The document provides an overview of the state of Plone over the past 12 months. Key points include an increase in conferences held around the world with 27 countries represented at Plone Conference 2012, the release of Plone 4.2 and 4.3, numerous sprints held globally, increased code contributions with over 5,500 commits by 208 contributors in the past year, and growing activity on the plone-developer mailing list. The Plone Foundation saw 14 new members. World Plone Day had 38 events. The 60th Plone Tuneup had 31 developers close 34 tickets. The semi-annual Plone Roadmap was revised to focus on areas like frequent releases and moving features out of core. Migration efforts included moving the

1. The State of Plone
Eric Steele & Matt Hamilton
Plone Conference 2012
Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12

2. The Last 12 Months
Thursday, October 11, 12

3. Conferences
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

4. Conferences
• Plone Conference 2011
• Plone Symposium South America
• Plone Open Garden
• Plone Konferenz
• Plone Symposium East
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

5. Plone Conference 2012
27 different
countries
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

6. Plone Releases
• Plone 4.2
• Plone 4.3 alpha
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric

7. Sprints
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric

8. Sprints
• Plone Conference 2011 – San • Post-Symposium Sprints – State
Francisco, US College, US
• Art Sprint – Vienna, Austria • Buschenschanksprint –
Grasnitzberg, Austria
• Cioppino Sprint - Bodega Bay,
US • Belgian Beer Sprint - Antwerp,
Belgium
• Plone Konferenz – Munich,
Germany • Caipirinha Sprint – Brasília,
Brazil
• Plone Open Garden –
Sorrento, Italy • Cafecito Sprint – São Paolo,
Brazil
• Pre-PSE Strategicesque
Sprintacular – State College, US • Sea Sprint – Oak Island, US
Averaging one major Plone sprint per month over the
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem past year and a half
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric

9. Code Activity
Past 12 months: 5597 Commits, 208 Contributors
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Contributors: Up 20% from previous 12 months

10. Code Activity
• 66 contributors within the last month
• 13 new contributors
• Set to break both marks this month
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric New record for us!

11. Developer list activity
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
The plone-developer mailing list activity saw a steep drop off after Plone 3. We’re coming
back. Each month is more active than the last.

12. Foundation
• 14 new Plone Foundation members
Georg Gogo Bernhard Alan Hoey
Maurizio Delmonte T. Kim Nguyen
Sjoerd van Elferen Rob Porter
Jean Ferri Paul Roeland
Carol Ganz Héctor Velarde
Rok Garbas Chrissy Wainwright
Nathan Van Gheem Nejc Zupan
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

13. World Plone Day
Big thanks to Andre Nogueira
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt
38 events worldwide

14. 60th Plone Tuneup
• 31 Developers
• 34 tickets closed
Big thanks to Carol Ganz
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

15. Plone Roadmap
• High-level vision for Plone's future
• Summary of community goals and activities
• Revised every six months
• That’s this week!
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

16. Plone Roadmap
• Defines Plone’s
• Purpose
• Competitors
• Key industries
• Differentiators
• Ideal size
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt
Key industries: Education, Government, Non-profits, Media are most common
Differentiators: Community, security, usability, theming, workflow, multilingual

17. Roadmap Goals
• Iterate, iterate, iterate
• More frequent releases
• Introduce new technologies early, before
they become the standard
• More aggressive about moving under-used/
under-maintained features out of core
• Sane upgrades
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

18. Migration
• All of Plone Core repository moved
• Much of the Collective repository moved
Big thanks to Rok Garbas and Alex Clark
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Lowers barrier of entry
Gives us more defined approval process for contributions, easier to contribute translations
Makes my life much easier when merging
Minor patches easier -- related: Our patch policy recently been adopted by Zope Foundation

19. Installers
• New Windows installer
• Much more native Windows experience
(Web Platform Installer)
• Uses same base buildout as other
installers
• Managed Cloud deployment options
• Bitnami
• Turnkey
• Ploud
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt
Plone has always had a focus on easy, one-click install.
Windows installers have been previously developed by Enfold Systems. Now technology has
moved on and we have a more modern approach - Ross Patterson
Bitnami: Wyn Williams

20. QA
• Trac cleanup
• Simplified bug reporting
• Ticket triage
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric

21. Automated Testing
• Maintaining code quality
• Jenkins
• Travis-CI
• Robot Framework
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Ed Manlove, Asko Soukka, Godefroid Chappelle

22. The next decade...
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

23. Why us?
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

24. In the beginning...
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt: In the beginning all decisions came down to two individuals and that carried Plone
through ten years of growth.
As we move into the second decade, we’re now moving into the position where, as a
community, we’re less reliant on the Benevolent Dictators for Life to do all of the work.

25. Community Ownership
• Foundation Board
• IP/Trademark
• Roadmap Team
• Directions
• Framework Team
• Code
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Matt

26. 3 Areas of Focus
• Approachability
• Integration
• Involvement
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric To make this work, there are 3 areas we need to focus on.

27. Approachability
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric: Answer “what next”

28. Documentation
• Documentation Team
• TODO Tutorial
• tutorialtodoapp.readthedocs.org
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Ownership of documentation.
ensure documentation coverage for new features
Nejc Zupan

29. User Interface
• UI Team
• Nathan van Gheem
• UI review of core features
• Accessibility
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
WebLion, Paul Roeland

30. Development
• plone.api
• Core developer documentation
• Translated
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Nates Zupan
Translated into Spanish and Portuguese.

31. Integration
• The “3 Ds”
• Diazo ➡ Plone 4.2
• Dexterity ➡ Plone 4.3
• Deco/Tiles ➡ Plone 4.4
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Playing nicely with other systems. We are seeing a lot of people who were primarily using
Plone as a web application framework moving to Pyramid. These technologies allow us to use
Plone to its best advantage -- as a CMS, yet work with other technologies.

32. Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
UCLA

33. Involvement
• Reduce barriers to
contributing
• New contributor
agreement process
• Mentorship
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
got an email from a new contributor last month, and I didn’t ask his permission to put this in
my talk, so I won’t call him out, but this is awesome. Excitement.
Improving our contributor agreement process -- Elizabeth Leddy
Welcome email, pointer to developer documentation, tips for getting started, offer mentorship
opportunities

34. Involvement
• Reduce barriers to contributing
• UI
• QA Team
• Recognize good work
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Starting points with mockups
And we’re going to do a better job of recognizing the people doing awesome work.
Plone Awards
Rose Pruyne at WebLion has started a series of news items, the first of which went out 2
weeks ago about UCLA and their work on the theme editor.

35. The Call to Action
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
So what is the State of Plone?
I am absolutely satisfied about the pace of development right now. We’re handling
everything. And I shouldn’t say that because people are going to start slacking off.
What I think we’re facing right now is an organizational issue, a community issue. We’ve got
amazing people here, but we’re not using them

36. "I don't care what they
do, I just want to be a
part of it"
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Dinner with Maaike

37. Call To Action
• 3 things
• Code, Community, or Process
Plone Conference 2012, Arnhem
Thursday, October 11, 12
Eric
Can you write?
Can you write in a language other than English?
Do you know python?
Do you know JavaScript?
Are you a designer?
Do you care about usability?
Do you care about accessibility?
Can you install Plone and test it out?
Are you good at organizing people or events?
Do you have 5, 10, 50 of whatever your local currency is to give to the Plone Foundation?
What are you going to do this year to make Plone better?
I want everyone here to think of three things they think need to be fixed in Plone. And that’s
not just Plone the code, but also the Plone the community and Plone the processes. I think we
all can do that. Is there anyone here that’s missing a thing or two? Raise your hands, I’m sure
some people have extras.
This is your job. Before the end of this conference, I want you to find someone else here that
wants to fix the same thing. Before the end of the month, I want you think about how you’re
going to make that happen. Before the end of the year, I want you to actually start working
on it. And before next year’s conference I want you to fix that thing.
And I know, I know. Half of you won’t do that. But just think, if even half of you do that,
that’s 125 ways in which Plone gets better. 125 ways in which Plone becomes easier for you
to use. 125 ways in which Plone becomes easier for you to sell.