Re: [OSCOM] A Proposal for the Future of OSCOM

I don't know, Bob. It has taken a bit of time and momentum to get to 
this point.  I would say we need to flush this out first and then we 
will still have time to do what you propose in the coming OSCOM.

I think "the means" is a fair and good game for OSCOM especially the 
closed source vendors have their open-source plays and the open-source 
guys sound more like close-it-soon-source. This could open ways for 
broader appeals.

me opinion

Bob Doyle wrote:
> Hi all,
>
> Most of you on this list for more than a couple of years will remember I 
> worked very hard to make OSCOM 3 at the Harvard Law School in 2003 a big 
> success. http://www.oscom.org/gallery/oscom-3/
>
> I would like to take up Michi's suggestion of OSCOM 5 in 
> Boston/Cambridge next year and propose that it could be the means to 
> reconstruct OSCOM as a more sustainable organization representing all OS 
> CMS.
>
> I made a list of OS CMS (still part of my CMS Review site) at that time 
> and invited all the developers to OSCOM 3.  I propose we do that again 
> and this time make room for all of them in the program.
>
> You probably know that OSCOM inspired me to make a bigger organization 
> for CM practitioners who work with any CMS, Open or Closed Source, to 
> discuss their problems.
> http://www.cmprofessionals.org
>
> Over 900 members have joined CM Professionals from around the world (we 
> have large communities in Australia, the Benelux countries, Canada, and 
> Scandinavia - with small ones in Africa and Japan).
>
> Our CM Pros Massachusetts Community is a strong group that is run by 
> David Pearson, who is also the Event Coordinator for the CM Pros Fall 
> Summit (in conjunction with the Gilbane Conference).
>
> At the last Massachusetts Community meeting, David described trying to 
> get an OSCOM booth at the Gilbane Conference, staffed by our 
> Massachusetts Community OS  members.
>
> OSCOM 5 and the reorganized OSCOM could be introduced there.
>
> David is Executive Director of Shawmut Education. I believe OSCOM could 
> hire him part time to be the OSCOM 5 Event Coordinator. I would try to 
> get Harvard as the site again, but there are many great venues here.
>
> I see the proposal that the next OSCOM have only invited presenters. We 
> could try to assure equal time for major OS CMS that way. But David has 
> developed a forms-based Call for Papers and a team of peer review 
> judges.  OSCOM could do the same to attract the best ideas to the 
> conference.
>
> In the last few years I have learned a lot about what it takes to 
> maintain a community. CM Pros has a great Membership Directory so people 
> can find one another. We have a large number of bloggers whose posts are 
> aggregated to our home page. We feature member sites with links on our 
> home page. We built a tool to convert our boring Mailman list archives 
> to a blog-style web interface. We have a large Resource Library,  a 
> Glossary of CMS terminology, a world-wide calendar of CMS Events, and an 
> active Jobs Board.
>
> Many of these resources I built with a Creative Commons license and they 
> are now syndicated to many CM webistes
>
> I have proposed to Sandro that some of these could be added to the OSCOM 
> website and he liked the idea. But we need a working website first.
>
> The CM Pros website runs on multiple OS CMS (all GPL) that are 
> integrated by web services, RSS feeds and custom XML connectors.
>
> I propose we rebuild the current OSCOM site the same way, asking each OS 
> CMS team that thinks they could add something special to the OSCOM site 
> to provide that functionality while following the visual and interactive 
> design (look and feel) of the current OSCOM site.
>
> I see Marc Laporte has been prototyping an OSCOM Wiki. We currently use 
> his TikiWiki to drive our collaboratively-written CMS Glossary. 
> (http://www.cmswiki.com/tiki-index.php?page=CmsGlossary)
>
> My OSCOM CMSML project to allow head-to-head comparison of CMS  has not 
> been advanced for a couple of years.
> See http://www.oscom.org/projects/cmsml/
>
> CM Pros assumed responsibility for CMSML in November 2004, but we have 
> no results to show so far. I would like to revive this project. It is a 
> faceted classification system that is much better than the OSCOM CMS 
> Matrix. It might be an important alternative to the CMSMatrix.org 
> website, which always lists its owners, WebGUI, as the most popular tool.
>
> CMSML output is available as XML and OPML for other organizations to 
> take feeds. But it needs a lot of work. The version playing on OSCOM 
> could be the subset of OS CMS, but I recommend that we allow head to 
> head comparisons with proprietary CMS, because OS tools can hold their own..
> ________________________________
>
> To do the above things, we need a Board that wants OSCOM to be moving 
> again. They need to give approval for at least some of the above 
> suggestions and we are ready to start at any time.
>
> Perhaps the biggest and most immediate need is a new website. I 
> understand the current version is just an HTML peel of the Midgard-based 
> site that we used to edit the OSCOM 3 program (I spent a lot of time 
> copying and pasting Midgard GUIDs to link program entries with their 
> details).
>
> We now run Drupal, Apache Lenya, Plone, TikiWiki, and other OS 
> CMS-related tools at CMS Labs in Cambridge.
>
> I would welcome any OS CMS to install at my lab or maintain their OSCOM 
> contribution on their own servers.
>
> The goal is a model OSCOM website that demonstrates interoperability of 
> OS CMS, loosely coupled by web service connectors.
>
> I look forward to your criticisms and suggestions.
>
>