Page 23 of 50

Templates – Who Cares?

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

… everyone, it seems!

Those with some years of experience in the software business know: the implementation or decision upon a template engine is always good for flame wars.

Why? Templates are such a basic technology of a CMS, a must-have and not really something sexy. Those who hoped to make templates sexy, invented XSLT.

So why? Because it is a basic technology!

These are the flame war factors:

You can’t get Tempates out of Your Way

Every developer or Web designer building a Web site on top of a CMS, has to cope with the integrated template system, sooner or later. You will have a love-and-hate-relationship, because on the one side they help you, on the other side, every implementation has its pros and cons.

Love-and-hate-relationships are not really something that makes the involved parties calm and relaxed.

Who Takes Over the Bridge?

Templates are supposed to build a bridge between the programmers, who care about the business logic of a solution, and the designers who care about the user experience aka GUI. Thus, there are two groups with diverging interests affected by templates: programmers and Web designers. Every experienced how different their thinking can be? OK, then you clearly see the potential for conflict.

Love, Peace – and Common Sense

The discussion about the new template language for eZ publish, implemented as a library in the realm of the
eZ components, has of course been long, and is still ongoing – but there’s light.

It was interesting to observe, how the eZ components team will fight the fight and I must say, they did a good job.

So, what was it that created love and peace in eZ templates land? It was pragmatism: whenever a discussion becomes lengthy and and unfocused, bring it down to the facts, for example with a summary of past input and suggestions for solutions.

Doesn’t sound sexy? No, it doesn’t. Tempates are not sexy, they are basic technology, so let’s be pragmatic and treat it like that, so let’s cool down discussions and go back to work.

Sounds simple? It does, but is hard work, because you need to focus on the result!

You love such discussions? Jump in, you got time until Monday, 12:00.

PS: Did you find any irony in this text? Let me know 🙂

Yes, there is professional support for Open Source CMSs!

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

I have in the past read several papers about the Open Source CMS market, where the authors argued that such products lack professional support, that you depend on a forum or mailinglist, blabla. This is plain wrong!

For example, the company I work for, eZ systems, is the creator of the Open Source CMS eZ publish. We provide all the services you need, as well as total product responsibility for our CMS in the realm of the eZ publish Network, which includes guranteed bug fixing.

Aleksander Farstad, the CEO of eZ systems has just published an article entitled Power of Enterprise Open Source where he takes a closer look at what it really means to provide an Open Source product, plus professional support.

The essence of his view is: “The power of Enterprise Open Source originates from the combination of freedom and responsibility.” He further writes: “This gives both the users the freedom of choice and at the same time the backing of a responsible party providing a full set of guarantees and services.”

So, you consultants out there, get it right from now on! Of course, some of you already know about this 🙂

Lists of Open Source Events

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Some time ago, Lukas asked for an overview of Open Source events and compiled one himself.

The tOSSad EU project also got a list of events online. eZ systems is a consortium partner in tOSSad, thus I recently passed some of the events to Görkem (a tOSSad fellow) which eZ systems had internally. He just added them.

If you’d like to have an event added to the tOSSad list, please leave a comment here.

BTW: tOSSad is an abbreviation of “towards Open Source Software adoption and dissemination”. Take a look at
www.tossad.org for more information.

Here are some more collections:

Presenting at FOSS Days Istanbul

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

I am going to present a talk and a workshop at the Free Software & Open Source Days 2006 in Istanbul/Turkey. Currently, the program is only available in Turkish, so I’ll tell you a bit more about my presentations here in English. BTW: They will also be presented in English, because I speak no Turkish:

Talk: eZ publish, the Open Source Enterprise CMS

Feb 25, Saturday, 14:00-15:00

eZ publish is an Open Source Enterprise Content Management System based on PHP. It is being used by thousands of customers around the world, installed over 150.000 and with 1,5 million downloads. This talk provides an overview of the eZ publish functionality. You will also get first-hand information on new features and the roadmap ahead.

Workshop: Technical Introduction to eZ publish

Feb 25, Saturday, 15:00-19:00

In this tutorial you will learn how to use the Open Source Enterprise Content Management System eZ publish to set-up a typical small business site where you need to customize the CMS system for the customer. This site will include e-commerce functionality, PDF exports, a customized content structure, RSS feeds to publish news and a WebDAV interface for simpler document management.

Write an Article for ez.no

Sandro Groganz Leave a comment

Do you know an interesting topic? eZ systems is always looking for authors who would like to write an article for us on eZ-related topics. We welcome technical as well as non-technical content. You could write for an audience of developers or sales-oriented persons – no matter what: any topic from within the eZ ecosystem is of interest to us.

This article will guide you through the authoring process:
http://ez.no/community/articles/writing_articles_for_ez_no

My New Role: Chief Knowledge Officer

Sandro Groganz 2 Comments

I have been appointed Chief Knowledge Officer (CKO) at eZ systems. Some of you might go “Uh, CwtfO???”, so here is what Wikipedia has to say about the CKO role:

A Chief Knowledge Officer is an organizational leader, responsible for ensuring that the organization maximizes the value it achieves through “knowledge”. […] CKO responsibilities include such things as (1) developing an overall framework that guides knowledge management, (2) actively promoting the knowledge agenda within and beyond the company, (3) overseeing the development of the knowledge infrastructure, and (4) facilitating connections, coordination and communications.

That’s quite a nice description. One special thing about eZ systems is, that it is an Open Source company, thus the borders between internal and external communication often do not exist. In fact, an Open Source company is just as much about an open communication as it is about open software.

This is actually the part I am most excited about: to explore the potentials of open knowledge management, which includes the eZ systems team just as much as the developers community, the partners, etc. In an Open Source ecosystem, knowledge management is very much a joint effort of all actors involved and can only follow a bottom-up approach.

With the CKO role, eZ systems is the only Open Source company I know of with a dedicated role for managing its knowledge and that of the whole ecosystem. It shows that eZ systems is serious about its slogan “Share your Information”.

If this all sounds too abstract to you, stay tuned, as I plan to write about concrete KM projects and their results in my Weblog.