[Evangelism] Bad result for Plone at Europython

[Raphael Ritz]

On 4/20/11 10:54 AM, Matt Hamilton wrote:
>
> On 20 Apr 2011, at 08:24, Jan Ulrich Hasecke wrote:
>
>> -----BEGIN PGP SIGNED MESSAGE-----
>> Hash: SHA1
>>
>> On 20.04.11 09:19, Maurizio Delmonte wrote:
>> ears
>>>
>>> Also, I register a very low pull on pylons + pyramid (just 127 of
>> 158), so,
>>> what kind of people has voted this set of sessions?
>>
>> Hard to say, but I saw some tweets and facebook entries with "please
>> vote for my talk" though not for the Plone talk.
>>
>> If there is no interest in Plone in the Python Community, then there is
>> also not much interest in the Europython in the Plone Community. Maybe
>> the drawback of having its own conference?
>
> This is an interesting thought. I personally have submitted talks to Europython the past few years, and either myself or colleagues have done Plone talks there. This year I'm going to Plone Conf in San Francisco, Plone Open Gardens in Sorrento, and the Plone Symposium East in the US. I didn't even have time to *think* about Europython... to be honest it was only two or three weeks ago I found out where it was even being held.
>
> Historically Plone has had poor reception at Europython.

Depends on how far back you go:

3 years ago http://ep2008.europython.eu/ it was stated upfront:
"EuroPython is an annual volunteer-run conference for the communities 
around the Python programming language, including the Plone and Zope 
communities."

http://wiki.python.org/moin/EuroPython/ has more links for the
historically interested.

In particular I like
http://lwn.net/Articles/37835/

"Guido van Rossum: State of Zope 3
  =================================

I'll be representing Jim Fulton who couldn't come here. ..."

IIRC the idea to have Europython in the first place was
born at a "Zope Barbecue" in Berlin, maybe this one
http://web.archiveorange.com/archive/v/gB3ldzHkTZwqJ9dw67hz

I'm sure Martijn Faassen would know ;-)

Cheers,

	Raphael


> I think this is mainly because it is not the 'cool new thing'. I mean, it is a bit boring really... we have been around a while, we have solved all the hard problems, we have a great community and we did NoSQL 10 years ago. The Plone community just get on and do things. An interesting example is that two years ago there were *loads* of talks about Django on the agenda. The following year, just one. I guess it was the new big thing then I guess people realised it wasn't that exciting, or that it didn't solve the problems they wanted to and was over-hyped. This year there are a few, but pretty much all are of something called GeoDjango, which I guess is to do with GIS.
>
> Remember we used to have a *whole track* dedicated to Zope at Europython in the old days, then it became a 'web frameworks' track and then it disappeared completely.
>
> I think if we want to get some more exposure at Europython then maybe we need to be extolling the virtues of some of the technology we have that is not just Plone specific, e.g. Diazo, Transmogrifier, buildout, etc.
>
> *If* I go to Europython this year, and hoping to do the Lightning talk that I didn't get to do last year, which was 'From python to Plone in 3 minutes' in which I will do a live demo of going from a plain python 2.6 install to Plone 4 up and running in 3 minutes. Just to show how easy it is to get into Plone. I still think a lot of people are wary of Zope/Plone as it still has a bad reputation from before when it was a big monolithic thing you had to swallow whole. I'm hoping that Pyramid goes some way to helping alleviate these fears as it is taking a lot of the technology we know and trust and putting it in front of a new audience.
>
> -Matt
>