"Count what is countable. Measure what is measureable. What is not measureable, make measureable." -- Galileo

Thursday, December 31, 2009

Plone Metrics Person of the Year Award

It's that time of year again, time to single out someone who I personally believe did an outstanding job of participating in the Plone community, contributed significantly to the promotion of Plone, and is a heckuva human being.  This year has been singularly tough for me, in large part due to my inability to attend the Budapest convention.  It's at World Plone that I often get my inspiration for an award that manifestly is unilaterally decided and, for a blog that prides itself on getting the numbers right, totally based on my own qualitative perceptions and myoptic view of the Plone world.

All that said, there are a ton of worthy folks out there.  Here are just a few of the contenders that have crossed my mind in a hectic week of holiday cheer, out-of-town visitors, and post-cold virus sniffles. 
  • David Glick, Rob Porter, and Mikko Ohtamaa were the top 3 in the Plone IRC Superstar Contest.  Hats off to them and all the others on IRC who make it happen day in and day out.  Along with the core developers, book authors, and the documentation team, you are the engine that keeps Plone moving forward. 
  • And speaking of Plone development, the release managers for 3.x (Wichert Akkerman) and 4 (Eric Steele) have my undying admiration. 
  • Another worthy group is the Foundation Board (another tip o' the hat to all Board members, past and present).  Jon Stahl (2008-9 Prez) and Gier Baekholt (this year's Esteemed Leader) should be particularly touted.    
  • A fourth group that I looked at were the evangelists, the Plone marketing folks.  Mark Corum holds the marketing chair on the Board, but he is surrounded by others who spread the word:  Nate Aune, Matt Hamilton, Dylan Jay, and Roberto Allende all are high-volume participants on the Evangelism forum over on Nabble.  Roberto as one of the key champions of World Plone Day deserves special mention and Matt did an especially excellent job as Program Chair for this year's conference..
There was a strong urge to follow Time Magazine 2006 down the path of "You" as the person of the year.  And it's very true that the community as a whole and the entire Plone ecosystem has much to be proud of.  That said, I'll stick with my tradition, such as it is, and choose an individual.  (Drum roll, please.)

Today Nate Aune is named as Plone Metric's Person of the Year.  His participation at events of all sizes and kinds, plus his consistent and notable contributions to the Evangelism Forum have had a strong positive effect on the Plone community and our perception in the CMS world.  As before, this award comes with no monetary compensation and only the promise of a free beer whenever Nate and I are in the same town. 

Happy New Year!

6 comments:

Martijn Pieters said...

We need to honour Hanno Schlichting too! Release manager for Plone 5, and tireless cleaner of the ZTK, he's the most active developer in the Plone Subversion repository by several orders of a magnitude!

Jon Stahl said...

Many, many fantastic community contributors here, thanks for shouting them all out. One minor correction: I didn't serve as program committee lead for Plone Conference 2009 -- Matt Hamilton did a bang-up job here!

Schlepp said...

Thanks for pointing that out, Jon. Correction made.

Unknown said...

I'd like also to thank everyone (those who are and aren't mentioned in this post) who have been part of community. Last year was exiting year for Plone and Plone add ons and let's not forget the excellent conference we had in beautiful Budapest. I have also small correction to your post - it's Mikko Ohtamaa - not Ohlamaa.

Schlepp said...

Correction made. It should also be corrected over at the original Plone.org news item.

Matt Hamilton said...

A very worthy bunch of people :) This community really is amazing with all the work going on. And 2010 is going to just get even better!

Congrats to Nate! A very worthy winner :)

-Matt