Plone at TED

Peter Donnelly described a statistician as a person who likes numbers and figures but lacks the personality skills to be an accountant. So tonight I'll skip the numbers and do a strictly anecdotal analysis.

I was trolling the net last night and early this morning and came across a TED video on cooperation. The presenter, Howard Rheingold (author of Smart Mobs) discusses among other things, the role of open-source software in the new economy of collaboration. Definitely worth a look.

Also in the TED collection is Yochai Benkler (The Wealth of Networks) talking about open-source economics. Good stuff.

And if you're wondering why Plone Metrics is interested in all this besides a general enthusiasm for international cooperation, then watch Richard Baraniuk's presentation on open-source education. Baraniuk is the champion of Connexions, the educational collaboration program. Connexions in turn is a Plone site. Although Plone is not specifically cited (the only technical plug is for XML in general), I'll wager it was the only CMS that formed the critical backbone of one of the TED presentations.

It may just be anecdotal and there may be another CMS-driven TED topic hidden out there, but knowing that Connexions enabled by Plone made the TED cut should be a source of pride for the Plone community and a point of reference for anyone else evaluating CMS.

(BTW, the TED website appears to be built on top of the Dojo framework, which is manifestly not a CMS but the site looks great.)