Mercoledi dentra Italia

Buono Pizza!
That is pretty much how the day ended. But let me go through the rest of the day before I explain.

Quick note, I managed to get a picture of myself onto Flickr. More to come!

Plone Conference Sessions (Geek Speak so skip to next session if you want)
Me and Chris went to the integrators track called ‘Making Plone Theme: 10 Most Wanted tips’ by Jarn employee Denis Mishunov. It ended up being just 5 tips but they were killer tips of ultimate important.

Next session was Extending and Customizing Plone by Alex Espelli, who is a virtuoso of Plone content design. While it was good, there was too much content and often you glanced at a slide with 10 lines of detail for 5 seconds and he would go on. This means I’m going to have to buy his new book I supposed. Reed and Chris were also there.

Next was supposed to be Alex Limi’s track on usability, but he was sick. That was a real shame because he is one of the founders of Plone, now works for google, and is a master of presentation both verbally and technically. So I ended up going to Laurence Rowe’s presentation on the ZODB. Alas, it was nothing I hadn’t heard before and anyone could get after 10 minutes of googling the ZODB. He was going to give a demo but did a Q&A first. I was then determined to ask him later for that demo.

Ajax with Plone 3: KSS development patterns was given by Godefried Chappele. This promised to be exciting. It turned out to be a good intro to the KSS system implemented in Plone 3. More will follow with other KSS presentations.

The last session was Portlets in Plone 3 done by Geir Baekholt, and was brilliantly done. Portlets in Plone 3 are powerful, intuitive and very easy to implement. Plus they are very exciting.

Last but not least were Lightning Talks and Birds of a Feather. I’ll explain what that means later, but lets just say that I’ll be joining to Plone4Artists calendar module sprint. I also found a lot of really powerful ideas for use in Plone and Zope in the days to come.

Coffee Break, Lunch, and Tea
We had a morning coffee break with quality coffee and delicious sweets. I had a tiny sfogliatelle (scalloped shaped pastry that is a Neapolitan specialty) that took my breath away. Not bad for conference fare!

Lunch was a buffet of good food. Carpaccio, meatballs, zuchinni, eggplant with cream, buffalo mozzarella, cheese noodles, and smoked cheese was handed out at a central food table. In the US it would be wretched fare but not in Italia! It was good stuff. They served as beverage white wine and lemoncello, but that was pretty nasty stuff so I stuck to water.

A Disappointment
So I found Laurence Row and asked him near the end of the day for the ZODB demo he promised. Nope, he didn’t have one. Really lame. Well, he did manage to waste only 45 minutes of my life…

Plone Foundation News
Went to this meeting about the state of Plone politics. I’ll put my notes in a separate post.

Night Time
We went to Piazza Bellini again to meet up with whoever showed up. We ended up meeting a very smart German fellow named Christian who was a core member of the Zope 3 team. Chris, Reed, Christian, and me went from there to Pizzeria Sorbilla founded in 1938. We stopped there because it was packed full of Italians and in a narrow street, which is always a good sign. I ordered the house specialty Pizza Sorbilla and… well…

It was %@#$ing good pizza.

I’m spoiled for life. No more pizza for me. Nothing else will ever compare!

How can I describe it? The cheese was so good it tasted buttery. The crust was light and charred by the over. The sauce was light and full of explosive favor.

The staff was amused yet unsurprised by our reactions.