While writing the bid for the conference, we also formed a task force that will handle the organisation. It is a lot of work so we need all the help we can get. Down the road we anticipate on more people who can assist, but Four Digits will handle the main things to do.  Here is how it is done.

From left to right

Maarten Kling: Attendee manager

Maarten was responsible for writing the bid and during the conference, he is in charge of registration, the budget, information desk and welcome. Questions about where to stay, your fee or anything related to money and sponsoring, contact him.

Ralph Jacobs: Social Activity manager

Ralph is the man you need to contact for information about Arnhem, what to see and what to do. He makes sure you will visit the best bars, the best restaurants and the thing you must see when visiting the city. It is his responsibility to come up with a great beter half program.

Sjoerd van Elferen: Venue & Sprint manager

Sjoerd will handle everything that happens at the venue. He is in contact with the people there and he is in charge of things and stuff we need there: beamers, tables, chairs and things like coffee and lunch. Sjoerd also coordinates the lightning talks, sprints and stand ups.

Rob Gietema: Program manager

Rob is assigned to scheduling and programming. He will make a day to day program that contains all the talks, sprints and open spaces. At the venue, we have multiple rooms and a great auditorium; Rob has the overview on what is happening where and when. Apart from that, Rob takes care of the key note speaker and other VIP's who will speak at the conference.

Yadi Dragtsma: Marketing manager

Our marketing and PR guy. He does the contact with the press, handles the website and social platforms like Twitter, this blog and other meda. If all goes well, everybody in Arnhem is going to know that Plone is in town. During the conference, Yadi will do reports, stories and updates for the people back home.

Martijn Jacobs: Party manager

Martijn is not in the photo, but nevertheless he plays a vital part in the organisation. Martijn is developer, DJ and part of a successful dance music act. He is the party manager and takes care of the conference fest. The music, the equipment, the acts...Martijn is on top of things.

For information or questions regarding the conference:

info@ploneconf.org

We already put together a team together that will take care of initial planning and preparations. Of course, during the conference, we will need all the help we can get so all of the Four Digits employees will be assigned to a specific task. We had our first post-proposal planning meeting today and are in the works of making the planning up to the event.

We will keep you posted on all the relevant information in the months to come. Here, on Twitter and we will utilize the Dutch local and (if possible) national media. Apart from organising a great conference, we want to promote Arnhem as one of the best cities in the Netherlands. The company is located here and all the Four Digits members live in Arnhem.

The Plone conference 2012 will be held in the very heart of Arnhem centre, within walking distance of pubs, restaurants, shops, and public transport. In fact, the venue is very close to the office. We are going to our best to make sure you all have a great time here. Check out our proposal for more info on both the conference and the city of Arnhem.

And just to get you warmed up, a few of the many thing to see here. As mentioned in Mark Corum's article, Arnhem has a famous bridge that played a key role during the second world war in The Netherlands. Be sure to see the movie A Bridge Too Far featuring Sean Connery, Gene Hackman and Robert Redford (which sadly wasn't filmed in Arnhem).

Arnhem also houses one of the biggest zoo's in Holland, as well as the only historical open air museum in the country. In all, it's a beautiful city with lots of nice shops, cosy bars en a lot of parks to take a stroll in.

For updates keep track of this blog, and the soon to launch Plone conf website. For now: we thank the community for the opportunity to host the conference and we thank Abstract and Fanelli Consulting for putting in a great bid. Hope to see all you guys in October!

In october or november, the 2012 edition of the Plone Conference will take place and one thing is certain: it will be in Europe. Four Digits wrote a proposal and so did Abstract and Fanelli Consulting from Paris, France.

The procedure: from 16 until the 20 of januari, the foundation members give their advisory vote. After that, the board of directors meet to discuss the result. They will make the formal desicion, although it is expected that the board follows the advice of the foundation members. As said, monday 23rd of januari is D-Day for both Arnhem and Paris

The members as well as the Board are facing a challenge; both Arnhem (The Netherlands) and Paris (France) are great cities with a rich history. Two great venues for a conference.

As for now, it is out of our hands. We are convinced that the community will pick the right place for the conference and no matter what the result is: Four Digits is going to be there.

First steps to conference

In the weeks before the Plone conference 2011 in San Francisco we had a very short discussion "Are we going to submit a proposal for next year?". The answer was very clear "Yes we will, if we get a venue!".

Yadi and myself where appointed to research possible conference locations and create a shortlist. As we visited several conference locations in Arnhem before, the short list was easy: "Burgers ZOO", "Papendal", "Gelredome" and our favorite: "Musis Sacrum".

Calling the Gelredome and hearing: "Yes, it is possible to hire the stadium, we got over 10 rooms available and it will be possible to setup a part of the soccer field and make a stand to seat 6000 people" made me smile, concerts are held there for over 35.000 people.

On the 12th of October the first real visit was made to Musis Sacrum, to orientate and discuss  possibilities.

When visiting we where blown away, the possibilities where endless. Big inhouse party location, restaurant and bar facilities and best of all, serveral conference halls big enough to organize four parallel tracks and have a separate hang-out facility all in the same location.

Nine days later the good news arrived from the location, the seven days needed for the conference where available and we could have the entire building for ourselves!

The seven days are needed to locate the three days of conference, two day sprinting and two day training at the same location.

Writing the proposal

In the last couple of years there where several very good submissions made by different sized companies and individuals. There are numerous excellent proposal examples and blog posts. The chapter setup for the conference proposal was easy, doing the research about Arnhem and the requirements was harder then expected, there was so much to do :). In about five weeks time te proposal was written, rewritten and styled. A sneak peak of the "Team", "Venue", "Arnhem" and "Marketing" sections of the proposal is listed below.

The team

In the process of writing and organizing we set up a team, in this team everybody is responsible for different kinds of tasks. This way we are able to focus on the talk program and do marketing at the same time. As we view organizing the conference is serious business, a team will be able to organize it best.

Venue

‘Musis Sacrum’ is located in the city centre of Arnhem and is within walking distance from the train station, bus station and a lot of hotels. Musis Sacrum has a large concert hall with 870 seats, a conference hall with 500 seats and various halls for events such as conferences, congresses, dinners, parties, presentations or meetings. It also houses it’s own grand café Mahler.

The venue is big enough to hold 500 people without making it feel too crowded, but not too big to get lost. We have sole access to the entire venue for the seven days of the conference.

Arnhem

Arnhem has been one of the most attractive shopping areas in the Netherlands for years, boasting a range of large chain stores and small clothes shops. There are numerous restaurants and cafe’s in Arnhem from fine dining to fast food and buffetstyle eateries. Through the city there are numerous of bars, restaurants and clubs.

Marketing

We plan to invest heavily into marketing the Plone Conference. One of the organizers will be responsible for marketing only; The location provides several spots for printed or audio visual sponsor media. This can be at the outside of the building, at the registration desks and in all the conference rooms. Marketing will promote Plone and all people/sponsors making it possible. We will make big banners showing the Plone Conference 2012 logo, the sponsors and the venue.

Switch Conference dates in the dying seconds

In the last days of writing the proposal, Mojo Concerts announced three yearly recurring concerts in the biggest pop-theater of the Netherlands, the Gelredome, Arnhem, exactly on the dates we had arranged with the venue. The hotels in Arnhem raised their prices and availability dropped down in just a few days... O my god, this concert attracts many people having lots of spending money.

In the dying seconds before the proposal was done it was needed to call all available hotels and recalculate availability, a date change was needed! Luckily for us the venue was able to move the conference one week! And now we have already made optional reservations at all hotels in city center to ensure availability and to get the best conference-prices!

Submitting

Finaly the moment was there, 30 December the last Friday before the deadline, after hard work the complete proposal was finished having a clear budget and all chapters covered. This is it.

Two proposals: Paris or Arnhem!

On 4th of Januari Mark Corum announced there where the Plone Foundation Gets Two Proposals to Host Plone Conference 2012. So we are up against the French!

May the best conference proposal win! I think we got the plan, the location, the city having everything within walking distance and one of the best teams to make a great conference! Fingers crossed!

Can you tell us something about the team behind the organisation. Apart from you and Spanky, who else was involved?

Spanky and I were the only coordinators this year. We relied heavily on Trish Ang and Tyler Randles for help with design and just about everything creative. When the conference actually started, our team of bunnies was key to everything working out - they made everything go smooth and sound.

The conference was in November; when did you start the initial preparations?

Our bid was accepted in early March and we started planning the next day.

Can you describe what the roadmap looked like? Website, marketing, location, food, program, speakers etc etc?

The roadmap was really rough. In the beginning we tried to assign certain categories to certain months like "July is going to be swag month". In reality, this milestone type of management that you see in software so much doesn't really work for conferences. The problem is people. Not everyone in the world is addicted to email and highly connected. We dealt with some people that didn't even own computers. That type of communication took a lot of time.

Can you name some things that needed attention during the preparation that you did not expect?

There are some things we did very right that I hope future organizers keep in mind. We did as much as we could to keep our volunteers happy and they made the conference sing. Having a good walkie talkie/radio system helped a lot in that aspect, as well as a room where they could dissapear, regroup, sleep, eat, etc.
In general, just about everything took five times longer to do than we expected. We had to put on a lot of pressure sometimes and do many followups with vendors.
There were a couple of last minute bombs that really put us in a bad position. The person who was slated to do the wifi ended up in the hospital 2 weeks before the conference and we had no real backup plan. We also had an issue where the party vendor couldn't get the fire permit for the party location 3 days before the party and everything had to be moved last minute.

Can you name some important things the next organizing party should not forget to deal with? Things that went wrong or could be better next time.

- Think a lot about flow, especially for the first day. We had a silly mixup which caused all of the badges to get out of alphabetical order that caused a lot of backup. Little things like that cause bad impressions.

- Work hand in hand with the previous years organizers and build on what they did. You can't do fun and creative things if you are worried about infrastructure like web sites and mailing lists.

- Put up a FAQ page. It could potentially cut your email in half.

- Have group rates. Groups > 6 deserve a discount and will be much more motivated. Also think of how you can push these groups to sponsor as well.

- We didn't have a good system for integrating tickets and marketing. Because of this, we always had a partial list of emails for attendees which made coordinating last minute schedule changes a little sketchy.

- We did what we could to raise sponsorship money and handle sponsors but that could have also used a lot more attention. In the future I would find someone who is 100% dedicated to making sponsors feel like they are getting their moneys worth by spoiling them with attention.

- Recording and streaming of talks could have been handled much better.

What good features should a decent conference location at least have?

A good location should be within walking distance to high price hotels and cheaper homes and hostels. Having lots of food and bar options is a must have. As long as you make decisions with the thought that people are giving up some or all of their vacation time to come to your conference, then the rest will resolve itself.

Would you do it again if someone would ask you?

Absolutely!

At this moment, it is uncertain wich magazine will run the story, but we know for sure that it will be published (That sounds strange but trust us). It's going to be three pages and it will focus on the city of San Francisco, the conference and the Plone community.

If everything goes well, we can present it in January. It is in Dutch, but we will make it availible for download and if there is time, we might do a translation in English. Elizabeth Leddy, who was involved in the organisation, is helping us.

If you were there and if you have great photo's of the city, the congres or maybe of the party, please send them or a link to yadi(at)fourdigits(dot)nl We might use them for illustration. Please make sure the quality of the photo meets the standard for print.

The event that took place at the Dutch wine museum, was organised by Fair Trade Arnhem, an organisation that promotes corporal social responsability (CSR) in this city. Their president Yvonne Renckens recently decided to step down, so there was a small party in her honour. Apart from speeches, presents and ofcourse a decent glass of wine, me and two other guests did a presentation.

For more information about the presentation, please contact us.

The resignation of Yvonne was ofcourse the most important thing that evening. Her fellow boardmembers stated their graditude towards her and also the municipal councillor Henk Kok thanked her for all the work she had done in the past few years.

"What I am going to do now that i have some time off..? Nothing. It may sound strange, but apart from my regular job, i am going to take it easy", Renckens said. Given the huge amount of time she invested in Fair Trade Arnhem, it is deserved and long overdue.

The Zevenheuvelenloop is one of the biggest sporting events in Gelderland. More than 23.000 runners will participate. The name Zevenheuvelenloop in English is The seven hill run, wich means it is pretty tough. For this event, we designed a t-shirt with the Plone logo on it. It did not take too much time to come up with an idea... sport, sprint, fast, power....

The run starts at 1 pm today. We will keep you posted about the result.

We think it is important to support cultural organisations like this, and if possible we like to invite our relations from time to time. Are you into classical music? Contact us and maybe we will take you with us to one of the concerts.

For next saturday (November 19th) there is an exceptional concert especially for people around 30-35 years of age. When the concert is over (takes about one hour), there is an after party with a DJ and several VJ’s; students from Arnhems school of arts ArtEZ. If you are interested, please contact our marketing manager Yadi Dragtsma.

On this website, there is more information about the concert (in Dutch).

Chairman Roelof Meijer: "It is our responsibilty to promote innovation and easy access on the internet." That is why the organisation rewards websites and organisations. The people at Four Digits, responsible for the technical realisation of Cool Widget, are very happy. Project manager Rob Gietema: "We consider it to be a recognition for Plone as a versatile platform and CMS."

More information, check the news item on SIDN.

The guidelines in a nutshell:

WHAT NOT DO:

use jargon - just keep it simple and understandable

show irrelevant features - it only looks more difficult, even if you thinks it's cool to show of

talk about yourself - it is not about you

talk bad about other technologies - Plone is good, but there is more out there

WHAT TO DO:

listen - find out what it is the other person is looking for

know who you are talking to - find out how well the audience is informed and if necessary, adjust the presentation

build a relationship - do not start a conversation with a sales pitch. Find common interests to begin with

BE PREPARED:

have everything installed and tested - If you fail to plan, you plan to fail. So make sure all the equipment is working

have a folder with demo content of many types - if a demo is not working, have something else for backup

run it local - we like to believe there is internet everywhere, but sometimes there is not. So run your demo local. At least have a backup stand by

There is Plone.org, a place for developers, where you can find new features and where developers can share ideas. It is often difficult to understand by end users. That is why we will launch Plone.com. The first and most important thing? Office managers, decision makers and also your grand mother should be able to understand the content.

Companies and organisations who are looking for a new CMS, will find all the answers about Plone on Plone.com. In the next months, a group of people within the community will write new content.

Speaking of Plone.org:

- at this moment, 60% of the visitors don't find what they are looking for and leave

- the site contains about 10.000 pages and 28.000 elements

- Some information is outdated

It migh be an idea to update some of the information on plone.org

some topics:

- One of the important things at hand will be marketing. There should be more news and announcements on Plone.org. Sometimes events happen and almost nobody knows about it. Also, we hear stories about countries where important companies started to use Plone. That is news and should be on the site.

- Another thing: working on a guideline about how to behave at Plone events. There are examples about sexual remarks at events. And although it was not a Plone-event, this board wants to make a statement; incorrect behaviour within the community will not be tolerated. Especially since we want more woman to get involved.

- This board wants more transparancy, more communication and interaction with the community.

We have people from Europe, South America, Canada and even from Africa and Asia. The Plone community is great because we care for each other. When someone needs money to go to a conference, people donate. And there is more. People in the Plone community assume that other developers mean well, despite of differences in opinion.

Limi and Hendryx-Parker told the story about Dorneles Treméa, a guy who was a key Plone developer. He died this year in a car accident near his home in Brazil, only 31 years of age. He was a very positive guy; he came to Norway for a Plone event showing up in summer clothes. But he did not care. He kept smiling, just happy to be there. Even though he is not here anymore, we can still learn from him.

For people who are new to the Plone Community, stories like this are inspiring. It helps to understand that the community is about more than just developing. There is is no need to fly across the globe for just that. People attend to meet, work together and to feel that they are part of something special.

The new Plone Foundation Board of Directors:

Geir Baekholt (Norway)

Matt Hamilton (UK)

Erico Andrei (Brazil)

Maurizio Delmonte (Italy)

Paul Roeland (Netherlands)

Carol Ganz (USA)

Sjoerd van Elferen (Netherlands)

(Maurizio is not at the conference)