[Evangelism] Operation Ditch Plone

[Nate Aune]

> 2)  More generally, how can we locate and identify frustrated Plone admins
> and mitigate any negativity?  Can we set up a formal process to track sites
> in danger of falling off the Plone wagon?  Would it be possible to assign a
> POC who could act as a liaison between their admin(s) and Plone tech
> support?


This is a great idea, but I'm not sure how it would be coordinated. Some
sort of "Plone help hotline" where someone directs the frustrated person to
an appropriate POC?

I look at prominent sites that used to run Plone and have now moved away
from Plone, and wonder if they would have stuck with Plone had there been
someone to help them with their frustrations.
I'm thinking about these sites which moved away from Plone:
- Creative Commons
- Ubuntu
- Oxfam.org

Novell.com runs the risk of abandoning Plone unless they can resolve some
performance issues they are facing.

Here's another one that I stumbled across today: "I'm done with Plone."
http://bitubique.com/content/im-done-plone

Although a bit dated by now (2005-6), this summary of complaints by
Humaninet is very revealing:
http://groups.humaninet.org/about/plone-lessons-part-1/
http://groups.humaninet.org/about/plone-lessons-part-2/

I think it would be valuable if the Plone community had a process that
> tracks frustrated users and implementers, reach out to them even when they
> haven't asked or don't know how to ask for help, give them the TLC they
> need, and minimize the consequences of failed Plone projects.


Agreed. Do you want to draft such a process?


> Some of the input that identifies floundering Plone sites would come from
> the technical support lists and channels, but some could come from people
> who stumble upon negative blogs and rants on the web.


Yes, I know Gerry Kirk, Matt Hamilton, Alex Limi, Calvin Hendrix Parker and
myself have been monitoring the Twittersphere, for those who have Tweeted
about Plone, but if would be great if there were more folks who would
volunteer to do this, not just for Twitter but for the blogosphere.

http://search.twitter.com/search?q=plone
http://blogsearch.google.com/blogsearch?hl=en&ie=UTF-8&q=plone&btnG=Search+Blogs
http://technorati.com/search/plone?language=en

Maybe we could use Tarek's Atomisator [1] or Yahoo Pipes [2] to make an
aggregate of these search results, and then folks could take turns
monitoring the stream of blog posts and Tweets, and responding to them.

[1] http://atomisator.ziade.org/
[2] http://pipes.yahoo.com

One of my friends is building a Django app called Tweet and Shout, which is
designed for customer service and PR folks and provides a streamlined
interface for responding to Tweets about a company's products or services.
It's built with jQuery and the entire interface can be controlled with the
arrow keys, so you can respond to a lot of Tweets very quickly, even using
canned responses.

We might also want to consider setting up an account at one of the following
sites to provide an easier way for folks to submit feedback (the Trac issue
tracker is not very inviting for newbies)
http://getsatisfaction.com
http://uservoice.com
https://launchpad.net/+tour/index

I'd appreciate hearing from others about if and/or how we should be
> attempting this.


I would be interested in helping to come up with a process for monitoring
and responding to frustrations voiced by those using or evaluating Plone.

Nate

-- 
Nate Aune - natea at jazkarta.com
http://nateaune.com (personal blog)
http://jazkarta.com (open source technology solutions)
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