plonewars.com

Actually, two Plinkit presentations will be happening in Denver next week!

The first presentation will be for the Denver Plone Users Group — here are the details if you’re a Denverite and want to attend. The more the merrier — I always look forward to meeting more Plonistas!

The second presentation will be at the LITA Forum, the annual conference for the Library Information Technology Association of ALA (American Libraries Association). I’ll also be joined by several Plinkit Collaborative members: Sharon Morris of the Colorado State Library, Tine Walczyk from the Texas State Library and Archives Commission, and Bev Obert of the Rolling Prairie Library System (Illinois).

I’ve been talking about Plinkit for about a one and a half years now. My audiences have ranged from hardcore library techies (the #code4lib bunch — and my first lightening talk ever) to library staff from small and rural libraries (Plinkit’s “target customer”, if you will, especially in Oregon) to Plone users and developers.

It’s always fun to shape the presentation materials based on the audience. When I’m talking to primarily Plonistas, I spend more time talking about the issues — most people have a vague understanding (at best) of what happens behind the scenes at any given public library. No matter the size of the public library, chances are they could always use more money, more staff, and more skills. Our smallest libraries especially feel the pinch — and the ability to create and maintain well-organized, visually-pleasing website is almost always beyond their reach. And that’s where Plinkit (and Plone) come in.

Our LITA presentation will be a new audience for me. I expect that attendees will be relatively technologically-savvy and have a library background, of course, but may not be aware of just how stretched their small public library colleagues are. So in addition to outlining the issues that we address with Plinkit, I’ll get to put a more technical bent to it all and talk some about the ins and outs of Plone to many who may not be familiar with it.

I’m also looking forward to meeting a few of my Collaborative counterparts — I’ve been talking and emailing with them for more than a year in some cases and to finally meet them and to share horror stories and successes will be a blast, I’m sure!

Both sets of presentation materials will be made available online next week — keep an eye out here and here.