Plone Conference 2012 presentation about how we as the Plone community could develop ourselves to be perceived more friendly product platform choice within the open source developer community.

1. Saving Plone from
Plone agony

2. Agenda
• What open source means to me
• How can it be that people find Plone hard
• Building a better Plomorrow

3. Mikko Ohtamaa
• Snake expert from Finland
• Found out about Plone circa 2004
• Likes: sushi, Angry birds
• Dislikes: winter, serious business
twitter.com/moo9000
linkedin.com/in/ohtis

4. Values that define me

5. Equality in Finland
“Equality is a
fundamental right. In a
just society, everyone
has equal opportunities
in relation to access to
education, employment
and different services.”
- Finland Ministry of the
Interior
http://www.flickr.com/photos/taivasalla/3233794715/

6. Opportunity in open
source
The word "free" in our
name does not refer to
price; it... Second, the
freedom to change a
program, so that you
can control it
instead of it
controlling you; ...
Richard M. Stallman

7. My worries

8. ...I sometimes feel like I’ve finally been
given a secret handshake and granted
entry to the “international Plone guild”
recently, by being employed by at a Plone
consultancy who are spending time to
mentor me... -Witek
Lack of equal
opportunities in
Plone community

9. If the knowledge exists
why someone must be
there telling it to you?

10. In my ideal world...

11. Open source needs to be
“mentor free”
Anyone can pick the
software and express
their intent without need
to rely on third parties to
solve obstacles
Mentor-driven community
is not Internet scale, dying
in long run

12. Obstacles

13. #1: Eating your own dog
food

14. Senior Plone
developers...
...are not using Plone unified
installer
...are not using ZopeSkel
project scaffolds
...are not on Windows
... etc. ....
Those with better knowledge lack the
interest to maintain the tools needed to
enter Plone development.

15. #2: Idea about solving
problems by creating
more code

16. Deco, Dexterity,
Diazo, choose your
D’rack of the day....
Development
getting easier, but
only for the people
already “in” Plone

17. #3: Ignorance

18. “Wisdom: you can’t
make complex
systems easier except
by rewriting them
from scratch or
ripping out major
functionality or by
breaking the overall
compatibility.” -An old
time Plone developer
Bollocks

19. We do not
have a problem
to make Plone
easy to use; we
have a problem
to make it
possible to use
it at all

20. What we’ve got here is
failure to communicate

21. Whatever you
do make sure
people can use
it
If you write the
code it’s your
responsibility to
provide
documentation

22. More polish
of the rough
edges

23. First deployment of a
single .py change
requires...
Installing OS packages, compiler
Installing virtualenv, pip, ZopeSkel,
templer, paster, mr.develop, git,...
Running buildout, buildout, buidout
Restarting the server
We need less steps:
web development is
all about pasting in
code, hitting refresh
and see if it works

24. Care and share the
little things

25. Less code - more plone.org
content
Face your users in #plone
IRC - feel the suffering caused
by you
... or simply promise to add a
docstring to every class and
function you write
Anything making Buildout train
newcomers’ life
easier!

26. Thank You
twitter.com/moo9000
linkedin.com/in/ohtis