Plone.org/for summary of requests

Summary of thoughts/requests/ideas for each plone.org/for sector homepage

A) Welcome:

At first I thought we definitely needed this--a 2-3 line sentence saying something like Welcome to this sector and many people are using Plone in this sector to do cool things, look around, etc.). Maybe we don't? Thoughts?

Originally, Limi (i think it was him) wanted a photo of the person(s) who were curating the sector to populate from their plone.org pictures. I think that is too much. esp. b/c mine is still the sexy black silhouette.

B) Case studies:

For the plone.org/for sector homepage, i would love it if 2 case studies could appear, with others showing up after the "jump". Wiggy, this is exactly as you have it now in the plone.org/for/libraries section, except that there would ideally be a thumbnail of the company/org's logo. next to the title of the case study. (please?)

For case studies themselves I would love to see a simple template with some room for images/screenshots. the purpose of this would be to guide the writer to include the right _types_ of information that would be useful to a person evaluating/getting to know Plone. At first I was thinking that the template should be guided by 5 basic questions . I got some wonderful feedback from Mel, and she suggested a long list of questions aimed at getting to the most important part of a case study: Why does this matter and what difference does this make?  So now I am thinking of a template with 5 categories with sub questions to guide people through.

Dream Implementation:

My dream implementation would be as follows (bold are fixed headings that would remain, italics are in the text field and would be deleted/overwritten by the case study writer (i.e. not part of the "permanent" template, just pre-populated content in the text field):

PLONE CASE STUDY TEMPLATE

Area at the top for thumbnail of the company/org logo

I. Who is using Plone?

text box
Provide a brief overview of the company/organization using Plone and its business/focus
Where is the company located? Is this location the company headquarters or a division office? Are there other divisions using Plone-based solutions?
How many employees does the company have? Is the company/org's employee base growing substantially?
How long has the company been a Plone customer?

/text box

II. What challenge is Plone helping to solve?

text box
What key business trends/ challenges drove the company/organization to look for a Plone solution?
Does Plone help address these challenges (all/some/which ones?)
How was the company/org handling these problems prior to implementing a Plone-based solution?
What capabilities were they looking for?
What other criteria and requirements were involved in the selection of Plone?
Describe the evaluation process

/text box

III. How was the Plone-based solution implemented?

text box
How was the Plone-based solution first implemented?
How long did it take from contract to deployment?
Did the company/org encounter any obstacles?
What are the integration points (major systems, customization, etc)?
What is the company/org's reaction to the Plone-based solution?

/text box

IV. What are the benefits of Plone?

text box
What benefits have the company/org experienced since deploying their Plone-based solution?
What specific features/capabilities of Plone does the customer find most useful/beneficial?
Has the company/org had any difficulties? If so, what are they? Were they satisfied with the resolution?
How well is the Plone-based solution solving the company/org's challenges?
Would the company/org recommend Plone to a similary company/org?
Overarchingly, how does the solution/implementation really make a difference?

/text box

V. Describe the software architecture, including add-on products, that contributes to this Plone-based solution
text box
One of the most difficult parts of considering a Plone-based solution is the lack of an add-on products rating system. We are interested in hearing: What products are you using?
What products are fantastic?
What products need work? What kind of work?
If you had to do it all over again, what products would you use? Same/different?
What add-on products would you recommend to others?
Is the site world-viewable?  If so, can you include a link?

/text box
Place to post a thumbnail of a screenshot that links to a live page, if available.
/CASE STUDY TEMPLATE

Note: If this idea of a pre-populated form is too difficult/annoying then i suppose that the "next best thing" would be a template with these questions and the empty text boxes and then I could make a faq or how-to that includes the questions and perhaps some more advice in completing the case study.

I would _love_ the logo bit to appear next to the case study title though because it would help dress up the 'sector homepage'.


C. Mailing list for that sector
Notes on this:
Genesis for this idea came from the NGO list--during the foundation meeting many NGO types stressed how important this had been to the greater NGO community and how helpful it had been for the lists members. The idea was that we could create a mailing list for each of the sectors. I think (at first) that a regular old SF list (like the rest of plone.org's lists) would be fine but:
From Darci:
I can't stress the importance of a web-based communication tool. Searchable, archived mailing lists provide the most flexibility obviously. Online forums -- these can be hit or miss but something is better than nothing. Worst case, there are (free) mailing list archivers out there (have been for ages) and a Product like WindowZ will allow an archived list to be displayed within the plone.org/for/sector framework at least. Searching may be an issue in that case, however.

Similarly, Jon S.:
The only thing I have some concern about is the mailing list...I would really like it if we could get listen working so the sector mailing lists are competently and accessibly web-archived right on the site. I think that would greatly increase discoverability and accessibility. But it may be too tall a technological challenge, I guess we will have to consult with Wiggy & Alex.

And finally from Paul:
I'll be interesting to see what they conclude. Having something like that [would be] one of the biggest draws, IMO. Make people feel like there is a structured dialogue.

Wiggy, obviously I understand that listen is not desirable in its current state, but do you have any idea for an alternative? Or should we just stick to the SF lists and direct people to the archives/Gmane the way that plone.org does? I understand that the later is probably the best answer here. (/me hopes in the future to answer Darci/Jon S.'s plea for on-site web-archivability)

In terms of content for the 'sector homepage', this would just be a headline-style title Mailing List and then a link to joining the mailing list and a link to searching the archive. based on the support & mailing list page on plone.org

D.  Something, and this title is not perfect, along the lines of "Sites that Use Plone" or rather "Plone in this Sector" (yeah, that is better) or something like that.

Basically, a more curated version of the generic 'sites that use plone' for both relevancy and well, quality. Although I must say, whoever did some work on this has made it much more accessible (Jon Stahl, was this you?) and pretty. 

Paul noted that plone.net is doing some work on this (61 sites with a manual review). Is it me, or is does the screenshot make it pretty?  If I can't have what is there, what can I have?  A list of links? Maybe with screenshots, if not with the full contact info and stuff?


E. Okay, of course i wait til the bottom to ask for the biggest hopes/dreams. I am assuming that most of this will be shot down, but what I/We dream about is what Jon S. called some:
"live content, drawn in via some simple "Web 2.0'' b.s."
What this means to me:

* Something alive on the page, like the ability to designate plone.org news items/events/ documentation, etc. as relevant to this sector.
Both in creating them locally to this sector (publish to/in this sector's workflow) and for designating site-wide news/events/documentation as relevant to  this sector
(note: here is where i really wish i understood quite how smart folders work, because this is what i think they are, but they may not be)

note 2: i dream of tagging, but assume this must be a dream deferred.

* Sucking in (Jon S.'s term) relevant-to-the-sector Plone blogs a la planet.plone

* Darci notes that for whatever happens here, it would be great if people could leave comments.

* If we could, depending on the ML software, links to the last 3 mailing list posts.

* Anything else in terms of "live" content that would be low-hanging fruit?


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That is it. I know it is a tall order, but i think if will pull this off we will achieve the dream of 'like marketing to like'.
It's not easy to define Plone, it is better to let others show her off.

Thanks to everyone for their amazing feedback and comments. You all are the best.