[triangle-zpug] Plone Jams

[Josh Johnson]

I think I could really dig a regular meeting. I also like the loose 
sprintish concept.

+1 for the general idea (and not just because I work at UNC and it'd be 
hella convenient for me..  ;))

+1 for 6 pm. I go to bed early and have a hard time finding something to 
do after work till 7pm :P

+1 for wednesdays. Although I play poker occasionally on wednesdays, I 
can deal (no pun intended).

JJ

p.s.
It's important that I note the use of the word "hella" in this e-mail. I 
promise that I will never  use it again ;)

p.p.s.
OK, maybe I will use it, but only for comic relief.

p.p.p.s.
OK, pun intended. :P

Chris Calloway wrote:
> Mark and I talked offline about the follow-up to the last "Plone Tips" 
> TriZPUG meeting. The idea has been to put more "Z and P" in TriZPUG 
> meetings and take some of the fervent Plone activity, not out of 
> TriZPUG, but into additional TriZPUG meetings where newcomers wouldn't 
> be freaked out by the intensity of all the Plone activity. Not that we 
> couldn't talk about Plone at regular TriZPUG meetings anymore. But just 
> let some of the excess Plone pressure out of the cooker.
>
> We'd dubbed this "Plone Jam" in previous attempt where I dropped the 
> ball on the meeting place for the designated day back in August, I 
> think. We're going to try it again.
>
> The idea is sort of an "un-sprint." That is the topic is what you show 
> up with to work on rather than a pre-planned theme. And we may work on 
> our own things side by side for synergistic effect or we may work in 
> teams/pairs like sprint; it's up to the individuals how to work together 
> at each Jam. You can bring a problem you are trying to solve at work. 
> You can bring a pet project. You can bring something you are playing 
> around with. You can make a presentation. You can just work on your 
> code. It's a Jam: it's improvisational. Plone at the Improv. Just play 
> and see what comes out. See if a groove develops. Several TriZPUGers are 
> already grooving on their common approach to Plone integration and want 
> to share the love.
>
> I'm coming into this with a sweet meeting space on the UNC campus: a 
> deluxe conference room with a huge picture window view on the 4th floor 
> of my new building. It has a giant screen laptop projector and a large 
> LCD display at either end. It has a gianormous conference table. It has 
> GigE pipes. It has nice restrooms. It has a kitchen with a frig and 
> sink. It's fairly private and secluded. The parking situation is the 
> same as when we meet in Phillips Hall (that is, Swain Lot for a modest 
> fee, around $1/hour). In fact, to get to this room you will enter 
> through Phillips Hall and walk through a sky bridge at the rear of the 
> building into brand new Chapman Hall (so new it's not even on campus 
> maps yet).
>
> Mark suggested we meet every other week on days not overlapping regular 
> TriZPUG meetings. That sort of scares me except the CharPy group has 
> been having regular meetings every other week with no lack of steam. In 
> fact, meeting every other week seems to be energizing them.
>
> In order to accommodate this, I have two requests for feedback:
>
> 1) The building this Jam would meet in locks at 7pm. Would you be 
> opposed to meeting at 6pm? Then anyone who is an hour or more late can 
> call me to be let in. If we jammed for two hours, this would also get us 
> out at 8pm for a bite to eat instead of when most places to eat have 
> already stopped serving.
>
> 2) TriZPUG used to meet on Wednesdays. We moved the meetings to Tuesdays 
> to accommodate a request from a regular member. This member has 
> indicated he would not be unopposed to now moving the night back to 
> Wednesdays. However, this is not what I'm asking. I'm asking if it would 
> be OK to have Plone Jams on the first and third Wednesdays of the month. 
> This is because a community organization to which I belong, and try to 
> get as many other people to join as possible, has their nationwide 
> designated meeting nights as Tuesdays. I'm just lucky that so far the 
> particular Tuesday of the month my local group of this organization 
> meets has not had a collision with TriZPUG meetings on fourth Tuesdays. 
> Is there opposition to having Plone Jams on first and third Wednesdays?
>
> I will caution that any night we pick, there will be some home 
> basketball games during which parking on campus will be non-existent, 
> even if you get here early. Parking would then be best found in the Bank 
> of America deck on Rosemary Street. I think they charge $3 flat rate in 
> advance in the evening. Home games on first and third Wednesdays occur 
> on Dec 19 at 9pm, Jan 2 at 8pm, and Feb 2 and 9pm. That last date is the 
> Duke game.
>
> If you can voice your concerns or agreements in short order, I can make 
> a repeating reservation for the room starting Wed. Nov 7 at 6pm.
>
> Also, the next TriZPUG meeting will be on Nov 27 at 7pm in 328 Phillips 
> at UNC-CH. You are encouraged to speak up and tell us what you would 
> like to present. For my part, I would like to spend a little time 
> showing you why I've become a convert to KSS and update you on the 
> latest KSS developments. KSS is Kinetic Style Sheets. It brings a super 
> simple CSS-like domain-specific syntax to doing Ajax applications 
> without having to know any Javascript. Think of it as Grok for Ajax. It 
> currently works in Zope2, Zope3, Grok, and Plone. It's being brought to 
> Django and Pylons and soon the rest of the world. It currently works 
> with Prototype, MochiKit, Sarissa, and JQuery and has a plug-in 
> architecture to allow it to accommodate other Javascript libraries like 
> Scriptalicious. To learn more see http://kssproject.org/ (which is 
> undergoing re-org).
>
>