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

Thank you Bob. These are a lot of creative ideas for OSCOM (maybe you
want to run for office?).

I agree with Chalu that OSCOM should rather "flush it out" first.
However, I think the idea of an OSCOM booth at the next Gilbane
conference (http://gilbaneboston.com/) is worth pursuing now.
We already are a small group of people interested in running the booth
during the conference (Seth Gottlieb, Nate Aune, Moshe Weitzman, David 
Pearson, and myself).

The next steps are:
- putting together a small proposal/program for the booth (just talked 
with Jeff@Gilbane) and get the approval from OSCOM and Gilbane. Bob told 
me that Sandro Groganz approved the general idea and said that every 
OSCOM member IS OSCOM and that we could make the proposal (just copy him).
- organize booth staffing for 2.5 days (anybody interested in presenting
OSCOM please drop us a mail).

WDOT?

Thanks,
Renaud



Chalu Kim wrote:
 > 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.
 >>
 >>
 >>
 >
 > _______________________________________________
 > General mailing list
 > [email protected]
 > http://oscom.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/general
 >
 >

-- 
Renaud Richardet
COO America
Wyona - Open Source Content Management - Apache Lenya
office +1 857 776-3195 mobile +1 617 230 9112
renaud.richardet <at> wyona.com http://www.wyona.com



-- 
Renaud Richardet
COO America
Wyona    -   Open Source Content Management   -   Apache Lenya
office +1 857 776-3195                  mobile +1 617 230 9112
renaud.richardet <at> wyona.com           http://www.wyona.com