[Evangelism] PyCon Japan 2012 and Plone

[Dylan Jay]

On 22/05/2012, at 11:59 PM, Matt Hamilton wrote:

>
> On 22 May 2012, at 13:00, Dylan Jay wrote:
>
>> On 22/05/2012, at 5:47 PM, Shigeo Honda wrote:
>>
>>> I worry about PyCon is 'die-hard' python developer event and not
>>> suitable  for Plone. So, I'd like to know how Plone community work
>>> with PyCon in other countries. What kind of session is good for  
>>> PyCon
>>> attendees?  Please let me know your experience in PyCon.
>>>
>>> I appreciate any advice and comments.
>>
>> Not sure if it means anything but our company submitted 4 talks for  
>> pyconau this year. The two plone related talks were the two rejected.
>> It got me to thinking about the plone communities relationship to  
>> the python community.
>> I think open source is spread by fans, people not directly involved  
>> with the software itself. Those fans exist in a much larger  
>> community than plone itself. It makes me think that if the python  
>> community aren't fans of Plone, then where are our fans?
>> Sorry it's a little negative and off topic.
>
> Similar experiences with Europython the past few years. There were a  
> load of Plone talks submitted this year, and the only ones accepted  
> were the ones that did not mention Plone in the title.
>
> As is already said, Plone in and of itself is not new and shiny.  
> People naturally want the new and shiny things at conferences like  
> this I think. But with regards to Python and Plone I think it is  
> slightly deeper than that. I really don't know why, but it does seem  
> that Plone still has a bit of a bad taste for 'die hard' python  
> people.
>
> One thing I did at a conference this weekend was to install Plone  
> from scratch during a 5-minute lightning talk. I can do it in under  
> 3 minutes. Basically running virtualenv, paster, buildout, bin/ 
> instance fg. The idea was to show to python people that Plone is  
> *not* some difficult thing to get going with.

for the record the talk I did submit didn't mention plone. It was  
called something like "zero to website hero in 30min" and was going to  
a complete themed site from start to end in 30min talk slot. Now I'm  
just going to have to do the same thing in a 5min lightning talk slot :)

>
> The question of whether trying to promote Plone at the PyCon-type  
> events is worth the effort is a fundamental one. I go through phases  
> of thinking its not worth the effort and we are banging our heads  
> against brick walls… but then, I'm not sure how else we are going to  
> get new developers into the community. We can work on the business  
> level and aim at business conferences and do case study talks and  
> the likes and hope that business decision makes choose Plone and  
> drag developers along that way.

We need developers but they don't have to be die hard python devs.  
Python devs like making frameworks not themes :) Maybe we should be  
speaking at php conferences :)

>
> My only other idea is to stick to doing talks on specific bits of  
> technology that are new and shiny and showcase them. Things like  
> Diazo… then again, I submitted a Diazo talk to Europython and that  
> was not accepted either :(
>
> -Matt
>
>
>
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>>
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>> Technical Director
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