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?!