Friday in Italia!

Traffic was nasty going to the City of Science in the morning. The garbage men were on strike, blocking roads with trashcans and banners. The police were around but didn’t seem to be concerned with interfering with the strike. Fortunately the taxi driver broke all sorts of traffic laws to get us there on time.

We went to the same place we always do in the morning, got a yummy breakfast bread and our normal expresso shot thingy, and then made our way into the Plone conference.

Plone Geek stuff
My first session was Philip von Weiterhausen and Martin Aspelli’s presentation called ‘Untested code is broken code’. I agree with them, as does any reasonable developer. What I got out of the session is the concept of telling a story in your tests, because then its more interesting to write and its easier to read.

Then was a session on Plone in Government solutions by a panel of presenters. The focus was on European and South American efforts. It was interesting, and I learned a lot about presenting Plone as a solution to government efforts.

Kaman Ayeva gave a speech on Antipatters, Patterns, and Rules of thumb for successful Plone projects. Unfortunately it was very basic, and nothing new was learned.

Lunch like all the meals was served outside. It was the usual bits of yummy Italian goodness.

The next presentation was worth the whole day. It was the Novell web marketing team talking about Plone at the Enterprise level. I found out why they ditched Team Server and more importantly, why Vignette so utterly failed for them. That even Novell found the costs of Vignette prohibitive and the tool not very useful was really interesting. They found great ways to increase the already secure processes of Plone and to find creative ways to get their international site to handle tens of million of hits.

Last session was Andy McKay on ‘What Plone can learn from Rails’. Very interesting, and I agreed with bits and pieces.

About 20 lightning talks happened. So much good stuff was presented! People are doing some amazing things with GIS and other innovative technologies. I was exhausted so I didn't listen as closely as I should.

Evening fun
Piazza Bellini seems to be the adopted home of Plonistas in Napoli. A delightful band played loud music and the city seemed to be alive with incredible vibrant energy. Fridays are not to be missed in Napoli.

I chatted with Godefried and Jorun, two of the masters of KSS and the Plone – SQLAlchemy mashup. Great guys.

Dinner was another awesome meal. Seafood was the ideal of the place, and it scored. The appetizer was a delightful seafood salad we gobbled up in seconds. I am jealous of Chris because he took the calamari dish, but my fish wasn’t bad either.

Next to us sat a charming British couple. They were funny and witty, and made dinner better.

Alas, I let the flowing wine go by without paying enough attention. Suddenly it was hours past midnight and I had done a bit too much fun. I staggered back to Albergo del Golfo and found my bed waiting.