Ten Ways to Engage the Plone Community

Here at the Plone Conference, I'm taking a few notes at Darci Hanning's 10 Ways to Engage the Plone Community talk.

Darci tells us this talk will not be super valuable to developers. The point is that you don't have to be a programmer to be enormously helpful to Plone. Darci's talk is really for people who use Plone as an integration platform or as a user, and want to help promote and support the Plone project.

1) Blog about Plone.

:-) How you use it, what you like about it, how it compares to other CMS's, promote improvements, share ideas

2) Contribute a Theme.

People think you can always spot a Plone site, but this isn't really true. They frequently look very different. This is as close to “development” as Darci says she's going to get.

3) “Adopt” a Product (a Plone “add-on”)

You can assist the product author by reporting bugs, verifying bugs/bug fixes, write documentation (something many developers hate to do), test upcoming releases. You can also become the Product Owner. Darci became the Product owner of a formerly abandoned product called CMFSin (a syndication product).

4) Marketing

Advertise how you use Plone. You can do this by submitting sites or case studies to Plone.net. Tag Plone sites at del.icio.us with the tag “plone-site”. Join the Plone Foundation's marketing committee.

5) Online Participation

There are numerous mailing lists you can join. You can also participate with Plone people on the #plone channel on IRC.

6) Join a Local User Group

There are groups in cities around the world. List posted on plone.org. You can start one, if there isn't one locally. Can be good for presentations, socializing. The Denver user group has had virtual meetings (IRC or Second Life). Make sure you announce it regularly and create a mailing list.

7) Sprints — usually for developers, but Plone has had at least two sprints for non-developers, both for documentation. If you can't come to one, sponsor one. Or even better, organize or host one.

8) Test Beta/Release Candidates

Download new releases and play with them. Report bugs. Test migrating sites. Start identifying documentation needs.

9) Documentation

Use it, comment on it, write it. Join the Documentation Team

10) Report Bugs

Get feedback to developers. Not sure it's a bug - report it anyway. Join plone.org. Give detailed information and tracebacks.

This was a very nice, straightforward talk. Nice job Darci!

Some additional thoughts from the peanut gallery:

• Talk about Plone on social networks (Facebook, etc.)
• Create screencasts of how you use Plone and publicize them
• Talk about Plone at conferences or BarCamps
• Host a Plone Bootcamp (developer training)

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