PloneMetrics Person of the Year

It's that time of year again when I peruse the events of the past year and unilaterally designate some lucky person "Plone Metrics Person of the Year."  This award comes with only the promise that if the winner and I are in the same town at the same time, I'll buy them a beer. 

Past winners have been:

2009	Nate Aune
2008	Joel Burton
2007	Alexander Limi

The competition has been particular stiff, with outstanding contributions from a wide number of Plonistas worldwide.  It's been a eventful year for Plone and that makes 2010's throwdown especially difficult.  Noteworthy contributions during 2010 that deserve a shout-out include, but are not limited to:

• The 2010 Plone Conference people at Netsight, who did a great job with this year's event. Matt Hamilton's (general and host-specific) and Astra Fowden's summaries are worth their weight in gold. 
• The release managers for Plone 4 (Eric Steele) and 5 (Hanno Schlichting) are also high on my list.  Of course, their job wouldn't be possible without the core developers and all the Plone contributors.  Hats off to them all. 
• As always, the Foundation Board gets a great big nod of appreciation here.  Gier Baekholt (2009-10) and Calvin Hendryx-Parker (2010-11) deserve special mention for shepherding the Plone community.
• There is also some local Albuquerque talent among this year's nominees:  Michael Bernstein (Code for America fellow) and Emily Lewis (Webuquerque sparkplug).
• The Plone IRC Superstar Contest winner and runners up always deserve special praise.  The final determination has still not been announced as we go to press, but this is a reminder that the IRC community is a key part of the Plone ecosystem.   
• In a similar vein, here's a thanks to all those blogging and microblogging about Plone.  I'm particularly pleased to see diversity highlighted with a successful year of PloneChix. 
• Finally, Roberto Allende gets a big tip o' the hat as the champion of World Plone Day.  This year André Nogueira takes over the reins as we look forward to WPD 27 April.  

All that said, with this being a metrics-centric blog, I thought I'd run a few numbers and see what falls out.

As I mentioned Matt and Netsight are serious contenders.  Here's chart of World Plone Conference attendance since 2006.

Bristol turned out to be right in the middle of the range and probably would have done better had the world economy been brighter.  I regret missing the conference (yup, tight budget), but the high quality videos of the presentations has been a terrific resource that has softened the blow.  They have placed the bar high for future conferences. 

Another notable nominee for today's award is Eric Steele.  Here's the graphic that shows the impact of the Plone 4 release.  

Not only was there a huge spike in Plone.org visitors associated with the release, but a sustained increase of 15-20% that continues to this day.  (Green dashes show pre-release trend; red dotted line represents post-release trend.)

Based on that gi-normous spike, 130% above a typical Wednesday, plus the continued bump-up in Plone visitors, the Plone Metrics Person of the Year Award for 2010 goes to Eric.  By extension, this year's award goes out to all those who contributed to Plone 4 with code, testing, feedback, documentation, product upgrades, and all the myriad of details that make up a successful release. Well done, everyone!

In closing, let me paraphrase the immortal words of Bobby Flay: "So to all you awesome [Plonistas] out there, keep doing what you're doing, but ask yourself this... are you ready for a throwdown?"