[Zope] Zope Advocacy at Highway Africa Conference

[Jean Jordaan]

Hi all

The Highway Africa conference [1] has invited us to take part in a panel
discussion on "Open Source as a techonological alternative for Africa",
and to present a workshop about using Open Source software for online
publishing.

With this mail, I'm trolling for advice and input from all you moguls
experienced at wowing the crowds ;)

I've put together a page with more details and links here:
   http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za/highwayafrica.html
There's also a QuickTopic discussion space here:
   http://www.quicktopic.com/15/H/Vx6UCXCpB6qK

The panel will include representatives of the South African government
and from AllAfrica.com, so our contribution should emphasize the role of
Open Source in a third-world national and regional context.

For the Workshop, which will be taking place in a media lab with
workstations for participants, we're considering walking the
participants through a Plone [2] portal.

Plone is an implementation of the Zope Content Management Framework [3]
with a lot of emphasis on an attractive UI and on usability out of the
box. The default installation provides a portal with similarity to sites
like Kuro5hin, though with a wider application than news publishing:

  - site visitors can browse, search and comment on content,
  - members can contribute content (news items, documents, etc),
  - content participates in a publishing workflow, so that site editors
    can vet members' content before publishing.

Content is also automatically syndicated as RSS, so a Plone portal is
open to integration with other news sites. As Highway Africa 2002 is
focussed on the media and journalism, rather than on IT professionals,
this looks like a reasonable starting point.

So what do you think?

-- 
Jean Jordaan
Upfront Systems                         http://www.upfrontsystems.co.za

[1] Highway Africa 2002: Wiring Journalism for development.
     Johannesburg, August 21st to August 23rd, 2002
     http://www.highwayafrica.org.za/
[2] http://plone.org
[3] http://cmf.zope.org