[Evangelism] Upcoming Design4Drupal Boston event

[Ed Manlove]

For those in the greater Boston area I wanted to pass along this Drupal 
design event,

     http://boston2012.design4drupal.org/

which will take place July 14-15 at MIT.

As part of my personal mission I've been engaging with the diverse tech 
community within Rhode Island, USA including those within the Drupal, 
WordPress, ... communities here in our small state. I have several 
reasons for doing this. First has to do with community, which I will 
define more broadly than Paul did in his PSE2012 Keynote [1]. During a 
CMS Smackdown event held in Providence, RI it was asked of the panelist 
"If you weren't using your CMS which other one would you be using and 
why?".  One person noted another panelist's CMS and his reason was 
noteworthy; it was due to the people within that community. Not 
primarily due to technical superiority or ease of use but for the 
community behind that CMS. And that has stuck in my head.

Second has to do with advancing Plone. This happens in a few different 
ways. A) By simply getting the Plone name out there when other CMSes are 
being discussed, i.e. marketing Plone. B) By seeing how others solve 
problems which we the Plone community are addressing like accessability 
or TinyMCE intergration. C) By showing off the real strengths of Plone 
which sounds like marketing Plone (A) but is marketing with more passion 
and from one's strengths.

My third and final reason has to do with practicality.  Being in a 
smaller state and relatively far away from any other Plone communities I 
attend the tech/social events which are in my neighborhood. So this 
involves engaging those who use Drupal, WordPress, etc. And please don't 
think I am out there every week, at every event within Rhode Island 
promoting Plone.  I get out there when I can (which is about once every 
four months) and engage others sometimes on topics other than CMSes.  
This is a long term mission with small incremental steps of engagement.

So if anyone can attend the Design4Drupal event this July at MIT I think 
it would greater benefit the Plone community. (I had planned to attend 
D4DBoston but the date got changed to a weekend in which I have a 
previous engagment that can't be rescheduled.)

Ed

1. 
http://weblion.psu.edu/symposium/paul-roeland-to-keynote-at-plone-symposium-east-2012 
- Paul narrowly defined community as a tight nit group of people that is 
focused on a mission with passion. Even though I agree with Paul's use 
of the word I simply don't have a better word to describe larger 
"communities" so I use communities.