In case you don't know, Plone is the name of the open source software which powers the DOT web site. Plone is a very powerful content management system, or CMS, and it provides the infrastructure (security, workflow, editing tools, etc.) that we have built upon to enable everyone within DOT to contribute to our web site.

This year, the Plone community organised World Plone Day, where groups of Plone users organised local events to help make Plone better known to organisations looking for a CMS solution. At first glance this might seem odd. After all, business users don't take time to organise events promoting Microsoft Word, or Coke drinkers time to organise events promoting Coke. But because Plone is an open source project, it has a communityof users and contributors. Whereas people who use Word or drink Coke are simply consumers of the product, open source users can also be contributors, because they can participate in the product's development in many ways (not just by programming). And because the strength of an open source project lies in the strength of its community, the members of the community have a stake in growing and strengthening the community.

Promoting Word or Coke has little, if any impact on me. But promoting an open source project that I use has a great impact on me. A stronger community means more users and contributors, which means more improvements, more companies offering support and add-on products, and a greater ability for me to leverage those improvements.

The Toronto Plone Users' Group has only been going for a few months, but we managed to put together a very professional and well-attended event, drawing a broad variety of people from academia, government and businesses. Approximately 30 people attended our half day event. The event was composed of several presentations, as well as networking breaks so people could ask questions and talk with each other.

We also streamed the presentations via ustream.tv, where they are archived for later viewing:

Jordan Baker of Scryent gave an introduction to Plone, as well as a demonstration of how to get started with Plone in 25 minutes.

Gord Gallant of the Ontario Government talked about his experience and lessons learned running almost 300 collaborative Plone sites with 9000 members for the government.

John Southern of Softwerke demonstrated how to extend Plone with minimal coding, by drawing UML (Universal Modelling Language) diagrams.

And I presented a case study about how DOT uses Plone, and what we have learned. My slides are here.

DOT was a co-sponsor of the event, together with the Toronto-based Plone consultancies Scryent and Softwerke. We had a great turn-out, strengthened the Plone community in Toronto and learned a lot!