[Evangelism] Local/regional Plone communities and marketing

[Francesco Ciriaci]

Hi everybody,

a topic I care a lot about is:  aggragating/promoting/spreading Plone  
locally, I've always cared a lot.

Initiatives like to World Plone Day are great to this respect; another  
mayor actionable is.... country-specific Plone sites!

I'm very happy about the PF position on the topic ("The Foundation is,  
in general, happy to see "country-specific" Plone sites) and also  
happy that the PF could work out very simple and clear guidelines for  
it:  (http://plone.org/foundation/committees/ip/country-specific-domain-policy 
).

Following this "encouragement" from the Foundation in Italy we started  
developing the plone.it site (http://plone.it).

"The new Plone.it portal is addressed to the italian community of  
Plone users and developers: it aims to provide documentation about  
Plone in italian, visibility and aggregation for the italian  
community, and a channel to find and contribute localized material for  
the promotion of Plone."
(see full press release: http://www.plone.it/diffondi/comunicati/pressrelease-ploneit) 
.

And we decided to the focus on:

1) have a wide participation of the local community

2) develop the site as a bridge to the wider international community  
(plone.org, plone.net, etc.): i.e. plone.it is not a final  
destination, but an "entry point" (like current plone.org/countries/XY  
pages).

3) focus on local/regional specific products/market/etc. (italian  
Public Administration stuffs, italian specific events, etc.)

4) global consistency of the logo/brand: no plone logo derivative, but  
simple .it extention; consistency with new Plone logo color.


Like for the World Plone Day I hope other countries will follow (if  
they don't have local/regional sites already). I wish local  
communities can grow, develop and market Plone locally... with some  
global/international coordination! We can share experiences, ideas,  
code and much more.

cheers,
Francesco.


--
Francesco Ciriaci                    francesco at reflab.com
Reflab S.r.l. - Design, Development and Consulting
Phone: +39 3334284675        http://www.reflab.com