2011 Year in Review

It's very nearly the end of the year, which is probably why I'm listening to "Driving the Last Spike" by Genesis off their I Can't Dance album. So here's a wrap-up of Plone Metrics for 2011.

I'm always surprised when I go back and look at my posts, realizing what was a newsworthy item at the time.  But if you reflect on last year, you'll recall that in January the Arab Spring was upon us.  Plone.org users among thousands of others from Egypt were blocked when Mubarak shut down the country's Internet.  Continued unrest in the region has meant that many have had to turn to services like TeleComix to access the Web.

Besides the political, there were natural disasters, foremost of which was the Japanese earthquake and tsunami.  The impact of that event was readily visible in the stats from Google Analytics when I compared March 2010 with 2009.  Below, the red arrow indicates the Fukushima Prefecture, which to this day is hard hit by the continuing radiological drama.

In between those two events, the Cioppino Sprint took place.  One notable result was the migration of Plone.net over to Plone.org.  The result, as one might expect, was the complete loss of traffic (and a boost over at Plone.org).  As you can see, the drop-off was nearly instantaneous.

Amazon sales rank statistics were continued to be tracked for Plone books, although my quarterly schedule broke down.  Life happens.  In February the annual Great Backyard Plone Count was carried out. 

In July Plone Metrics chopped through CMS Matrix in an effort to see how things stood with Plone's standing in that venue.  Even admitting the flaws in a self-reporting and hence biased compendium like CMS Matrix, the results for Plone were very positive.  Plone scored 97% of all features listed.

In September an inquiry raised in a LinkedIn forum led to a summary that in many ways captures Plone's strengths.  It's always gratifying to be able to respond to someone's questions with point-by-point material that addresses matters concretely.

November saw the San Francisco Plone Conference, a tremendously successful event.  There was tweeting in abundance but no live blogging from me.  Following up on that, Plone Metrics took a lighthearted look at the Plone Conference attendance numbers earlier this month.  That in turn led to Lennart Regebro's insightful analysis.

The only thing left is the annual New Year's Eve posting of the Plone Metric's Person of the Year.  This is the fifth year for this annual shout-out to the community.  Now accepting nominations--please feel free to comment with your suggestions on who is the best of the best.