With sincere apologies for the delay, (most) videos and slides from Plone Conference 2008 are now available for viewing on plone.org. We are still working with the vendor (and some presenters) to provide missing media; so for the most part, if something is missing we know about it and we are doing our best to rectify. However, there may be some cases where a portion of the video is missing. If you happen to come across such a thing, please report it to http://dev.plone.org/plone.org and we will investigate. We hope that everyone enjoys these sessions, and that you are getting excited for Plone Conference 2009 (where registration is now open)!
Plone Conference 2008 was an amazing and rewarding experience for me, and hopefully everyone else involved. Most things went very well, a few went slightly wrong. Overall, I could not have asked for a better result (with the possible exception of the WiFi and videos) or better group of people to host an event for. Thank you again planners, sponsors, attendees, and community at large.
Believe it or not, I and several others are still digging out of the massive amount of work to be done for Plone Conference 2008. Specifically, I want to make sure all the slides and videos from slideshare.net and blip.tv get properly linked to from plone.org, and I want to make sure the Corporate Platinum and Gold Sponsors get their direct mails (the deadline for content submission will be Plone Conference 2009).
I would also like to believe our planning team’s experiences can help make future conferences better, easier to plan, and more consistent. To that end, and for whatever it is worth, here is the (formerly OpenPlans, now CoActivate) planning project we used to plan Plone Conference 2008! I hope you enjoy browsing through it, and find it useful in some way.
Now, bring on the new and exciting Plone Conference 2009 updates!
Alex Clark
Contents
This week’s Plone Conference 2008 Sprint newsletter brings you last minute sprint details with more updates on the sprint topic. See the previous issues for more information if you have missed those. As always, you can post a sprint topic or express interest in an existing topic at the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint wiki. Once again, the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint takes places Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12, at the Arlington Career Center.
Plone Conference and Sprint IRC Channel
The IRC channel for the Plone 2008 Conference and Sprint has been opened as #ploneconf2008 on irc.freenode.net. Use this channel for chatting about where to go and meet up at Conference, as well as for extending your sprint to remote developers. Need a freenode-centric primer on IRC? Check out this quick tour.
ZopeSkel Sprint Update
Josh has been super busy getting ready for the ZopeSkel sprint since his last report in Issue #1 of the DC Sprintletter. Actually he’s been busy getting you ready for the ZopeSkel sprint. Here’s Josh again with what you need to know to hit the ground running at the ZopeSkel sprint:
“Last week I branched zopeskel and merged in my changes. I plan to use this branch for the sprint.
I’ve also written up a very quick howto on getting up and running with ZopeSkel, building a plone 3 buildout with an archetype-based content type product and I’ve verified this actually works:
ZOPESKEL + ARCHETYPES - BUIDLD A DEV ENV
========================================
Dev Environment (Ubunutu)
-------------------------
$ sudo aptitude install build-essential python-dev python2.4 python2.4-dev subversion
Easy Install
------------
$ cd /tmp
$ wget http://peak.telecommunity.com/dist/ez_setup.py
$ sudo python2.4 ez_setup.py
ZopeSkel
--------
$ sudo easy_install -U ZopeSkel
- or -
[ from JJ's zopeskel branch ]
$ cd ~
$ svn co http://svn.plone.org/svn/collective/ZopeSkel/branches/jjmojojjmojo-AT/
$ cd jjmojojjmojo-AT
$ sudo python2.4 setup.py develop
Check for ZopeSkel
------------------
$ paster create --list-templates
Available templates:
archetype: A Plone project that uses Archetypes
basic_namespace: A project with a namespace package
basic_package: A basic setuptools-enabled package
basic_zope: A Zope project
kss_plugin: A KSS plugin template
nested_namespace: A project with two nested namespaces.
paste_deploy: A web application deployed through paste.deploy
plone: A Plone project
plone2.5_buildout: A buildout for Plone 2.5 projects
plone2.5_theme: A Theme for Plone 2.5
plone2_theme: A Theme Product for Plone 2.1 & Plone 2.5
plone3_buildout: A buildout for Plone 3 projects
plone3_portlet: A Plone 3 portlet
plone3_theme: A Theme for Plone 3.0
plone_app: A Plone App project
plone_hosting: Plone hosting: buildout with ZEO and any Plone version
plone_pas: A Plone PAS project
recipe: A recipe project for zc.buildout
silva_buildout: A buildout for Silva projects
Buildout Skeleton
-----------------
$ paster create -t plone3_buildout mybuildout
Selected and implied templates:
ZopeSkel#plone3_buildout A buildout for Plone 3 projects
Variables:
egg: mybuildout
package: mybuildout
project: mybuildout
Enter zope2_install (Path to Zope 2 installation; leave blank to fetch one) ['']:
Enter plone_products_install (Path to directory containing Plone products; leave blank to fetch one) ['']:
Enter zope_user (Zope root admin user) ['admin']:
Enter zope_password (Zope root admin password) ['']: admin
Enter http_port (HTTP port) [8080]:
Enter debug_mode (Should debug mode be "on" or "off"?) ['off']: on
Enter verbose_security (Should verbose security be "on" or "off"?) ['off']: on
Archetypes Product
------------------
$ cd mybuildout/src
$ paster create -t archetype my.product
Selected and implied templates:
ZopeSkel#basic_namespace A project with a namespace package
ZopeSkel#plone A Plone project
ZopeSkel#archetype A Plone project that uses Archetypes
Variables:
egg: my.product
package: myproduct
project: my.product
Enter title (The title of the project) ['Plone Example']: My Product
Enter namespace_package (Namespace package (like plone)) ['plone']: my
Enter package (The package contained namespace package (like example)) ['example']: product
Enter zope2product (Are you creating a Zope 2 Product?) [True]:
Enter version (Version) ['1.0']:
Enter description (One-line description of the package) ['']:
Enter long_description (Multi-line description (in reST)) ['']:
Enter author (Author name) ['Plone Foundation']:
Enter author_email (Author email) ['plone-developers@lists.sourceforge.net']:
Enter keywords (Space-separated keywords/tags) ['']:
Enter url (URL of homepage) ['http://svn.plone.org/svn/plone/plone.example']:
Enter license_name (License name) ['GPL']:
Enter zip_safe (True/False: if the package can be distributed as a .zip file) [False]:
Wire Up Product To Plone
------------------------
$ cd ../
$ vi buildout.cfg
Make changes:
[buildout]
...
develop =
*src/my.product*
...
[instance]
eggs =
${buildout:eggs}
${plone:eggs}
*my.product*
...
zcml =
my.product
Save and exit.
Check for Local Commands
------------------------
$ cd src/my.product
$ paster help
Usage: paster [paster_options] COMMAND [command_options]
Options:
--version show program's version number and exit
--plugin=PLUGINS Add a plugin to the list of commands (plugins are Egg
specs; will also require() the Egg)
-h, --help Show this help message
Commands:
create Create the file layout for a Python distribution
help Display help
make-config Install a package and create a fresh config file/directory
points Show information about entry points
post Run a request for the described application
request Run a request for the described application
serve Serve the described application
setup-app Setup an application, given a config file
ZopeSkel local commands:
addcontent Adds plone content types to your project
Content Type(s)
---------------
Container
~~~~~~~~~
$ paster addcontent contenttype
Enter contenttype_name (Content type name ) ['Example Type']: Date Book
Enter contenttype_description (Content type description ) ['Description of the Example Type']: A Simple Date Book
Enter folderish (True/False: Content type is Folderish ) [False]: True
Enter global_allow (True/False: Globally addable ) [True]:
Enter allow_discussion (True/False: Allow discussion ) [False]:
Non-Container
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
$ paster addcontent contenttype
Enter contenttype_name (Content type name ) ['Example Type']: Entry
Enter contenttype_description (Content type description ) ['Description of the Example Type']: A Date Book Entry
Enter folderish (True/False: Content type is Folderish ) [False]:
Enter global_allow (True/False: Globally addable ) [True]: False
Enter allow_discussion (True/False: Allow discussion ) [False]:
- repeat for each content type in your system -
Archetypes Schema
-----------------
$ paster addcontent atschema
Welcome to the ATSchema Builder. Field names/widgets can be specified in lowercase or upper case.
NOTE: No need to add 'widget' or 'field' to the names. atschema does the work for you!
See
http://plone.org/documentation/manual/archetypes-developer-manual/fields/fields-reference/
and
http://plone.org/documentation/manual/archetypes-developer-manual/fields/widgets-reference
for field and widget details
Enter content_class_filename (What is the module (file)name of your content class?) ['exampletype']: datebook
Enter field_name (What would you like to name this field?) ['newfield']: year
Enter field_type (What kind of field should I make for you?
Some examples: [boolean,computed,cmfobject,datetime,file,fixedpoint,float,image,integer,lines,reference,string,text]) ['string']: integer
Enter widget_type (What kind of widget do you want to use?) ['default']:
Enter field_label (What should be the label of this field (title)?) ['New Field']: Date Book Year
Enter field_desc (What should be the description of this field (help text)?) ['Field description']: Limit this date book to one specific year
Enter required (Is this field required?) ['False']:
Enter default (If you'd like a default type it here, otherwise leave it blank) ['']:
- repeat for each field in your schema -
Bootstrap/Buildout
------------------
$ cd ../../
$ python2.4 bootstrap.py
$ ./bin/buildout
Start Zope
----------
$ ./bin/instance fg
Eyeball Test
------------
1. Open http://localhost:8080 in a browser. You should see the Zope welcome page
2. Click the Zope Management Interface link, enter admin/admin for username/password
3. Select "Plone Site" from the dropdown on the right.
4. Enter a useful id (plone). The rest of the fields don't matter right now.
5. Click "Add Plone Site" button
6. Watch console for any errors during plone site setup
7. Click on the link to "plone (Site)"
8. Click on "portal_quickinstaller"
9. Check the box next to "My Product"
10. Click "Install"
11. Watch the console for errors
12. You should see "My Product" under "Installed Products"
13. Open http://localhost:8080/plone (it usually takes some time to load first time round)
14. Click the "Add New" link.
15. Look for Date Book in the list
16. Click on Date Book in the list
17. Fill out the form. We'll use "My Date Book" for the title, "A Date Book" for the description, and 2008 for the year
18. Click save button
-jj
Sprint Location Site Plan
The site plan for the Arlington Career Center shows the areas in the sprint location which are available for sprinting. Areas will be assigned to topics on the first morning of the sprint based on factors such as need for laptop projectors for tutorials and the number of sprinters per topic. Sprints which have solicited engagement, submitted newsletter reports, and have published their participation details on the sprint wiki have a leg up for space. But there will be more than ample room even if every single person from Plone Conference 2008 attends the sprint.
A special room has been designated for the Beginners’ Sprint on the site plan. Talks have been prepared for this room to help beginning sprinters. And so the Beginners’ Sprint will have the largest private room with a large screen laptop projector and public address system. The common area in the center of the building is reserved for morning briefings and evening reports, but will be a free sprinting space during the day. The common area can host 150 sprinters. There are two other private rooms with projectors, and two private rooms without projectors. The topics with the most participation will get the private rooms.
It is important to note that alcohol and tobacco products are forbidden at the Arlington Career Center. The ACC is a facility of the Arlington Public School System, and as such is subject to local ordinance. Smoking is prohibited on any school grounds in Arlington County and within 1000 feet of any school property.
Plone4Artists Sprint Announced
The first time I knew about a public post-Plone Conference sprint, Nate Aune had hired space in Vienna for a Plone4Artists sprint out of his own pocket. Since then, there has been a Plone4Artists sprint after every Plone Conference. 2008 will be no exception. Here’s what Nate had to say upon announcing the Plone4Artists topic at the 2008 Plone Conference Sprint earlier last week:
”We’re looking for a few good developers to help extend the multimedia capabilities of Plone. Our immediate goal is to get a 1.2 release of Plone4ArtistsVideo and Plone4ArtistsAudio products out. We also need folks who can test and write documentation. If you’d like to join the Plone4Artists/multimedia sprint team, please add your name to the participants list.
Here’s a list of tasks:
Audio
- Make sure all tests pass in Plone 3.x
- Fix all critical bugs
- Make it easier to install into an existing buildout: Update buildout config
- Documentation:
- update README file
- Make screencast (see existing screencast)
- Create a guided tour using Amberjack or Flowgram
- Improve templates (requires HTML/CSS and preferably ZPT knowledge)
Video
- Make sure all tests pass in Plone 3.x
- Fix all critical bugs
- Make it easier to install into an existing buildout: Update buildout config
- Documentation:
- Update README file
- Make screencast (see existing screencast)
- Create a guided tour using Amberjack or Flowgram
- Improve templates (requires HTML/CSS and preferably ZPT knowledge
Large file handling
- make sure plone.app.blob works with Plone4ArtistsAudio and Plone4ArtistsVideo (see ticket #27)
- test FileSystemStorage with Plone4ArtistsAudio and Plone4ArtistsVideo (see ticket #17)
- conduct load tests to simulate how well these perform under a lot of traffic
- integrate scripts to post file uploads to Amazon S3 (bypass Zope)
- conduct further testing of Tramline
Video transcoding
- integrate scripts to post video uploads to Blip.tv using this Python script and their API (bypass Zope)
- explore ZopeTube for doing the video transcoding”
-Nate
Sprint Volunteers: Your Help Needed
We couldn’t have a sprint of this size without a good number of volunteers. The fine people at the Arlington Career Center, Jeff, Jason, Matt, and Dave are volunteering their time to help us. The topic leaders are volunteering their time. And you, the sprinter can not only volunteer your time at the sprint, but might consider some of these needs:
- There will be plenty of power and network available at the sprint. What you need to do is bring your own power strip. The ACC has many power distribution cords and few power strips. They have asked each sprinter to bring a power strip. Be sure to put your name on your power strip.
- Warm bodies to move tables and chairs, make coffee, tape down power cords, put up signs, assist caterers, and all manner of odd jobs are needed at the ACC by 7am on both mornings of the sprint. Considering that the Metro doesn’t open until 8am on weekends, this is a tall order. But your help is needed. The ACC is less than a $20 cab ride away from the conference center. Please consider coming out early so that the sprint can start on time at 9am. We have the ACC until 11pm on Saturday and 5pm on Sunday, meaning that report outs will start around 9:30pm the first day and 4pm on Sunday. It would be great to have a few people stick around for clean up duty afterwards.
- The Beginners’ Sprint needs mentors and tutorial speakers. Sprints like the post-conference sprint, the only time all year when the largest majority of the Plone Community are gathered together, are about software second, and developing the skill base of the community first. Pair programming is the key to spreading skills. If experts only pair with gurus, and newbies only pair with neophytes, skills are not multiplied. Please let Jon and Joel know you are ready to help grow the community (their email addresses at the bottom of the previously linked page).
- Alex Clark needs you to bring your laptop projectors to both the Plone Conference and Sprint. The Reagan Center charges almost what a laptop projector costs just to rent one. The sprint location has several projectors, but not enough for one for each topic. Your help with the loan of a laptop projector for a week will make the Plone Conference experience smoother for everyone. Projectors in the 5000 lumens range are especially needed.
Until Next Time
I’m Chris Calloway and that’s our Sprintletter for this week. Stay tuned to the Plone Conference 2008 blog in the next week for more about Plone Conference 2008 Sprint preparations.
An important part of any Plone event is getting to know one another. The Plone conference is often the one time of year we see each other face to face and actually to get spend quality time with all those people that make Plone what it is today. Because we see each other so rarely, socializing is an important way to strengthen the ties of the community. You may notice that as the conference day ends, the mood tends to shift to a more celebratory atmosphere. It’s no secret that the Plone community is often times fueled by copious amounts of beer. While this may seem somewhat unproductive, at it’s best it can lead to great brainstorming and at it’s worst some hilarious yarns of Plone in its infancy.
The planning committee wants to make sure you enjoy your time both at the conference and after hours in D.C. That’s why our conference director Alex Clark appointed me, JoAnna Springsteen, as Social Director. It has been my duty the past 7+ months to find and research some of the best places to spend your free time while in D.C. Together with the conference planning team, ZPUGDC members, and other D.C. locals we have put together a suggested social agenda that we think you’ll love. We’ve picked three great neighborhoods for you to explore and highlighted the best eating and drinking establishments for you to try while there. Of course we also want you to organize things of interest to you. We’ve started a space on our wiki for you to post and read ideas for other activities here. While at the conference, we’ll try to make an announcement of where we’re going each night if you’d like to join others. If you need suggestions or information while at the conference, please don’t hesitate to ask.
Building community relations is important for the survival of any open source project. We can’t wait to see old friends and meet some new ones this year!
If you’ve registered for the conference, you should have received an invitation to join the EventVue for Plone Conference 2008. EventVue is a great tool for increasing your networking abilities before, after and during the conference. Here are a few ideas on how to use EventVue in order to maximize your networking time.
Cruise those Tags
It’s kind of like cruising a website for a date, except in this case your intentions are probably less sinister. Tags in EventVue are clickable. Simply click on a tag in your profile to see who else shares that tag. You’ll instantly see a list of those who share similar interests. Chances are you’ll probably notice these very people attending the same sessions as you and showing up at the same Birds of a Feather (BOFs). Get to know these people! You can learn from them and they can learn from you. They can serve as a future resource for you, especially when you get stuck.
Job or Vendor Hunting
Looking for a job in the Plone world? Looking for a company to help you with your Plone installation? Take a look at the most represented companies section in Eventvue. The size of the tag indicates how many people from that company are in attendance. Bring a copy of your resume or that RFP and put it in the hands of the right people!
Local Plonistas
Take a look at the most represented cities section. Again, the bigger the tag, the more people from that city are in attendance. If you don’t already have a local Plone User Group, get together with others in your area and start one. Or maybe you already have a local user group and just didn’t know about it. Take this opportunity to meet them! Local user groups (like ZPUGDC) are critical to establishing a physical component to our (mostly) virtual Plone community. It’s always handy to know someone near by that you can depend on.
What ‘chu Talkin ’bout?
Click on the Chatter tab in Eventvue and see what participants have to say about Plone…and just about everything else. Here you’ll find conferece participants that have elected to share their Tweets, Blogs, Pictures, and Videos. Keep a special close eye out for anything with a #ploneconf2008 tag. This is the hash tag we are encouraging everyone to use for their tweets, blogs, pictures, videos, or anything else related to the conference. During the conference you’ll be able to see what other participants are saying in real time. And the best news is that all you have to do is click on the Chatter tab…no joining any websites or creating new accounts necessary.
Looking Good
Of course none of this works effectively if you don’t fill out your profile. So get out there and do it! It’s a simple profile with only a few questions. It should take you less than 15 minutes. Be sure to show us your lovely face so we can recognize you in D.C.!
Talking to all these people will give you a foot into the community. Plone isn’t an exclusive club. We want you to participate. Getting to know people in the community will probably inspire you to get more involved down the road. You’ll take that leap from Plone user to Plone contributer. This is a jump we’d love to help you with. Make that little extra effort and get involved in the Plone community. Being involved with the community will make your conference experience that much more rewarding and productive.
Contents
This week’s Plone Conference 2008 Sprint newsletter has practical advice about sprinting with more updates on the sprint topics, as well a first hand look at the hotel where most Plone Conference attendees will be staying. See the previous issues for more information if you have missed those. As always, you can post a sprint topic or express interest in an existing topic at the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint wiki. Once again, the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint takes places Saturday and Sunday, October 11-12, at the Arlington Career Center.
Beginners’ Sprint Update
Maybe the most exciting development for the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint is the Beginners’ Sprint. That’s where you, the Plone Community newcomer, receive special attention for how to get involved with the world’s top choice in open source enterprise CMS. Even if you aren’t a beginner, you can help with mentor new sprinters. A litle bird also told me that participants at this sprint will get a first look at some exciting follow-on sprint opportunities in the coming year. Here are the organizers, Joel and Jon. to tell you more:
“We’ll take a straightforward task–’How to add dynamic visual effects and better UI to PloneHelpCenter’ as our topic. This will help make the documentation faster, prettier, and more easily navigated. We’ll teach you KSS (a great skill for site builders and developers, and one that doesn’t require any JavaScript experience!). We’ll teach you how to work in teams (”pair programming”). We’ll teach you how to check in your changes to the ‘Collective.’ And we’ll teach you how to have fun while helping out our project with a critical task!
This is a sprint where you’ll WRITE REAL CODE that will really be used in the product–you can leave with a sense of having learned a useful skill in Plone, and contributed to a real product that will benefit our community.
Everyone is welcome, but we’re aiming to make sure this sprint is especially helpful for those who’ve never sprinted before (or those who have, and want to help mentor the new sprinters):
- Graphic designers and other people who can help us design the UI
- People who are interested in giving back but don’t know where to start
- People who don’t know how to use any kind of version control products to ‘check code in’
- People who want to learn about KSS and interface design
- People who know HTML and CSS but do not neccessarily know Python or Plone-specific technologies
- Everyone else that wants to help out, including experied Plone developers who want to help “mentor” new developers
Sprint Coordinators
- Joel Burton: Plone trainer, consultant, Plone Foundation Board Member
- Jon Stahl: Plone consultant, Plone Foundation Board Member, and organizer of the 2006 Seattle Conference
Our Recent Progress:
- Made agenda for sprint, including *teaching time* for sprinters to learn KSS
- Created list of improvements to the Help Center that we can accomplish in the two days of sprinting
Prerequisites
- You should bring a laptop with Plone 3.1 on it
- We’ll help you install “subversion”, the code tracking system used in Plone, *and* we’ll teach you to use it!”
-Joel and Jon
Effective Pairing: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Gerry Kirk is a remote project manager with Plone consulting firm ifPeople. Gerry’s experience is in working with software teams in South America from his home in Canada. Gerry is also a connoisseur of agile development who recently captured some interesting sprint dramatizations to video at the Agile 2008 Conference in Toronto. There is a lot to be learned from these enactments, especially for seasoned sprinters. Do yourself a favor. Remind yourself what sprinting is supposed to really be about by watching these insightful skits.
SchoolTool CanDo Sprint
Perhaps the oldest continuous Zope3 project and subject of more sprints than I can remember is the Arlington School System’s SchoolTool. In fact, SchoolTool has conducted so many sprints at the Arlington Career Center that it was a natural match for one of the SchoolTool team leads, Jeff Elkner, to get involved with hosting the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint. SchoolTool is a project to develop a common global school administration infrastructure that is freely available under an Open Source license and is quite advanced. At the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint, the SchoolTool team will be sprinting on the topic of CanDo, a student skills inventory integrated with SchoolTool.
Scrum in Five Minutes
At sprints, for most people the concentration is on sprinting. However, for topic leaders, the concentration can be at a metalevel above sprinting. Leading a sprint is definitely an acquired skill. If you are a sprint topic leader, whether first time or many times, consider giving Scrum in Five Minutes a look see. It’s a quick read which might provide a needed pause for reflection before your big weekend at the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint. And thanks to the WebRam team, Rob, Mark, and Josh, for turning me onto this useful tidbit. WebRam are the developers of BlitZEN (Bioinformatics, Laboratory Information Management, and IT Zen), the premier Plone-based Bioinformatics LIMS.
Repoze Sprint Announced
Without a doubt, one of the most vital Python technologies of recent vintage is repoze,the WSGI-fication of Zope into middleware. The goal: create the defacto ecosystem of web components capable of sharing between and integrating with the many silos of Python web frameworks. So it is with delighted anticipation when I see Chris McDonough has announced a repoze topic for the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint. Chrism and team will be sprinting on (the ingeniously named) repoze.lemoande (a “CMF replacement”), repoze.catalog (a “plone.app.catalog replacement”), and zc3.pt, a super sleek and fast reimplementation of Zope Page Templates and Genshi.
GloWorm at the Theme Sprint
Have you checked out GloWorm yet? If you haven’t, run, don’t walk, to pypi and do so. GloWorm is the mind-blowingly fantastic Plone page inspector you need, need, need. Alpha 6 is out now for your buildout pleasure. I was elated to learn from Eric Steele, the Penn State Weblion developer behind GloWorm, his invention will be a part of the Theme topic for the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint. Here’s what Eric has to say about it over at the WebLion blog:
“I’ll be spending time working on GloWorm at the Post-Conference Theming Sprint. I’m looking for a few folks interested in helping out. I’m especially interested in nabbing someone who knows their Javascript to work on a few tasks. Here’s my list of possible sprinting tasks:
- Drag-and-drop reordering of viewlets
- Viewlet manager overrides so I can get rid of the monkeypatch
- Writing some new KSS/Javascript to pull more information out of the page
- Browser compatability issues
- General UI primping and usability preening
- Brainstorming about what else it should do
- Documentation
Feel free to contact me at EricSteele att psu dott edu if you have any questions.” - Eric
The Hotel Harrington Experience
Staying at the Hotel Harrington for Plone Conference 2008? So am I. While in DC recently to discuss sprint plans with our Arlington Career Center host, Jeff Elkner, I stayed at the Hotel Harrington for three nights. I thought I’d give you an advance peek into “Washington’s Tourist Hotel.”
First of all, good choice. The Hotel Harrington is certainly basic. But its also a terrific value for its location steps away from Plone Conference 2008, the Metro Center station, and practically all DC points of interest. Built in 1914, the architecture might be best described as “Gothamite.” The rooms are small. The fixtures quaint. The elevators quirky. But it is made to order for Plone Conference, somewhere between an overgrown hostel with its “sleeps 12″ dorm rooms and a trip back in time to the days of grand old hotels.
What you will get: a bed, a window, a desk with chair, a lamp, a phone, a refrigerator, a microwave, a TV, free (but open) wireless, a closet, a bath, a lock on the door, and pretty decent ventilation. The clientele appears to be mostly international students spending a semester in DC. Parking is a subsidized $15/day in an underground garage four blocks away with unlimited pass in/outs. Check in is 4pm and check out is noon. There are no bell hops to tip. But then, there are no bell hops to stow your bags safely away in a lobby closet, either.
Speaking of the lobby, it opens into a small gift shop, where you can purchase postcards, commemorative plates, Advil, toothpaste, and Red Bull; a diner-style breakfast/lunch/dinner restaurant called “Harriet’s;” and a dive bar/restaurant called “Harry’s.” I mean dive bar in the good sense. Harry’s has inexpensive drinks of limited selection, a long bar, a few TVs tuned silently to major league sports, 80s glam metal on constant rotation, and about 100 seats for indoor dining and maybe as many for outdoor dining. The menu is very basic pub food, but much less expensive than many of the other dine-a-terias around the area. Harry’s also serves the room service for the hotel. No, this isn’t the same Harry’s Bar in Paris, Milan, and New York.
You will likely spend most of your time at Plone Conference 2008 soaking up the community and atmosphere of the conference rather than the decaying luxury of the Hotel Harrington. But you can certainly look forward to a good night’s sleep there each night of your stay. A Barnes and Noble bookstore is across the street (no Python-related books in stock, though). There are innumerable coffee shops, restaurants, and bars surrounding the Hotel Harrington. Location is everything.
Tip: print out this Hotel Harrington coupon and see if it works for you. Or, if driving into DC, pick up a copy of America Travel Coupons at most any truck stop on the way into the city.
Until Next Time
I’m Chris Calloway and that’s our Sprintletter for this week. Stay tuned to the Plone Conference 2008 blog in the next week and the weeks to come about more Plone Conference 2008 Sprint preparations.
It’s no secret that many people think writing documentation is boring. Sure, it’s time consuming, a bit dull, and, well, just not as exciting as programming something new. Nonetheless, having an accurate documentation set is important to any piece of software.
- How many times have you had a problem you needed to figure out and couldn’t get an answer?
- How many times have you gone looking for Plone docs only to come up empty handed?
- How many times have you found inaccurate or just plain incomprehensible documentation?
Happens more often than you’d like, right?
So here’s your chance to do something about it!
Great documentation improves Plone usability and approachability for users at all levels. Consistant and correct documentation cuts down on Plone’s notorius learning curve, making it easier for people to jump into more advanced topics and contributing back to the community. For those of you that own your own business or do consulting work, did you ever think that great docs on plone.org could save you money? Think about it…if great documentation already exists, you can refer you clients to plone.org instead of spending precious development time writing training materials. If your company uses Plone but can’t afford to hire outside help, using docs on plone.org may just be the key to keeping your implementation functional. Not to mention, having great documentation makes Plone much more visable and desirable to people who are just starting to consider a content management system. Thorough documentaiton soothes the nerves of anxious stakeholders and integrators alike.
The documentation team is making a lot of changes to try and improve both the look and content of documentation on plone.org. The post conference sprint is your chance to get involved and help! We have a lot of ground to cover. The more people that help, the sooner we can claim that our doc set is the best that it can be.
The Plone Documentation team needs your help and the post conference sprint is a great time to get involved. We welcome everyone - from beginners to advanced Plonistas, non-writers and writers, native and non native English speakers. We can find something interesting for you to do! So please consider staying for the post conference sprint and helping out the doc team.
Contents
The Plone Conference 2008 Sprint topic masters are back with more exciting news to get you ready for a great time at the Arlington Career Center on Saturday and Sunday October 11-12. This issue of DC Sprintletter is a continuation of last week’s inaugural sprintletter. So let’s get to it:
Pre-sprint Flickr Set
I had the very great pleasure of spending three days in Washington, DC over Labor Day weekend to meet with other Plone Conference organizers and the staff at our sprint location, check out both the Reagan Center where we will meet for conference and the Arlington Career Center which is hosting our sprint, as well stay at one of the Hotel Harrington where many of you will be encamped for Plone Conference 2008. It was a great time with Alex and Amy Clark, Reed O’Brien, Jeff Elkner, Dave Welsh, Jason Straw, and Matt Gallagher. I though you might enjoy this Flickr set of photos which show many of the places you will see during the conference and sprint, as well as some landmarks on the way to the sprint. Click through the photos in the set and look at their descriptions to get tips on getting around DC and Arlington.
Take the Skinners Bowling! (aka Plone Themes Sprint Update)
Veda Williams has spent the last year shepherding themers in generating new themes for 3.0 and identifying best practices based on community discussions. She has also been in charge of cleaning up documentation in the Visual Theming portion of plone.org/docs and has generated new designs that will soon highlight the efforts of Plone’s themers better. Here’s what one of the most prolific Plone skinners reports about the Plone Theme sprint:
“Take the Skinners Bowling!
Actually, we don’t want to go bowling. We want to go to the Plone skin sprint after the DC conference, on October 11 and 12!
It’s a lot to shoulder, but it will be fun and you really can make a difference. Sign up and be counted!
SIGNUPS
http://www.openplans.org/projects/plone-conference-2008-dc/theming
GETTING THERE
http://www.openplans.org/projects/plone-conference-2008-dc/sprint
TOPICS
http://www.openplans.org/projects/plone-documentation/visual-theming-section-assessment
If you have ideas of docs you’d like to see created, now is the time to suggest them.
http://www.openplans.org/projects/ootb-plone-themes/which-themes-we-will-use
Suggestions are also welcome, and we’re looking forward to seeing everyone there.
Skinners Unite! - Veda”
GetPaid Sprint Update
Ever since the BBQ Sprint, Chris Johnson has been on something of a vision quest to create the ultimate e-commerce set of products for Plone. GetPaid is the rich component architecture which has evolved along that journey. Here’s Chris to bring you up to date on what’s happening to prepare for the GetPaid sprint after Plone Conference 2008:
“We have been having regular Friday afternoon sprints during the month of August and decided to do it on an ongoing basis after our 2 day sprint 2 weeks ago. If you are interested to connect with others, please jump on #getpaid to get help, introduce yourself, etc. Friday afternoons are a good time to find people giving attention.
If you are interested to get involved with GetPaid, I can suggest that you:
- Sign up for our mailing list and introduce yourself:
http://groups.google.com/group/getpaid-dev/ - Install GetPaid buildout locally so you can check it out:
http://code.google.com/p/getpaid/wiki/DevGettingStarted - Check out what we have been up to lately:
http://plonegetpaid.com/updates - join us at #getpaid
We will hopefully have the next release out in the course of September (that would be 0.7.0, see http://plone.org/products/getpaid/releases/0.7.0 and complementary tools for using GetPaid like the recipe and eggification of all components.
You can also check out:
- What features folks have requested:
http://code.google.com/p/getpaid/wiki/BrainstormingFeatures - The issue tracker, for additional information on future direction and what needs fixing:
http://code.google.com/p/getpaid/issues/list
As we understand how far the Friday sprints get us, we will continue to refine the Plone Conf sprint goals and details. We will start by continuing what has been identified for our current sprints:
http://code.google.com/p/getpaid/wiki/AugustSprint
Please get in touch if you have any questions! Hope to see you in DC! - cjj”
Documentation Sprint Update
JoAnna Springsteen has been very busy organizing the preparations for the Documentation Team sprint for Plone Conference 2008. Here’s a “short” list of what the Documentation Team has been up to since the last sprintletter:
- Scheduled a meeting and actually held a meeting.
- Tried to pick more editors. (Want to be an editor? We still need a few more!)
- Plan to update editor duties (so editors know exactly what they are getting themselves into).
- Got an update on the new doc landing page redesign (coming as soon as plone.org moves to plone 3.x).
- Existing editors are starting their topic section assessments, which should be started on no later than at the sprint itself (major brownie points to those who get it done before).
- Steve McMahon is creating a mailing list and group for just doc editors in preparation of implementing our new editor workflow (see editor duties, once completed).
“We have a lot of things to do and we really started to make a dent in them by holding this meeting.
So what can you do to help prepare?
Signing up is the first step!! After that, take a look at the Doc Team wiki, specifically the section assessments. They are all still in progress but you should get a good idea on what needs to be updated or created. Find something the piques your interest and claim it on the sprint wiki. We still have plenty of room for sprinters to please sign up! - JoAnna”
A Taste of Naples at the Sprint
I have many fond memories of the incredible food in Naples from our last post-conference sprint. There’s nothing quite like a true Neopolitan pizza. But if you come to the 2008 Plone Conference Sprints, you won’t have to rely on memory. You can get the real thing! The famed Pupatella Neopolitan pizzareia and frittatoria cart will be on-site at the sprint to serve you breakfast and lunch on both Saturday and Sunday. Enzo Algarme and his partner Anastasiya Laufenberg whip up a dazzling array of crepes, brioche, arancini, pizza, calzone, sandwiches, salads, and other creations from their custom-made food cart. Enzo honed his chops in the kitchen of Il Pizzaiolo del Presidente, a member of the Verace Pizza Napoletana in Naples. I’m so excited that Anastasiya and Enzo will be bringing their Pupatella cart to the sprint. I hear they make a mean nutella pizza for breakfast. Read the rave review Pupatella gets on yelp.com and in the Washington Post.
Until Next Time
I’m Chris Calloway and that’s our Sprintletter for this week. Stay tuned to the Plone Conference 2008 blog in the next week and the weeks to come about more sprint preparations, a more first-hand on location reporting, and some suggetions for what to see while in Washington, DC.
This year to fulfill our social networking responsibilities we are trying something new: EventVue. I am really excited this and I hope everyone else will be too.
What is it?
EventVue describe themselves as “the online community for your conference” but what does that mean? EventVue is a service, designed to connect attendees. It provides for each attendee:
- A profile page where you can add information about yourself:
- A dashboard-like page, containing an overview of popular companies, tags, and cities, among other things:
- A community page where you can browse all attendees:
- A chatter page where you can browse tweets, blog entries, pictures, and videos:
- A message center where you can:
- Look for someone:
- Type a message:
- Wait for a reply:
and much more, including RSS feeds, and statistics for the organizers. The interactive possibilities are endless!
I hope this introduction gets you excited to register and attend Plone Conference 2008 and start using EventVue to connect with attendees. This service will launch for all attendees on September 15th and it is ENTIRELY OPTIONAL, you don’t have to participate if you don’t want to, just ignore the invitation and your information will remain private.
See you in DC!
Your conference organizer,
Alex Clark
Contents
Joel Burton thought it might be a nice idea to give you weekly updates about the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint up through the conference. And I’m not one to refuse a kindly request from Joel. Besides, there are many exciting things to tell you about. Such as:
Sprint Information Wiki
You can register a new sprint topic, or sign up for an already established topic on the official sprint information wiki. If you create a new topic, be prepared to lead it. That means you will need to solicit engagement from others, as well as give the morning briefing and evening report-out for your topic.
ZopeSkel Sprint Report
Josh Johnson has been working overtime improving ZopeSkel. Why, just last week, I watched Josh crank out an entire Zope 3 powered content type for Plone without writing a single line of code or drawing a single UML box, using only ZopeSkel. Pretty cool. Here’s what Josh has to say this week about the upcoming ZopeSkel sprint after Plone Conference:
“Here’s a more concise summary of what I’m hoping to accomplish with the sprint:
ZopeSkel is a collection of paster templates for creating Zope/Plone projects. It handles the mundane boilerplate code that is necessary to get up and running.
ZopeSkel is great. It has become an indispensable tool in my plone utility belt, but it has some serious flaws:
- It’s spread across a wide range of use cases and situations
- It’s been developed by a large number of people(at least 20+ based on distinct usernames of committers) 3. It’s hard to test (recent work has been done in this area but it’s still not quite there)
- It’s poorly documented (or not at all in most cases)
- It’s not well known in the community
So my goal is to spruce up the bits of ZopeSkel that exist, document them, but more than anything publicize it so more people can get involved in it’s maintenance. We’ve already run into issues where a ZopeSkel template generates code that breaks with newer versions of plone. For ZopeSkel to be useful it has to keep up with changes in the projects it services.
Ultimately, I want a set of templates that are convenient to use, easy to test, and well documented. This will make them more useful and make plone/zope development much simpler, and we can do more to integrate ZopeSkel into other documentation.
So here’s the status of the sprint prep:
This week I identified some more bugs in ZopeSkel (specifically in the ‘archetype’ and ‘atschema’ commands), and I created an IRC channel, #zopeskel on irc.freenode.net. I’m ready to start discussing the outstanding issues and get down to deciding what parts of ZopeSkel need some work. I’m leaning toward the archetype and plone 3 related bits, but want to provide support for any other parts that people want to work on.
I plan to contact past contributors and interested parties sometime this week. - Josh”
Documentation Sprint Report
As a follow-up to her Plone Conference panel discussion with the Plone Documentation team, JoAnna Springsteen will lead the Plone Documentation sprint. JoAnna has been a leader among the Plone Documentation team for years. Here’s what Joanna has to report this week about the upcoming Documentation sprint after Plone Conference:
“So far we’ve started a task list on the Documentation Sprint Wiki.
Topics are open and we welcome people to add more. For those that don’t have a specific topic, but still want to participate, we will find you something to work on. As we get closer to the sprint, we will prioritize by what we need the most and ask that those topics be tackled first. We are going to try and have at least one doc team meeting (in #plone-docs) between now and the conference (watch the for details). At this meeting, I want to get the doc team section editors together so we can review our sections and see where we have needs for docs. Editors will add tasks to our to do list based on what their sections need[note to editors: perform gap analysis like that thing Matthew Wilkes did for his section]. Prior to the sprint, we ask that participants pick at least one task to document. We will help you find any background information you will need, before you get to the sprint. If it’s a particularly big topic, we encourage you to pair up or work in groups. For other sprints that are programming during this time, if you would like someone to document something, add it to our list if you know ahead of time.
One of our biggest goals for the sprint is to create a road map for the documentation team to follow. We encourage anyone and everyone to attend the documentation team panel during the conference and bring your ideas. We want ideas on how to manage our doc team and our doc set better. We’ll take these ideas and use them to make the documentation better and things on the team run more efficiently. This task will require group participation, both at the conference panel and during the sprint. JoAnna will take responsibility for writing up results and documenting things. This will probably take several rounds of revisions and continue after the sprint, but we intend to get a big chunk of it done during the sprint.
Yes, we do take beginners, non-programmers, new to plone people. Documentation is a great way to get involved in the Plone community, especially for those who don’t code (or who just don’t feel like coding).
Next week: We’ll have ideas on what you can do to help prepare for the sprint.
Why is this important? Why should you participate?
Because we want to make Plone.org the place to come for official Plone documentation. We want to ensure that our users always have an up to date and accurate knowledge base to rely on when they need information. By having great documentation, we can make Plone more user friendly and approachable. Documentation changes with every release and we want to make sure we keep up. We always need people to help write and edit docs, throughout the year. - JoAnna”
Sprint Location Report
The Arlington Career Center is the location for the Plone Conference 2008 Sprint. I went on a walk-through of the ACC this past weekend with our hosts, Jeff Elkner, David Welsh, Jason Straw, and Matt Gallagher. What I saw made me very excited. The ACC is a regular sponsor of sprints for one the very first Zope 3 applications, School Tool. The ACC team will not only be assisted us with finding our way around the ACC’s networking, but will also be sprinting themselves on School Tool.
Here’s just a sample of what I saw while at the ACC:
…a beautiful atrium which itself can hold up to 100 sprinters seated before a laptop projection screen over a marble riser. There are several more classrooms reserved for us including rooms with projectors. There will be plenty of power drops provided by the ACC team. (But if you can, please bring a power strip.)
Getting to the ACC
I scouted out the way to the ACC to see if there would be any surprises. It takes about 55 minutes from the downtown DC area to get to the ACC, including buying a SmarTrip card and the short waits at stops. So plan to leave your hotel at 8am to get to the sprint on time. Space in the ACC is limited and on reserve for those who get there first!
First, I went from the Hotel Harrington to the Metro Center station at 12th and F Streets. I bought a SmarTrip card at the station, which saved me 40% on all my DC Metro fares. SmarTrip cards are available at Metro Center station. The DC Metro is a modern, fast, efficient, and clean electric transportation system. I boarded the Blue Line for Pentagon City station (not to be confused with plain old Pentagon Station). If you are staying around Dupont Circle, you can also take the Red Line towards Glenmont two stops, get off at Metro City station, and transfer on over to the Blue Line.
I took the Blue Line towards Franconia-Springfield. At least, that’s what the printed signs and map say. The electronic signs and voice announcements say toward Reagan National Airport, though, because beyond the airport, the Blue Line is shut down for track replacements. 15 minutes later, I’m seven stops down the Blue Line at Pentagon City station. From there you can catch any westbound Columbia Heights West - Pentagon City Line (16G, 16H, 16K, 16W) Metrobus down Columbia Pike almost all the way to the ACC. I had to cross the South Hayes Street to get the westbound stop because I came up the wrong escalator exit out of the Metro. When you get to the street level, just look for this Metrobus stop:
Your SmarTrip card will also cover your Metrobus fare. Take the #16 about ten minutes up Columbia Pike to S. Walter Reed Drive. You’ll know you need to signal the bus to stop when you see the Arlington Cinema:
Once you get off the bus, turn right and head two blocks down S. Walter Reed until you see the ACC sign on the west side of the street at 816 S. Walter Reed Drive:
Keep walking around the building, through the driveway beside the library, and you will find the entrance to the ACC:
Until Next Time
I’m Chris Calloway and that’s our Sprintletter for this week. Stay tuned to the Plone Conference 2008 blog in the next week and the weeks to come about more sprint preparations, a Hotel Harrington first-hand report, and all about the gourmet Neopolitan food cart being arranged to cater the sprint.