Plone, a leading open souce content management system, is increasingly used in enterprise, community, and personal web applications. As the community has grown and the technology surged in popularity and adaptation, it has also increased its need to provide accurate, concise, and professional information for a variety of audiences. With a worldwide network of developers, usability testers and user interface programmers, the community is thriving with contributions and a great product. For those and the companies that already use Plone, the product speaks for itself. For the rest of us, there is a need for marketing materials

ifPeople's Christopher Johnson was invited to lead a workshop at the North American Plone Symposium to create a better understanding of marketing, how Plone is positioned to be successful in outreach, and what are its current needs for marketing. Moreover, the double-header session of the conference was a roll-up-your-sleaves and get busy working session, which led to the creation of new products and plans for the community.

An overview of Plone from a marketing perspective

In marketing Plone, we are trying to help people decide to use this excellent resource. In order to effect that decision, we need to know who the audience is and what the emotional and rational factors are they consider when deciding. Finally, we have to address those in clear, concise, and accessible materials that are consistent across a variety of media.

In regards to making decisions about technology, Plone thrives on a vibrant community of tech-savvy individuals who often promote the tool to their bosses, colleagues, or customers. The decision needs to be made by someone who is normally not "tech-savvy" and is considering issues of:

• how established is the product and is it proven in the marketplace?
• what kind of support is available?
• what knowledge and information is available about the technology?
• what is the short- and long-term cost/benefit?

For Plone (referring to not only the technology, but also the community of contributors, companies that deploy it, and users), it is easy to show how Plone can be key to addressing all those issues with many benefits:

• Plone is used by large non-profit organization (Oxfam USA) and large companies, government institutions, and universities. See Plone Sites
  
• Plone is supported throughout its lifecycle (hosting, development, deployment, training) by a growing number of companies. See Open Source Experts
  
• A growing number of books (online and in print) provide an accessible knowledge-base and many sources of community help and training are available. See Plone Documentation
  
• Plone's value proposition racks up points in its favor: Free Software and no license fees, standards compliant, accessible, built on best practices for maintainability and usability. For more see ResponsibleIT

But it is not so easy to find non-technical sources of information on all these factors.

Enter Thriving Community and the revitalized Marketing Committee

Recent efforts by Paul Everitt of Zope European Association and Alan Runyan, founder of Plone and of Enfold Systems, have driven a revitalization of the marketing efforts in the community. The workshop was a spark that found lots of fuel and lead to rapid devleopment of, among other things, a snazzy brochure for OSCON, the O'Reilly Open Source Convention. The community ate up the opportunity to work together and contribute at the Symposium and produced the brochure in record time! (see a black/white version of the product) I was awed by it and happy to be working with such a great group.

The efforts that continue on at a distance in the committee are leading to a more formalized approach to marketing, to broader engagement within the community, and to innovations that will continue to drive Plone as a leading technology and thriving social phenomenon. The community will host its 2005 international conference in September 2005 in Vienna (see the conference page) and continues to be present at the most important technical events around the world, entering in new technology spaces, and competting with the biggest proprietary systems around - all in an elegant, organic, distributed Open Source way.