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.
Thanks for the great write-up. We’re excited to see what can happen when the right people get together through EventVue. I know Plone is going to be a great event. I mean, any group of people that chooses “beer” as one of their top tags sounds like a fun group to be around!
If anyone has any problems signing in or an idea for how we can make EventVue better, shoot me an email at josh@eventvue.com. I’d love to hear from you.
Comment by Josh Fraser on September 22, 2008 at 2:43 am