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Well, we've finally done it! For a number of years now at Plone conferences around the world, I've said "Wouldn't it be great to hold the Plone Conference in the UK?' and each successive year I seem to say it after fewer and fewer beers. This year, we've finally done something about it, and put a bid in to host the Plone Conference 2010 in the UK. Not only that, but the bid was accepted :)

So now comes the hard work, in terms of planning the whole event. I think if we get things started nice and early then we should be OK. So far I've been in touch with a number of previous Plone Conference organisers and got quite a good deal of feedback from them on things that worked or didn't work from their point of view with the management and running of the conference. Having been to every conference except the first one myself, I've got a pretty good idea of what makes them work from a delegates point of view (decent wifi and lots of coffee! ;) ).

Bristol's Biggest Bike Ride. Bristol is the UK's first 'Cycle City' and is known for its work on environmental issues. This photo is taken in front of @Bristol, a science museum. The big silver dome is the planetarium. Those that came to the Performance Sprint in Bristol might recognise it, as was just around the corner from the sprint venue.

Bristol is a fantastic city, located in the South West of the UK with a population of around 600,000 people. Despite its modest size, it has a very high regard with technology and media. The BBC Natural History unit is here, and a lot of BBC Dramas filmed in the city, and around this spawned a whole ecosystem of related media businesses such as post-production, graphics, audio, costume, etc. When the term 'New Media' started to surface in the early 90's Bristol was hot on the scene and as a result a large number of digital / interactive agencies formed. Bristol is also home to Aardman Animations, the creators of Morph, Wallace and Gromit, Shaun the Sheep and other well known plastercine characters. Bristol is also referred to as the 'Silicon Valley of the UK' with a whole host of silicon chip manufacturers and related businesses here.

Bristol Cathedral in the foreground and the Wills Memorial Building, part of the University of Bristol in the Background. The University received its charter in 1909, and is now one of two universities in the city -- the other being the University of West England. This building was built between 1912-1925 and considered one of the last great Gothic buildings to be built in the UK.

I came to Bristol in 1996 to attend the University of Bristol to read Computer Science, and graduated four years later to form Netsight, based just over the road. in the next 10 years, Netsight has grown to 13 staff and become well known within the Plone community for our advocacy work, and promotion of Plone.

Each year, the Plone Conference gets better and better, so I'm under no doubt that I have some pretty high expectations to meet. Last year I was leading the programme committee for the Budapest conference and we had an amazing number of talk submissions, way more than we had room to fill and we had a tough choice picking the talks. This year I want to get direct feedback from the community and get the talks organised earlier and get them all up online so the whole community can see them and vote on the talks they would most like to see. That way we can be as transparent as possible, but also make sure that we give a chance to those potential delegates that are not yet so involved with the Plone community to have a vote in which talks they want to see. It is always hard to make sure we get a good balance of talks for those new to Plone and those with lots of experience. It will also give us a chance to gauge the talk popularity beforehand and schedule the talks in the appropriately sized rooms.

Speaking of rooms, yes we do have a venue already in mind. We are talking to more than one and just negotiating the final details with them before we make it concrete and announce the venue.

One item you might have seen on the preliminary conference page is the one-day 'Analysts / Customers / Suits' mini-conference. The goal of this day is to attract those people whom we might not normally reach so easily as a (generally developer-focused) community. For this I'm talking about industry analysts and pundits, journalists, technology evaluators, customers, etc. I don't mean to be glib when I say 'suits' but hopefully most people will get what I mean. The main conference has always historically been very inward focussed as a community. Events like World Plone Day have shown the value of reaching out to a wider audience and I see the conference as an ideal time to organise something. This was if someone wants to they can come to the one-day conference and stay for the main conference as well. For the one-day event I'm hoping to invite a number of speakers to come and present case studies of Plone projects they have been involved in.

I'm open to ideas as well for all aspects of the conference. If you have any particular ideas you'd like to see, or want to get involved in the conference then by all means drop me an email on ploneconf2010@netsight.co.uk. I'm going to me asking around the community for volunteers (esp. from the other UK Plone companies) as well closer to the time.

-Matt