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Open source communities delegates draw the attention of the Members of the European Parliament to the current situation where the institution’s ICT systems are locked into the products of one vendor, warns about the implications of this for participative democracy and for fair competition, and calls for action to promote Open Standards and Interoperability.
The new Plone.it portal is addressed to the italian community of Plone users and developers: it aims to provide documentation about Plone in italian, visibility and aggregation for the italian community, and a channel to find and contribute localized material for the promotion of Plone.
Two EU-funded projects in the area of Free and Open Source Software (F/OSS), namely OpenTTT and FLOSSMETRICS, have recently published a F/OSS guide for SMEs. Different types of software applications and businesses are addressed, making this guide useful for most SMEs that wish to simply use F/OSS or even build a F/OSS-based business approach.
25 experts from across the world discussed in depth the relationship and importance of Open Standards to the Internet. They wrote a call upon the European Commission, National Governments, Standards Bodies, Industry, the Community and the Market about the future of the Internet. Zea Partners supports the Geneva Declaration on the Future of the Internet.
Grok is a web application framework for Python developers. It is aimed at both beginners and very experienced web developers. Grok is an easy and powerful project that has an emphasis on agile development.
Health Atlas Ireland is an open source application developed to bring health related datasets, statistical tools and GIS together in a web environment to add value to existing health data. The application is part of the PloneGov project, an international Plone based egovernment collaborative initiative.
Cities, regions and public agencies participating in the PloneGov initiative are developping cross collaboration. They help each other and form a large open source Community. Private sector is also involved, bringing technical expertize to the public sector developers. Every one is welcome to join the project and support the Community.
Participative democracy relies increasingly on the ability of citizens and stakeholders to access public information and to communicate with officials and elected politicians electronically. To highlight the impact of open standards on democracy, the Greens/European Free Alliance organized a half day event at the European Parliament in Brussels on April 17, 2008.
The Italian ZEA Partners members are planning a number of initiatives to launch the PloneGov branch in Italy: an italian PloneGov site, a stand at COMPA 2008, and the organization of special event dedicated to Public Administrations.
The Kent Connects 'Portal of Portals' project has been shortlisted in the final four in the category of Best Government to Government Project in this year's GC Awards for Innovation. A central part of the Kent Connects is built on the Plone content management system.
Health Atlas Ireland is an open source Geographical Information System (GIS). The system enables to plan health services and health data analysis. The project, led by Irish Health Sector, is based on Zope3. OpenApp, a Zea member SME, was in charge of the technical development ensuring a smooth integration with the core technology.
Public Health geospatial data with Zope

PloneGov shows something that hackers of FLOSS in the public sector have long talked about: Public bodies only stand to gain from cooperating in software development and procurement. Though developing applications is obviously not the remit of most public bodies, free licenses provide a highly efficient tool to share development cost and mutualise risks.
According to the Tiobe Community Index - based on hits on major search engines - Python is now the seventh most popular programming language. Python had the largest increase in ratings of any language in 2007 and has become the de facto glue language at system level.
The Walloon Business Federation (UWE) is the official voice of industrial, commercial and service sector businesses in Wallonia, Belgium. In a move to improve communication and services to its 6000 member businesses, the Federation recently launched its new Plone portal.
PloneGov is an award winning eGovernment open source initiative. The European Commission recently released a detailed case study about this innovative collaborative project. In the weeks to come, we propose to publish excerpts as a serialized novel, this article being the first episode.
Researchers investigating open source software quality invite Fosdem participants to a research room. The goal is to explore opportunities of exchange and collaboration between open source researchers and open source communities. This workshop will take place in Brussels on Feb 23-24, 2008
OBOOE is new umbrella Federation bringing together European business associations and organizations related to free, libre and open source software. The Federation goals are to encourage cross-border networking between national initiatives and to become a voice for the sector.
Plone is one of the best known Free Software Content Management Systems (CMS) in the market. Much of the importance of Plone lies in its power and flexibility, enabling it to be applied in a wide variety of contexts.
Plone Foundation finalizes the trademark transfer. The community, via the Plone Foundation, now "owns" the word Plone in nearly all areas of the world. This article outlines Plone Foundation role protecting collective interests. It also highlights Plone Community values, base of the development of a thriving ecosystem where developers, SME and users work together for the benefit of all.
The PloneGov team is proud to announce that their eGovernment open source initiative based on Plone has been awarded the “Good Practice label 2007”. PloneGov receives this prestigious label based on the recommendation from the 2007 European eGovernment Awards consortium.
The last few months have seen the emergence of a new sub-community sponsored and developed e-commerce framework for Plone. Its goal is to develop a tool enabling a variety of use cases for monetization of a Plone site from traditional e-commerce stores, to donation processing and subscription sites.
GetPaid, e-commerce and donations with Plone

A research project examining the production of information and communication technologies by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) in the EU-25 has been concluded. One of the key findings of the study was to confirm the interlinkages between research, innovation and economic performance.
Plone Solutions announced at the Plone Conference 2007 that the company is changing its name to Jarn, and its corresponding web address to www.jarn.com.
A case study about CommunesPlone is published in PS-OSS, a well know report commissioned by the European Union. CommunesPlone is a project part of the PloneGov initiative and located in Belgium and France. Moreover, CommunesPlone is also cited in the last 'Hype Circle of Government Transformation 2007" of Gartner.
Rosario, an Argentinian city of 1 million inhabitants, joins the PloneGov initiative. This new member highlights PloneGov ability to reach major cities and different continents.
Public sector and Open Source Software (PS-OSS), a report commissioned by the EU Commission addresses the question : What would be the potential impact on the development of the Information Society if public organisations (administrations, research institutions, universities, agencies, public companies) were to release software fully owned by them under a Open Source licence? Is an amplification effect on the adoption and use of information society technologies to be expected?
Your vote for the “Most innovative good practice” award is a unique opportunity to reach politicians and decision makers. Winning this award will highlight the maturity achieved by the Free and Open Source collaborative model as a pragmatic way to tackle IT challenges in society. You may vote until Friday, September 7th.
Open eGov is a project launched by the City of Newport News, Virginia. The intent is to create a collaborative software ecosystem, where government organizations, non-profits and the private sector work together to share the cost of enhanced capabilities. The software and related documentation is available today for free download.
PloneGov has been selected amongst 53 finalists for the Third European e-Governement Awards. PloneGov's goal is to develop a set of generic tools matching the needs of local government and other public administrations. The initiative is open and aims to reach many more organizations. Each of you can vote for PloneGov in the "most innovative good practice" category and thus help, in concrete terms, this new e-Government open source initiative.
Plone is an open source content management system that is simple to set up, maintain, and modify. It is designed to be a corporate-ready content management system. It is ideal as an intranet and extranet server, as a document/Web publishing system, and as a groupware tool for collaboration between separately located entities.
During the conference "Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre", Roberto Allende the PloneGov contact in South America will give a talk for non technicals users about PloneGov.
PloneGov is selected among the 52 best European e-Government projects, and is invited to present the project at the fourth Ministerial eGovernment Conference held in Lisbon in September 2007. PloneGov projects relies on 2 renowned open source software : Plone and Zope. Its success results from a close collaboration between public organizations and Zea Partners, an international network of SME building Zope and Plone solutions.
Local and regional governments and SME from Europe, North and South America and Africa participate in the PloneGov project. The goals of this close collaboration is to develop in a cooperative manner, applications and websites suited for public organization for their own use as well as for their citizens’. In June, this innovative project was awarded the Lutèce d’Or 2007 Grand Prix du Jury. Philippe COURARD, Walloon minister of Homelands affairs, met the PloneGov Belgian Community to congratulate them for their exceptional implication.
Plone Cono Sur is the Plone User Group for Argentina, Bolivia, Chile, Paraguay and Uruguay. During the conference "Jornadas Regionales de Software Libre" taking place in Argentina, Plone Cono Sur will organize it's first meeting with more than 10 talks, free courses and a sprint.
Bungeni is a Parliamentary and Legislative Information System for drafting, managing, consolidating and publishing legislative and other parliamentary documents. It is being developed within the context the "Africa i-Parliaments Action Plan" of the United Nations Department of Economic and Social Affairs (UNDESA). It is meant to contribute to making Parliaments more open and accessible to citizens ... virtually allowing them "inside Parliament" or Bungeni -- the Kiswahili word for "inside Parliament". PloneGov and Bungeni decide to join efforts to share experience and their developments.
We are proud to announce that the new Plone e-government initiative won the biggest French award for open source projects on June 13 during a ceremony held in the town hall of the city of Paris. This award, called "Grand prix du jury des Lutèce d'Or 2007", demonstrates PloneGov work quality and encourages us to continue on this way.
Flossquality.eu is an initiative of 3 EU research projects : Qualoss, Flossmetrics and SQO-OSS. It demonstrate the strong collaboration between the actors of the 3 projects. The expected benefit is to ease the access to information by disseminating news by joint RSS feed.
Open source experts from the public sector, SME and open source community participated in the first Plone e-government international workshop. After two days of intense work the group decided to merge into 1 common project 3 e-government initiatives: CommunesPlone (Belgium, France), PloneGov.ch (Switzerland) and UdalPlone (Basque Country, Spain). The new project, based on the open source Content Management System Plone, will be named PloneGov.org. It now reaches over 40 local governments and 2 regions in 5 countries.
A growing number of local governments are choosing the open source Plone CMS for their web infrastructure. Doing so they provide new services to their citizens and improve internal administrative processes. Mutualization of resources opens the way to a new form of collaboration. The workshop goal is to bring together experts from several regions. The expected benefits of this transnational collaboration are to share applications, best practices and investments.
Researchers need a platform to support transnational scientific collaboration. Paul Henning Krogh explains how collaborative software as Plone brings outstanding benefits to EU research projects.
Based in Hong Kong, Global Hand is an NGO acting as a broker matching donations and needs to support NGO’s in their fight against poverty and disasters. It also provides branded Web sites for the United Nations Joint Logistics Center (UNJLC), the World Economic Forum (WEF) and Rotary International. All these services are based on the open source softwares Plone and Zope. This article investigates Global Hand experience and criteria to select these technologies.
Sunil Abraham, manager of United Nations Development Programme’s (UNDP) International Open Source Network, is a staunch advocate of open standards. It is freely available, maximizes choice, has no royalty implication, and does not include any predatory practice, he asserts. Sunil is also director of Mahiti an Indian business expert in open source and member of Zea Partners network.
The next Plone sprint will take place in Sorrento (Naples, Italy), from March 27 to April 2. With 64 participants from 14 countries it is probably the biggest Plone sprint ever to take place in Italy.
ONE/Northwest is a US non-profit supporting the environment and grass roots organizations through the use of technology. For over a decade, ONE/Northwest has helped 100's environmental organizations fuse technology with new ways of doing their work. They offer websites powered by Plone in order to help environmental NGOs make the leap to the internet age.
CommunesPlone is a fast growing open source software mutualization project led by local governments. Open to international collaboration, the project outlines the benefits of open source and mutualization for the Public Sector. This case study presents CommunesPlone, analyzes best practices and challenges.
OneWorld South Asia developed on Plone, an open source Content Management System (CMS), a customized technology solution named Ek Duniya Web Services. Through Ek-Duniya, OWSA seeks to exploit the democratic potential of the internet, making it accessible and useful to the communities that need it the most. Ek Duniya is already reaching over 70 organizations in India, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh. This article outlines benefits open source software brings to society.
Roberto Allende from Menttes, an Argentinean Zea member, will be present 2 Plone talks at FISL "8º Fórum Internacional Software Livre". This conference will be held in Porto Alegre, Brazil, from 12th to 14th April 2007.
FLOSSmetrics, an european research project, will provide you detailed quantitative data about the development process, development actors, and developed artifacts of those projects. The project aims to ease the strategic decision of integrating adequate free and open source software (F/OSS) components into software systems. Zea positions itself as an pro-active partner in this research project.
Noze joins Zea - 2007-03-02
noze, a Tuscany based SME, joins the Zea network. With the addition of noze, Zea gains a second Italian partner.
Prior to his talk about Plone 3.0 at FOSDEM 2007, conference organizers interviewed Paul Everitt a leading figure of the Plone and Zope communities.
QUALOSS, an european research project, aims to enhance the competitive position of the software industry by providing methodologies and tools for improving their productivity and the quality of their software products. Zea positions itself as an pro-active actor and is responsible for results dissemination.
SERPRO, the main IT solution provider for the Brazilian Government, is actively using Plone and Zope as its primary Portal construction tool for Government Web Content Management Solutions. SERPRO counts on an impressive list of reference and will soon launch its 50th governmental portal.
Zea academic partner, Universidad Rey Juan Carlos, organizes a research room at FOSDEM. The goal is to explore opportunities of exchange and collaboration between open source researchers and open source communities.
Paul Everitt is giving a speech at the Fosdem conference in Brussels, Belgium on February 25, 2006.
In the Flossimpact report, Zea Partners is presented as an innovative business model part of a thriving new economic ecosystem. It also includes a number of references about Plone and Zope, outlining the maturity reached by these technologies in term of technical achievement and community organization. The project CommunesPlone, lead by local governments, is presented as an ICT project unusual in terms of opportunity for innovation, standardization and economy of scale.
The European Commission has released a study about the economic impact of Open Source on the ICT sector. The Floss Impact report was led by academics at the United Nations University (UNU-MERIT). Presenting the study abstract.
New user group looking for members! - Nuevo grupo de usuarios buscando miembros!
Experts representing the open source community, government, businesses, researchers and higher education institutes met in Buenos Aires to study argentinian and regional FLOSS impact.
The European Commission has commissioned a study to explore the potential impact if the Public Sector were to release its software open source. The project CommunesPlone, based on the renowned open source applications Plone/Zope, is investigated as a practical example of mutualisation between local governments.
At the last Plone Foundation meeting in Seattle, 2 interesting questions were raised. First the need to gather quantitative data on Plone and the development processes, second increase the visibility of Plone future in the next 5 to 10 years. Zea Partners goals includes tackling these issues. An example is Zea recent involvement Qualoss and Flossmetrics research projects.
A number of initiatives are taken worldwide to harness the economical potential of open source business activities. France is a leading example : the Minister of the Economy, Finance and Industry, Thierry Breton announced his intention to build a Center of excellence for Open Source Software development.
Zea network was presented as a good practice in the field of Libre Software at a Morfeo project workshop. The presentation was made by Eneko Astigarraga, manager of Codesyntax, a Basque business expert in Open Source Content Management.
Eben Moglen's keynote address "Software and Community in the Early 21st Century" is now available for your online viewing pleasure at YouTube and Archive.org.
Plone a winning technology: the 2 best IST projects websites are built on Plone. The jury outlined a number of Plone technical qualities: ease of navigation, good presentation and compliance with the W3C guidelines on web accessibility.
Packt Publishing announced the winners of the 2006 Open Source Content Management System Award. The winners include Plone.
The Belgian Plone community held its third annual meeting last November. The meeting was a success, attracting 100 persons from 10 countries and various backgrounds including Public Sector, Education SME and Open Source Community.
CommunesPlone is a project whose goal is to create a city-oriented version of Plone.
CommunesPlone in France

CommunesPlone

Menttes joins Zea - 2006-10-26
With the addition of Menttes, Zea makes a tep further in its strategy to extent internationally. Zea now counts 4 partners located outside the EU and US : Upfrontsystems (South Africa), Mahiti (India), Except and Menttes (Argentina).
25 members of Zea network were at the Plone Conference in Seattle, several partners presenting talks on Plone businesses and technology. This Conference is a unique opportunity to contact these experts and get to know better their activities.
With the addition of OpenApp, ZEA gains an Irish partner.
Members of Zea Partners bring a broad background of experience from many branches of IT. They constantly cooperate on various aspects of content management and related fields. For example, Topia Systems is working on a project to clarify the needs of larger organizations and local authorities with respect to Content Management.
Increasing the participation of small and medium-sized companies in EU-funded programmes was the topic of a SME stakeholder conference held in Brussels on October 11, 2006.
With the addition of Topia Systems, Zea gains a software consulting company based in Wales, UK.
Topia Systems joins Zea Partners

Topia Systems

Greenfinity LLC. is a young, dynamic company operating in Budapest, the capital of Hungary.
It was time to launch a proper website for all video podcasts and tutorials about python, plone, zope, virtual worlds und web2.0.
COM.lounge TV online!

Xavier Heymans was invited to comment the study findings based on Zea Partner network experience. This study analyses the positive economical impact of Open Source on EU and world economy, and the potential of economical growth. The final report will be made public this winter.
A new research on Zea business model will be presented at the 2nd workshop on coopetition strategy in Milan. The central question of the study is «how are organizations able to manage two logics of competition and cooperation simultaneously when they are in coopetitive relationship ?»
The "handbook for authors and editors", available in German and English, is an end-users manual written that provides current and future users of Plone with an introductory guide and a comprehensive reference.
CALIBRE has identified as a promising business model the approach used by ZEA Partners and its network of companies across Europe and beyond that shares customers, contacts and expertise to deliver software-related services.
With the addition of Except, Zea gains an Argentinean business with a long term commitment to open source, Plone and Zope.
EuroPython is the annual conference for the Python and Zope communities. It circulated between different sites in Europe; having started in Charleroi in Belgium and moved to Göteborg in Sweden, and then CERN in Swizerland. EuroPython will next take place in Vilnius, Lithuania in July 2007.
Based in India, Mahiti specializes in the areas of web, Intranet, kiosk, multimedia applications, consultancy and training.
Do you want to meet Zea experts? This new edition of Europython is a unique opportunity to meet a number of Zea Members and get to know their activities.
With the addition of Upfront Systems, ZEA gains a South African company with long-time Plone experience.
New award for a Plone website developed by Netsight, UK
Flossworld is a world impact study funded by the EU. Workshop participants will be experts representing the interests of the open source community, government, businesses, researchers and higher education institutes, as appropriate for the workshop questions.
Paul Everitt is giving a plenary speech at the OSSWatch conference in Oxford, England on April 12, 2006. Kit Blake from Zea Partner company Infrae is also speaking.
You knew us as ZEA, the Zope Europe Association. Now it's official. With a name change and a partner plan for 2006, Zea's results are showing.
The Open Source Academy (OSA) goes live with a new Zope-Plone based portal. Open Source Academy is a UK-funded initiative created to support OSS adoption in Local Authorities. Zea Partners was part of the team involved in the portal development.
Zea held its second partner meeting for reviewing the proposed 2006 plan. The meeting was held January 11-12, 2006, in London at the offices of Fry-IT.
The Royal Bank of Scotland has revealed that it is working on a large content management system based on the open source application server Zope.
The State Services Commission is championing an open source solution for content management needs in state agencies.
Zea added five new partners to the network during the fourth quarter of 2006: Amaze, CodeSyntax, Fry-IT, COM.lounge, and atReal.
The EU safety and health portal (OSHA) built on Plone receives the International Information Industry Award 2005
Zea had its first of two 2005 closeout partner meetings. The first meeting was held Dec 8-9 in Louvain-La-Neuve outside of Brussels.
Enfold Systems, a Zea network member, delivers value and enterprise scalability with the Plone Open Source Platform
The United Nations Joint Logistic Center (UNJLC) has adopted Plone for its new portal providing logistic data to humanitarian crisis. Zea Partners was chosen to provide support and services to the UNJLC team.
Danish Ministry of Science awards Plone company for exceptional web site.
Paul Everitt from Zea Partners gave a mini-keynote at O'Reilly's inaugural EuroOSCON conference, Oct 2005 in Amsterdam.
Plone is a CMS product atop a stack of open source framework technologies. Moving the product forward means moving the stack forward. However, this requires architectures working together, which requires architects working together.
Xavier Heymans, Zope Europe association CEO, give a talk at the First Holland Open Software conference (HOSC) held on May 2005 in Amsterdam
A warm welcome to ZEA's newest UK partner, Blue Fountain Systems.
The fastest growing open source content management system releases new version
Netsight joins ZEA - 2005-03-08
ZEA gets its first partner in the UK.
Paul Everitt, founder and product leader of Zea Partners, identified by CMS Watch as one of the 20 people who could make a difference on the CMS landscape in 2005
ZEA has three new partners: Zest Software, gocept and Enfold Systems
ZEA At Lots - 2005-02-08
Silva and Kupu presented at the LOTS conference in Berne.
Oxfam International, an international confederation of non-governmental organisations (NGO) that are working to find lasting solutions to poverty, suffering and injustice, opt for the free and powerful Plone CMS. Zea was awarded the contract to develop Oxfam new CMS. The project, in which 6 Zea members were involved, resulted in large contributions to Plone including Linguaplone, Versioning, Kupu and Multisite.
The Lisbon Trust is a conservatory of open software copyrights and legal services. It provides a 50-year pledge that Europe's competitive, knowledge-based society will be built atop a competitive IT marketplace. The mission and outcomes from the Trust are designed to reflect and fulfill European values and strengths.
eWeek identifies Plone as a CMS leader
CALIBRE, the european co-ordination action for libre software engineering, aims to coordinate the study of the characteristics of open source software projects, products and processes, distributed development, and agile methods.
The Plone Conference taking place in Vienna will be an opportunity to meet a number of Zope Europe Association members. 14 of them giving talks on Plone businesses and technology.
BubbleNet joins ZEA - 2004-07-22
BubbleNet, a long-time Zope company in Belgium headed by Godefroid Chapelle, is the newest member of Zope Europe.
Hosted by the Zope UK Association this one-day event will provide a platform for the promotion of Zope-based open source technologies within the UK.
World's leading open source content management software project turns to Law Center for Legal Services and Support
UK Web developers are throwing their weight behind Zope, an open source application server already popular in the US and Europe, but which has yet to crack Britain.
eWeek identifies Plone as "probably the best option in web publishing portals"
Plone 2.0 Released - 2004-03-17
The Plone Team announces the release of Plone 2.0, the next generation of its rapidly growing open source Content Management System.
The Plone development sprint took place in Schruns, Austria, between the 7th and 14th February 2004.
Zope Europe is pleased to announce its newest member, Plone Solutions from Norway, best known as the workplace of Alexander Limi, the co-creator of Plone.
ZEA gave a speech at SolutionsLinux 2004 in Paris Feb 5th. The trip included visits to the Plone booths, the presentation, and an integration day for our customer project.
Zope awarded as best entreprise application server
Padova Trip Report - 2003-06-05
Reflab organized a Plone sprint in Padova, Italy, at the Webb.it conference, May 9-11.
Studious observers of the mailing list for Zope 3 CVS checkins might have observed a happening of potentially great importance this past week. Stephan Richter started checking in a Zwiki for Zope 3.
Godefroid Chapelle hosted a Zope 3 XML/i18n sprint at his BubbleNet office in Belgium, April 8-11. This is a brief trip report.
We had the first OSCOM sprint in Zurich Mar 20-21.
A press release for Zope 2.6.1, including translations into multiple languages, is available.
The year 2003 kicks off fast on for Zope in Europe. At the beginning of February (Feb 4-6), Zope Europe has organized a Zope pavilion at the SolutionsLinux exhibition in Paris, showing Zope and making it known to the public.
SL2003 UI Sprint - 2003-01-27
We're having a Zope 3 UI sprint as part of the Zope effort at SolutionsLinux 2003.
The Plone-designed website developed by Netsight for Las Vegas-based gaming products manufacturer and distributor Vendingdata is one of three finalists at the Third Annual Gaming Association Communications Awards for Best Website.
In a quick fit of cleanup, I uploaded 3 presentations from recent trips

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