Helping Plone.org Docs

I sent out a message recently on the Plone-Docs mailing list but I'm going to add it here to my blog. If you've been following any of the discussions on the doc list over the past few months, you know we are trying to make a lot of changes. We have the first group of deadlines coming up at the end of this year and we need any and all help we can get. We don't care if you're an old skool Plonista or a newbie- we want your help! So while others are sprinting to upgrade plone.org to Plone 3, the doc team will be picking up momentum in order to meet our deadlines head on.
This is a critical juncture for the doc section and it will be hard for us to move forward with other plans until these tasks are done. If you use plone docs at all, want to use plone docs at all, and want to see them get better, please consider chipping in. Veda had the idea of dividing up the tasks into small chunks which I think is a fabulous idea. We'll do just that. This way even if you only can spare an hour, we will have a task for you!
Contact me on the plone docs list, email me directly, twitter me, or find me in #plone or #plone-docs on IRC. Use your resources to spread the word. Let's rally and get this done!!


Below, you'll find the text from my recent post:
====================================================
Hey Doc team-
We have some end of year deadlines that we are in danger of missing.
If you have time over the holidays/end of the year/start of new year,
please let me know!
We need help with the following tasks:
- Section Assessments
- Configuration and Set Up (almost done?)
- Developing for Plone (almost done?)
- Managing Content (half done?)
- Navigation
- Installation
- Updating and Moving
- Users, Authentication, and Permissions
- i18n & l10n
- Documentation Guidelines for official and new knowledge base docs
- Process for starting new doc team members


If you can spare any time at all, email me and I will get you
instructions and every thing you need to work on these tasks. The
section assessments are top priority for us. We can't divide our
current doc section into formal and less formal sets until the
assessments are done. Our editors need your help to get these done.
Even if you can only spare an hour, it would help us out tremendously.
It will also be good karma and your fellow doc team members will love
and adore you for chipping in at the last minute.

So please please please chip in and help us make the final push
towards our deadlines!!

A Software Love Affair

It's no secret that I love me some Plone. I've been a constant cheerleader in the Plone community since I became involved in about 2005. I started using Plone in 2004 on a project for my local STC chapter. Plone wasn't my first forray into content management, but it was my first successful endeavor. I was hooked instantly...ten minutes to download and set up a blank instance. Who wouldn't want that? And that Undo button put me at ease...if I screwed up, all I had to do was click that and problem solved! The interface was simple and most everything was intuitive or at the very least took very little time to figure out. It was official, I had developed a bit of a crush. As we introduced our site to our users, I started writing documentation on how to use the site. (It was still fairly uncommon for most of my user base to actually log in to a website.) Sure, I got irritated when Plone.org didn't have any basic user documentation, so I stepped up and complained. Sure enough Martin Aspeli and Alexander Limi chimed in and said yeah it does suck, you should write us some. So I shared what I had and somehow ended up on the documentation team. Around this time I had a client that was looking for a way to update their intranet. After a intensive product comparison, we settled on Plone. It fit the budget and with all the add-ons, we could make it do just about anything we wanted.
It was around this time that I was getting more involved with Plone on the mailing lists and in the IRC channel. As I got more active with the documentation team I made the decision to attend the Plone Conference 2006 in Seattle. That conference was my first face to face experience with the Plone Community. I learned a lot at the conference, most of which was way over my head. But I was motivated to get even more involved. It was that conference that helped me fully realize what it meant to be part of an open source community. So I dove in. I went home and started doing more and more with the doc team. Before I knew it, I was planning a documentation sprint. But it was that conference where I fell in love. I learned about Plone 3 and more importantly, met the people who work on Plone everyday. I talked, mingled, ate, and drank with people just like me. People when from screen nicknames to friends in an instant.
Plone, the software, has its ups and downs, just like any other product out there. Our software is stable and growing. But our community is the foundation that Plone is built on. It's our people that I love. Sure the software is fabulous and will continue to be so. It's the people that make Plone that are the real gems. Maybe it sounds overly cheesy, but Plone is like one big happy family. Of course we have our issues and debate and nit pick at each other, but in the end, we're all about making Plone better, stronger, faster. With such a wonderful group of people, how can you not love Plone?!

Upgrading to Ubuntu 8.10

After hearing wonderful things about Ubuntu's latest release, I decided to upgrade last night. Yeah, three hours just to download the updates. Ridiculous! It didn't even take me that long to install Ubuntu the first time around! So after downloading and installing I start the old computer up this morning. And Ubuntu didn't run. I had to boot into windows, make sure my computer was still working and then restart and try to get into Ubuntu again. Phew. Ok got in. Oh wait. Wifi doesn't work. Check password, check settings, oh great where'd my network monitor icon go? Oh it's gone? But it's installed. Hmmm. Yeah after some googling I found no one with my same issue. I hopped on my wired connection and tried to ask for help in #ubuntu on IRC. No help whatsoever. Very disapointing. Pop into #plone and whine...three people immediately step up to help me and within 15 minutes my problem is solved. Genius.

So for those of you upgrading from 8.04 to 8.10, type this into your terminal before you go on a wild chase, then reboot:
sudo sed -i -e "s/# deb/deb/g" /etc/apt/sources.list && sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get upgrade


Solved my issues no problem. Many thanks to my #plone friends who helped me troubleshoot even though it was off topic for the channel and they didn't benefit one bit from helping me. You guys are great!

Live Blogging Plone Conference 2008

Somehow I was chosen to live blog the Plone 2008 Conference for CMSWire. A very important job for Plone's visibility so I'm still confused as to how I ended up with the responsibility. Never the less, I gave it my best, and learned a bit in the process.

Live blogging is hard! I've never been one to take notes while I'm listening to something. I always write down just the highlights, not everything. With so many exciting presentations, it was really really hard to make sure I picked up on every little detail. Further more, a lot of sessions were really over my head, technically speaking. I was pushing myself to grasp just the basics in several talks.

Only live blog when you have decent wifi. Yeah, the wifi was a bit sketchy, no thanks at all the the Reagan Center staff for fixing it. Our own people had to come in and set up routers. At least we're a resourceful bunch. When you don't have wifi, blogging live isn't really an option. I wrote as if I were live blogging and posted later but I felt as if I was playing catch up the rest of the day.

Lessons learned? Well I have a lot more to learn before I decide to live blog again, that's for sure! Maybe I'll stick to twitter for my live stuff. I'll live tweet the conference next year, how about that? But next year, lets make sure someone on the marketing team for Plone does this. It's far too important to be left up to a newbie like me! I have even more respect for Scott Paley, who live blogged for Plone conference 2007. You, my friend, are far better suited for this than I am. Ah well. It was a good experience and I'm glad I was at least a little bit of service to the community.

For the list of posts, go to CMSWire.