News

Six Feet Up's talks will feature the diversity of the Sixies team, covering topics as diverse as theming, Plone migration frameworks, and how to effectively pitch Plone to potential clients.

Intro to TAL and Plone Theming in a Nutshell

Chrissy Wainwright's presentation "Intro to TAL" kicks off the conference as one of the first talks given on Thursday, May 18 10:10 to 11 am. This is an introductory lesson to the Zope page templating language and will cover all the commands, various uses, and existing examples in default Plone.

This presentation will be followed by Chrissy's second talk, "Plone Theming in a Nutshell" from 11:10 to noon. This talk is a "where-is-what" reference for developers familiar with Plone who are looking to get into Plone theming. Among other topics, the talk will cover:
* where to find the original Plone templates for overriding
* how to override them
* ZMI to filesystem connections (actions, registries, etc)
* Common theming stumbling blocks

Chrissy Wainwright is Six Feet Up’s Lead Template Developer and has accumulated several years of experience in website development since she obtained her Bachelor of Science from Western Illinois University in 2004. Chrissy enjoys problem-solving and fixing bugs, which she has leveraged to reach a solid level of proficiency with XHTML and CSS. With an eye for design and detail, she is very thorough when developing templates and is a strong advocate of adherence to web compliance standards. Chrissy gave a presentation on Plone Viewlets at Plone Symposium East 2009, then led a two-day training on Theming Plone at PSE 2010. She is a Plone Core contributor and an active developer on KARL. She works from her home in New Hampshire. These talks will follow her two-day training class on Plone theming which is being held prior to on May 16th and 17th.

Migrating From Drupal to Plone with Transmogrifier

One of the hottest topics in the CMS realm is content migration, and Clayton Parker's talk "Migrating From Drupal to Plone with Transmogrifier" on Friday, May 19th from 1:40 - 2:30 focuses on making the move from one of Plone's biggest competitors.

Transmogrifier is a migration framework that can help you easily migrate from one platform to another. It has been written in a way that allows re-use of migration code through blueprints. In this talk, we will walk through the steps necessary to migrate from Drupal, a popular CMS written in PHP, into Plone. We will see how to use the various blueprints available to build a pipeline that prepares and imports the content into Plone.

Clayton Parker is a Senior Developer at Six Feet Up who has been a speaker at many Plone conferences, including previous PSEs and Annual Plone Conferences in both Budapest, Hungary and Bristol, UK. Clayton has been creating dynamic websites using the Plone content management system since 2004. He started out at Six Feet Up, Inc. as a Systems Administrator, which he is leveraging when working on Plone deployment projects. Clayton has created and contributed to many buildout recipes in use by the Community. He is a big proponent of following best practices for effectively delivering quality projects that can scale in the long term. He is also a Plone Foundation member.

Potential Plone Clients: How to Seal the Deal

One thing Calvin Hendryx-Parker knows how to do is how to show Plone to clients. But sealing the deal is more than making a good demo - it's about showing potential clients how Plone can meet their needs. In his talk Friday, May 19th 1:40 - 2:30, he will unveil the process he follows to win.

What is the secret to turning a CMS prospect into a Plone client? As Content Management Systems have become mainstream, customers are more sophisticated in the questions they ask and initial contacts can include in-depth comparisons to competitors. Organizing your information and having a plan to pitch Plone is the key to successful client acquisition. In "How to Seal the Deal", Calvin will unveil the process he follows to win.

As Chief Technology Officer for Six Feet Up, Calvin is responsible for researching cutting-edge advances that could become part of the company’s technology roadmap. He has over 12 years of experience in fields as diverse as systems engineering, data modeling, and information architecture. Calvin is well-known in the Plone Community for being an excellent speaker who attends and presents at Plone and Python events year-round. He is also President of the Plone Foundation and is serving his second term on the board. He is also renowned as being the go-to-guy for opinions on the latest and greatest gadgets and new technologies.