Open Dialogue

A fantastic turn out for the Plone Wessex meet up last night – despite a couple of absences due to sickness and late working, we still had the largest gathering I’ve been to so far.

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There is no denying the massive growth of social media. It’s become a huge part of our culture, with 10% of all time spent on the internet  on social media sites. Whilst it’s important to get involved, with so many channels available it can be a little daunting at first. I joined the members of Brrism (Bristol Social Media) last week to discuss how different social media tools can be used most effectively.

(Attendees of Brrism 4: photo courtesy of Peter Tecks)

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Yesterday was World Usability Day 2009, so I joined the members of Bristol Usability Group (BUG) for ‘Futures Night’ at CX Partners. Not only was the evening an enjoyable mix of talk and debate about the future of the computing, but I also won the prize draw!
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Photo courtesy of MrTopf

I spent last week in Budapest at the Plone conference and sprint. This was my first Plone conference and was just what I had come to expect from such a friendly, passionate and professional community. Plone has a strong sense of direction and there are some exciting things to look forward to. For me the most exciting developments were changes to the way Plone is themed.

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I’m always looking for ways to promote an agile, user centred approach. Anyone who has taken a few steps into agile development, or taken a few moments to watch actual users, will know that this is the only way to go. It gets results.

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There has been a lot happening in search lately. Yahoo! has finally given up the battle and sold up to Microsoft, increasing the market share for Bing, Microsoft’s recently launched search engine from around 8 to 28 percent. Google, still dominating with a massive 65% share of the market has recently announced Caffeine – a huge update to its search indexing. Live search has also been making headlines, with the likes of Twitter’s new search focused home page and Google’s new time based search options. Even Google co-founder Larry Page has admitted they have lost out to Twitter! So what does all this mean for search engine optimisation?

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Ben and I attended the Bristol Plone Balloon Sprint this weekend, joining around 20 Plone developers and enthusiasts from across Europe. The sprint was kindly organised by Team Rubber, running from Thursday evening to Sunday afternoon, to coincide with the Bristol International Balloon Fiesta. The event started with welcome drinks in the Woods bar as participants began arriving in Bristol. The lively discussions around agile project management, Plone hosting and support and the anecdotes of previous sprints set the tone for a very enjoyable and productive weekend.

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‘We are on the threshold of the “Next Economy” – an economy characterized by a huge withdrawal of customer spending, an exponential increase in demand for service, and a consequent shift in business priorities from satisfying shareholders to delighting customers.’ – Elliot Ettenberg

As the IMF recently said, we are in uncharted waters. The question is – do we attempt to forge a new way forward or retreat to what we know to be environmentally and economically unsustainable and socially inequitable?

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After many years of licensed software development, in late 2007 we decided the time had come to embrace and support open source. This complete change of mindset, company name and business model did present a few initial hurdles, but we haven’t looked back. From my sales and project management perspectives, here’s why I feel this has been a good move.

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