we contribute back to the community. We have also used Plone with great success in introducing CS and IS students to a world-class framework (a teaching example of how it's designed, developed, and maintained) and to a dynamic international developer/integrator/user community. We sometimes forget that the concept of sprints and users-helping-users is revolutionary; I myself only realized this the other week when I was explaining what happens at the Plone Symposium to a completely non-technical person, and she reacted with such amazement when I described sprinting.
On the idea of simple products: it's gratifying to see eyes light up when I explain the relatively simple idea of centralizing all info related to a particular meeting (in uwosh.meeting) and then demonstrate it. This is what gets me charged up. :)
Kim

Post by Matt Hamilton
Kim,
Thanks for making this list! I was actually going to ask you to do something similar for Plone.com. We did a brainstorming session in Sorrento and it will be good to correlate both lists and see what we each came up with.
Working in the sector you do I think you are probably a lot closer to users than many developers are. I know that there have been a number of occasions where I have seen Plone 3rd party products developed by those in Education which I've looked at with my developer hat on and said 'wtf?! but it is just something simple'? but in many cases that 'simple' thing exactly solves a specific need or requirement that a user has had. And it is often that specific requirement that makes or breaks the adoption or use of Plone.
-Matt

Post by T Kim Nguyen
I'd be tempted to make security a top 5 item.
At PSE we did some brainstorming as part of the PloneEdu web site sprint and came up with this (raw) list. The starred ones the ones we thought were most important.
Kim
What Makes Plone Great
*Community
*High security out of the box
*education-focused ?products? (modules, add-ons, extensions) (eg. FSD, timeslot)
*intranets
*improving your business processes
*forms builder
*free and open source
*in-place editing
*accessibility
responsive / mobile-friendly
scaleability
file structure
accessible URLs
docs of various types
Plone user groups
accessibility compliance
modern technology framework
upgrade path
easy to theme
extendable
workflow
multilingual and global community
handles lots of content
publication workflows OOTB
built in search
fine grained permissions groups
auth integration
collections / reports / queries
robust
stable
installable product modules
zeo-enterprise scale OOTB
conferences for edu

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5 things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally be techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email
matth at netsight.co.uk
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at lists.plone.org
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

[wraphd]

For an edu audience I do agree that appealing to the "unfettered flow of
information" value embodied in university missions can be quite powerful.
Most university administrators (who of course are the ones making purchasing
decisions) are, or were at some point in their careers, academics, and as
such are proud to be a part of a community of that openly shares ideas and
pushes each other forward. When they learn about open-source software they
immediately see the analogue to what they value so much in their academic
fields, and they are sold.

Post by T. Kim Nguyen
Thanks Matt - I don't think there is going to be much difference between
this edu-focused list and the more general one for plone.com.
One item I did not think of before to add to the edu list is perhaps not
specific to Plone but applies to open source software in general: that it
is part of a university's academic mission to create and share knowledge,
in this case in the form of software, documentation, classes that we
contribute back to the community. We have also used Plone with great
success in introducing CS and IS students to a world-class framework (a
teaching example of how it's designed, developed, and maintained) and to a
dynamic international developer/integrator/user community. We sometimes
forget that the concept of sprints and users-helping-users is
revolutionary; I myself only realized this the other week when I was
explaining what happens at the Plone Symposium to a completely
non-technical person, and she reacted with such amazement when I described
sprinting.
On the idea of simple products: it's gratifying to see eyes light up when
I explain the relatively simple idea of centralizing all info related to a
particular meeting (in uwosh.meeting) and then demonstrate it. This is
what gets me charged up. :)
Kim

Post by Matt Hamilton
Kim,
Thanks for making this list! I was actually going to ask you to do
something similar for Plone.com. We did a brainstorming session in
Sorrento and it will be good to correlate both lists and see what we each
came up with.
Working in the sector you do I think you are probably a lot closer to
users than many developers are. I know that there have been a number of
occasions where I have seen Plone 3rd party products developed by those
in Education which I've looked at with my developer hat on and said
'wtf?! but it is just something simple'? but in many cases that 'simple'
thing exactly solves a specific need or requirement that a user has had.
And it is often that specific requirement that makes or breaks the
adoption or use of Plone.
-Matt

Post by T Kim Nguyen
I'd be tempted to make security a top 5 item.
At PSE we did some brainstorming as part of the PloneEdu web site sprint
and came up with this (raw) list. The starred ones the ones we thought
were most important.
Kim
What Makes Plone Great
*Community
*High security out of the box
*education-focused ?products? (modules, add-ons, extensions) (eg. FSD, timeslot)
*intranets
*improving your business processes
*forms builder
*free and open source
*in-place editing
*accessibility
responsive / mobile-friendly
scaleability
file structure
accessible URLs
docs of various types
Plone user groups
accessibility compliance
modern technology framework
upgrade path
easy to theme
extendable
workflow
multilingual and global community
handles lots of content
publication workflows OOTB
built in search
fine grained permissions groups
auth integration
collections / reports / queries
robust
stable
installable product modules
zeo-enterprise scale OOTB
conferences for edu
On May 28, 2012, at 11:04 AM, Matt Hamilton &lt;

matth at .co

Post by Matt Hamilton

Post by T Kim Nguyen

Post by Matt Hamilton
Hi all,
I'm going to be representing Plone at a fairly informal local event,
http://bathcamp.org/events/cms-smackdown/
I've got 10 minutes to talk about 5 things I love about Plone and 5
things I hate. I'm up against 7 other CMSs. So I'm trying to think of
my list of things. Many of the people at the event will generally be
techies, so I won't be afraid to talk about some of the technical
aspects. However the bit I'm struggling with is coming up with 5 things
I hate ;) I'm hoping to mention how we are improving the things I hate
- The Community (international events, people, etc)
- Buildout + Deployment (dev.cfg -> staging.cfg -> live.cfg, versioning eggs etc)
- The ZODB (pervasive data store? no need to think SQL etc)
- Diazo (Great way to theme sites + demo)
- Python [1]
- Legacy (talk about ripping out stuff, Zope 4 etc)
- Documentation (talk about the swamp of old docs, but point out good
new stuff eg. Developer Manual)
- Perception by Python developers (that is is old hat and boring: point
out it does its job well and is mature)
- Everything in the catalog (talk about navigation using it etc. Point
out move to parent pointers, use of Solr etc)
- Too easy to shoot yourself in the foot performance-wise (i.e., as
ZODB is pervasive, you can accidentally load every object in the ZODB
or mutate things you don't mean to).
Any thoughts on this list? Any other good viewpoints, ideas? Bearing in
mind I have just two minutes per point!
-Matt
[1] Great quote from colleague: "When I used to program in Java I used
to first think how to solve the problem, then I had to think how to
code that in Java. With Python I think how to solve the problem, then
just write it"

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email

matth at .co

Post by Matt Hamilton

Post by T Kim Nguyen

Post by Matt Hamilton

Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list

Evangelism at .plone

Post by Matt Hamilton

Post by T Kim Nguyen

Post by Matt Hamilton
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

NETSIGHT
Matt Hamilton
Technical Director
Email

matth at .co

Post by Matt Hamilton

Post by T Kim Nguyen
Telephone
[phone]
Web
www.netsight.co.uk
Address
40 Berkeley Square, Clifton
Bristol BS8 1HU

_______________________________________________
Evangelism mailing list
Evangelism at .plone
https://lists.plone.org/mailman/listinfo/plone-evangelism

-----
Rush University
--
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[Paul Roeland]

we think about upgrades. Sure, they were bumpy sometimes, but we beat
the competition's "Computer says nooooo" approach...
That also means we build sites that are meant to last, not throwaway
brochureware.