Plone

Last week I attended the 2007 Plone Conference in Napoli, Italy. Plone is the software that powers the Social Edge web site, and it was great to get a look at the latest revisions to it and talk with the folks who are doing the actual development of the product. Or platform. Maybe it's a platform product? Well, however you describe Plone, it is working well for us here on the Edge. Now we get to start planning when we're going to upgrade to the latest release and what features we'll put to use first. With any luck, users will never notice a big change, just new features as we roll them out. It is going to take us a little while to gear up for that, so don't expect anything new to show up right away.

One of the keynotes at the conference was from Tom Moroz of the Open Society Institute, and it was about the similarities between the open source software movement and work by non-profits towards an open society. Interesting parallels, to be sure. I was most interested in his comments about the need for online collaboration tools for non-profits.

It was also interesting to find out about some of the organizations that are using Plone to run their sites. Discover Magazine has a nice Plone based site, as does Novell, but I was more surprised to find out that the CIA is also using Plone. I guess I can stop fretting over whether or not Plone is secure enough for us here on Social Edge. They should still probably consider updating their favicon, though the folks working on Plone appreciate the free advertising.

I was surprised by the number of Windows based laptops at the conference. Not that they were numerous, but in fact the exact opposite. I saw more presentations delivered from Ubuntu based machines, along with other Linux variants than I did from any of the various flavors of Windows. Macs, on the other hand, have gone from being a geek's focus of condescension years ago to the most prevalent platform for hardcore developers. Even more surprising to me was that Keynote is taking hold amongst this crowd over PowerPoint.

The most interesting part of the conference, however, was just the camaraderie of the developers. Coming from a corporate background, it still surprises me that folks from around the world can come together to develop something as complex as a content management system, for free, and have that product end up being robust and secure enough to meet the needs of major corporations like Novell, and security intensive organizations like the CIA. As Tom Moroz discussed in his keynote, we all have something to learn from the open source software crowd.

After months of planning, developing and implementing the new Social Edge 2.0, we are very excited that we are finally putting it in your hands and  seeing what you think of it. A lot of what we did was structural, the most obvious changes are visual and there are a few new features that we think are really nifty and hope you do too.

Invariably in a project like this, things go wrong and there are things that we wish we had done differently. There are also the pleasant surprises along the way that make you smile, grin or laugh out loud. With that in mind I wanted to take a moment to share with you some of the lessons learned along the way.

1) Figure out how to migrate your data early.
When you build a site from scratch you don't normally have to worry about data migration. When you're migrating a community site that has been around for years, migrating the data from one platform to another has to be your biggest priority. Our biggest headaches came in this part of the process, and things we tested early on and thought worked great ended up not working when we were in the home stretch. Which leads me to #2.

2) Be flexible.
Things are going to change. Roll with the change, don't fight it. Change happens, change is good. There are always going to be unexpected results that you have to adjust to, and most of the time they are going to make your end results that much better.

3) Ask for help.
I'm a stubborn individual, but I know that there are always people who know more than I do about, well, anything. (Well, except for bad entertainment trivia and lyrics. Six degrees of separation? Child's play.) In choosing to develop this site on Plone, an open source platform, we were able to benefit from the collective wisdom of the Plone community. I was amazed at how responsive developers and others who were using Plone were to share their knowledge and expertise with us.

4) Documentation, documentation, documentation.
The old maxim about the three most important things about real estate? Location, location, location. When it comes to site development it has to be all about documentation. Another thank you to the Plone community for all of the information that has been developed and put online for easy access. But it's more than that. Document what you do as you're doing it. I'm terrible at this, but I made an effort throughout this project to do this, and was better than I have been in previous projects. There were a number of times where my notes helped out considerably and saved me a lot of time. There were other incidences where I had failed to capture my processes and kicked myself for having done so.

5) Usability tests.
Users can be unpredictable. No, I'm not talking about you, I'm talking about all the other users. Really. Do usability tests early and often to find out what your users think of what you are building for them. I guarantee you that it will change your work for the better.

Again, we hope that you like what we've done with the place and that you'll enjoy what's coming next too.

As a child growing up in the shadow of Disneyland, I spent many a day at the "happiest place on earth." The Jungle Cruise, Pirates of the Carribean, Haunted Mansion - good times all. And yes, I still lament the passing of Adventure Through Inner Space to make room in Tomorrowland for StarTours.

And then there was the Enchanted Tiki Room, brought to you perpetually by those fine folks at Dole. (Large, slow loading YouTube video follows:)



Apparently, I wasn't the only one who didn't quite get it. In my mind this attraction was nothing more than a fiendish plot to keep me from getting another ride on Space Mountain. That and those parades. Everybody's sitting down and watching the parades - c'mon! That means they're not in line for Big Thunder! Let's go!

For a long time I felt the same way about wikis. Not that a wiki has ever kept me from enjoying a roller coaster, but I just didn't quite get them. What's a wiki anyway? An encyclopedia? A workspace? A collaborative brou-haha?

According to Wikipedia, "A wiki (IPA: [ˈwɪ.kiː] or [ˈwiː.kiː] [1]) is a type of Web site that allows the visitors themselves to easily add, remove, and otherwise edit and change some available content, sometimes without the need for registration."

That's it. Nothing terribly fancy about that. But not all wikis are the same. Some are simple, others complex. It all depends on what the wiki is for, who uses it and what functionality is included.

So don't worry about getting a wiki up for your organization. You don't need a wiki. Unless you do. If you need to work collaboratively with co-workers or with folks from other organizations, a wiki might help you out. Or if you have a community of users who want to share their knowledge and expertise with each other - an with you - a wiki might be the way to go. Define your need first, then find the tool that best addresses your need.

There are plenty of options to choose from. Sure, JotSpot is down for new users now that they've been absorbed by the Google-plex, but if you want a hosted collaborative workspace-type wiki, SocialText, WetPaint and Yahoo Groups are all viable options. If you are looking for a more robust, project oriented solution Basecamp is a robust solution.

If you're looking to have a mini-Wikipedia on your site, chances are that you'll want to integrate it into your current development environment. Content management systems such as Drupal and Plone have optional wiki modules, or products. You can also build collaborative workspaces utilizing a content managements user profile security and collaborative functionality from calendars to document sharing to create a custom tailored collaborative experience. It might not be a wiki, exactly, but if it works you can call it whatever you like.

If that means filling it with animatronic birds and dubbing it the Enchanted Wiki Room, that's fine, just as long as I get one more ride on Adventure Through Inner Space.