In case you don't know, Plone is the name of the open source software which powers the DOT web site. Plone is a very powerful content management system, or CMS, and it provides the infrastructure (security, workflow, editing tools, etc.) that we have built upon to enable everyone within DOT to contribute to our web site.

This year, the Plone community organised World Plone Day, where groups of Plone users organised local events to help make Plone better known to organisations looking for a CMS solution. At first glance this might seem odd. After all, business users don't take time to organise events promoting Microsoft Word, or Coke drinkers time to organise events promoting Coke. But because Plone is an open source project, it has a communityof users and contributors. Whereas people who use Word or drink Coke are simply consumers of the product, open source users can also be contributors, because they can participate in the product's development in many ways (not just by programming). And because the strength of an open source project lies in the strength of its community, the members of the community have a stake in growing and strengthening the community.

Promoting Word or Coke has little, if any impact on me. But promoting an open source project that I use has a great impact on me. A stronger community means more users and contributors, which means more improvements, more companies offering support and add-on products, and a greater ability for me to leverage those improvements.

The Toronto Plone Users' Group has only been going for a few months, but we managed to put together a very professional and well-attended event, drawing a broad variety of people from academia, government and businesses. Approximately 30 people attended our half day event. The event was composed of several presentations, as well as networking breaks so people could ask questions and talk with each other.

We also streamed the presentations via ustream.tv, where they are archived for later viewing:

Jordan Baker of Scryent gave an introduction to Plone, as well as a demonstration of how to get started with Plone in 25 minutes.

Gord Gallant of the Ontario Government talked about his experience and lessons learned running almost 300 collaborative Plone sites with 9000 members for the government.

John Southern of Softwerke demonstrated how to extend Plone with minimal coding, by drawing UML (Universal Modelling Language) diagrams.

And I presented a case study about how DOT uses Plone, and what we have learned. My slides are here.

DOT was a co-sponsor of the event, together with the Toronto-based Plone consultancies Scryent and Softwerke. We had a great turn-out, strengthened the Plone community in Toronto and learned a lot!

It's here!

I finally broke down and ordered an XO PC from the One Laptop Per Child Project's  Give 1 Get 1 (G1G1) program in  the last hours before the program ended on Dec. 31. The G1G1 program got a lot higher response than they anticipated, and so my laptop just arrived today. At first it wouldn't turn on, and I thought I was going to have to return it as defective, but then it started working, and has been fine so far. I haven't had much time to play, but I did fire up the browser to see how the DOT web site looked:

So far I'm really impressed with what I have seen in a first few minutes of playing. I connected to my WiFi network easily, and was able to find applications quite easily (although I have looked at articles about the new Sugar interface before).

You can tell the pioneers by the arrows in their backs...

I've been impressed with everything done by the OLPC project to date, and am disappointed by all the criticism levelled against the project. The OLPC folks have challenged almost everything we assume about how we use computers, and have been very clear that this is a journey, and that they expect to learn (and make mistakes, which is part of learning) as they go along. Yet people jump on them for every mistake and setback.

As a society we claim to encourage people to take risks and try new things, but then we jump on them for the slightest setback or failure. Building something new is never easy, and there will always be failures and mistakes throughout. Edison tried thousands of combinations before developing a practical light bulb. I'm sure many of his assistants and investors urged him to give up after so many "failures" but if he had, then where would we be.

More on the XO PC as I get a chance to play with it. I'm looking forward to taking it with me on an upcoming trip to Kenya in April.

Toronto has had a lot of snow this year. You have to realise that Torontonians are spoiled (a few years ago, when we had a record snowfall, the mayor at the time called in the army to help, and everyone else in Canada enjoyed making fun of the Torontonians who couldn't stand a bit of snow). Because of where we're located, and the size of the city, it usually snows a bit, and then often melts anywhere from 2 days to 4 weeks later. Most of the snow passes over and lands north of us, on the aptly-named snowbelt areas, such as Barrie (where I grew up). But this year Toronto has had several large snowfalls, one after anotther, with no intervening melting. The side streets are often reduced to single lanes, and I can't go a couple of blocks without usually having to drive onto a snow bank to let someone get by (thank goodness for our Subaru Forester - it's been a life saver this year!).

The city, of course, doesn't want you shovelling snow back onto the street (although they don't mind ploughing it back against your car after you just finished digging it out). We have a small front yard, and the snow pile is so high, I don't know where I'll put any more. The crabapple tree in these photos is about 10 feet tall, and must be about 6 feet buried.

However, after shovelling snow all weekend, my teenage niece and nephew got me to go tobogganing with them and go play in it.