Scientific Collaboration
with Plone:
Sharing Bibliographies,
Papers, Discussions
Boston World Plone Day
November 7, 2008
Sally Kleinfeldt, Jazkarta

Overview
• Python tools and libraries
• Plone collaboration features
• Plone products for science

Python
• Implementation language of Plone/Zope
• Open source, object oriented, clean design
• Low threshold, high ceiling
• Popular in scientific community, especially
astronomy, biology, math, geosciences,
economics

Python Tools
• NumPy - N-dimensional array manipulation
• SciPy - statistics, Fourier transforms, image
processing, linear algebra, genetic
algorithms, etc. etc.
• matplotlib - 2D plotting library
• PCL - Python Cartographic Library
• ESRI tools

Python Resources
• http://www.scipy.org - mathematics,
science, and engineering
• http://biopython.org - computational
molecular biology
• http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ -
matplotlib
• http://trac.gispython.org/lab/wiki - GIS

Plone Collaboration
Features
• Out of the Box
• Document sharing
• Rich pages, news, events, calendars
• Wiki behavior
• Commenting
• Related content
• Member areas

Plone Collaboration
Features
• Add-on products
• Discussions (PloneBoard)
• Blogs (Quills)
• Integrated news feeds (FeedFeeder)
• Multimedia (Plone4Artists)
• Calendar import/export (Plone4Artists)

Plone Products for
Scientists
• CMFBibliographyAT
• Maps
• Lab notebooks
• Easy to create custom content types!

Example Sites
• http://conserveonline.org/
• http://conpro.tnc.org/
• http://www.watershedportal.org/
• http://mcdb.colorado.edu:8089/kiosk/
kiosk6.swf

Finally...
• Let’s look at some sites!