Alfresco Community News

It probably comes as no surprise that the release of Alfresco Labs 3 Beta on July 31st has been the big attention grabber lately. There has been a lot happening on other fronts too and I wanted to share some of the highlights.

Stats:

Our community is growing at an amazing rate. That’s a good thing because there is strength in numbers – more members on the forums to provide peer support, more members contributing extensions, more members reporting bugs.

Community Site Prototype:

If you installed Labs 3, you may have noticed a dashlet called Alfresco Network. Click the “Join Alfresco Network” link at the bottom to get a preview of our new community site (or just visit http://network.alfresco.com).

We’ll launch the site officially in the fall but the prototype should give you an idea of what to expect. All content and services on the site will be provided through Surf components; the homepage content is already being surfaced from a repository using Surf.  If you’d like to get a feel for developing on the Surf platform, take a look at how the prototype works. Just download the HEAD from SVN, you can find the source in the extranet.war file.

If you are an Alfresco Enterprise customer, you should have received an email with a username and password for the Enterprise Network. Loggong in from the community prototype site gives you access to premium content including a knowledgebase and a call tracking system where you can connect with our Support team. Got suggestions? Email us, we’d love to hear them.

Events:

We have two Community Meetings planned for fall. The first event is scheduled for October 9th in Washington DC, the second will take place in Munich on October 16th.

We are trying something new this time around; the first half of the day will feature keynotes and product updates. In the afternoon we’ll break into two groups, one will have a business focus and the other will have a technical focus. As in the past, seating is limited and we expect to fill up early.

The barcamps that we did over the past several months were so well received that we’ve decided to take them to the next level. Our code camps will go deep on developing applications with the Surf platform.  We are planning full day events in multiple cities that include a hands-on session where you code up some Surf components, pages and mini-sites.  We haven’t settled on dates and venues yet, check back later for more details.

Forge Projects:

Have you visited the Alfresco forge lately? We now have 155 different projects. New projects in the past several weeks include a new a simplified Chinese translation of GUI messages and DoCASU, a custom user Interface for Alfresco.

Contributor of the Month, July
J.M. Pascal’s aim is to promote and teach open source technology, particularly ECM. Even though he is new to the Alfresco Community, he has already has made a big impact. Read more about J.M. and let me know if you have nominations for a future contributor of the month.

Content Community, New Content Highlights

You may have noticed that we are building up our collection of content aimed at developers in the Content Community. Take a look in the Developer Tools space and check back often for new additions.

Here are a few of the highlights:

• Zimbra Integration - a zimlet that allows users to archive email and attachments to an Alfresco repo, attach documents from an Alfresco repo to an outgoing email as attachments and more.
• User Quota Manager  - a utility that allows Alfresco admins to limit and monitor space used
• WCM - Deployment And Delivery Overview - Short series of videos and accompanying source code covering basic WCM topics such as Web Forms, Deployment and Delivery Options
• Examples of SDK extensions - this space has several good examples of SDK extensions

By now you have most likely read several articles and blog posts on the new beta release of Alfresco Labs 3. In short, it rocks. Big time.  Okay, I’m biased — but it does. Read John Newton’s blog for details, you’ll see what I mean.

From my perspective as the community manager, what really excites me is Surf, the new web application framework.  Why? Because it allows community members to build reusable components, templates and other web site bits and share them with others.

Look for announcements soon for code camps that will be equal parts of Labs 3 technical immersion and hands-on coding where attendees will develop their own web parts using the Surf platform.  But don’t wait for the code camps, you can start building your components today.

To learn more about Surf, you can read an overview  on the wiki and get the details in the developer guide.

A limited edition Alfresco Community t-shirt is available to anyone who submits a valid Surf component. Email them to me and have fun with Alfresco Labs 3.

If there is one thing we’ve learned in the United States from recent presidential election history, it is that EVERY vote counts (think hanging chads). Don’t put it off until tomorrow, vote now! Nominate Alfresco for the 2008 Open Source CMS Award.

Summer is always a busy time and that is especially true when you have the good fortune to be part of an organization that moves at a head-spinning pace like Alfresco.  The next few months will bring some amazing new developments but for now, let’s take a brief look in the rear-view mirror.

In June we sponsored our third barcamp, this time in Munich, Germany.  Like a Chicago Cub’s game in mid-summer, it was a sell-out crowd, the fans enjoyed a beer or two and most agreed that it was a day well spent. I met some great community members, learned a lot and had a great time. Thanks to everyone who participated.

And speaking of participation, we have seen some great stats lately on the forums and wiki.  Not only is our community growing at an impressive rate but also the willingness to share knowledge and contribute back continues to result in some high-quality peer-to-peer support.

We recognized a couple high achievers this month including Adrián Efrén Jiménez Vega who not only was our Contributor of the Month for his outstanding presence on the Spanish language forum but also won the June Developer Challenge for his user quota web script. Way to go, Adrián!

The Chumby Award for Community Achievement went to Aingaran Pillai of Zaizi, a UK consulting firm specializing in the Alfresco ECM and WCM platform.  Aingaran accumulated the most points in the forums for providing helpful information.

If you haven’t visited our new Developer Toolbox space in the Content Community, please do so. If you don’t see what you need or better yet, if you have some sample code, technical tips, starter apps that you would like to contribute please email me.

Enjoy your summer.

Looking to jumpstart your learning curve on web scripts, content modeling, presentation templates and other Alfresco technical topics? Check out the new Developer Toolkit space in the Content Community. You’ll find sections for sample code, starter applications and technical tips.

If you don’t see what you are looking for, drop me an email and we will put it on our list. Better yet, if you have something that you would like to contribute, let me know and we will post it for you. (We’ll have a community upload process shortly.)

The toolbox has a large number of web scripts, both declarative and Java-backed. You’ll also see some starter applications that can be used as a learning tool or as a starting point for your own custom application. One of the starter applications is a fully functional expense reporting system that is used by our sales team to submit expense reports.

Another great opportunity to advance your Alfresco skills comes each Friday at noon EST. A group of our technical field staff host “Tech Talk Live”, attendee-driven, one-hour live sessions where you can ask questions or participate in a discussion on a relevant technical topic. Learn More …

Just a reminder, it isn’t too late to enter the Web Scripts Developer Challenge. We still have a few iPod Touch’s to give away and don’t forget that everyone who submits a valid web script gets a t-shirt.

April proved to be another busy month around the Alfresco community. One of the highlights from my vantage point was the Barcelona BarCamp on April 21st. Almost fifty community members gathered for this developer-focused event to share demos, best practices and hear talks from our engineers on a variety of topics.

There was also overflow attendance (>220) at the Community Conference, which followed on April 22nd. You can find a link to the recorded talks on our Facebook page.

The Shimano and Acquity team have been doing some great work on a digital asset management application developed with Alfresco web scripts. Tune in on May 14th, for a webinar to learn what they did and how they did it. More details here.

Alfresco’s technical field staff will answer your questions live during our new Tech Talk Live series. The first session was held on April 25th. To get the schedule and to learn how to attend a session see the wiki.

Plans are underway for the first gathering of the Alfresco New York Meetup on May 13th. If you live in the area and are interested in learning more, see the Meetup site.

The first winner in the Web Scripts Developer Challenge is already enjoying his new his Apple iPod 16GB Touch. You have four more chances to win.

We are looking for a few good people and offering a referral bonus of 1,000 British pounds (about $2,000 USD). The bonus is payable after six months and all the other usual restrictions apply. Learn more.

What is a Chumby and how do you score one? Simply put, Chumbys are little marvels of technology that are about the size of a coffee cup, have a touch screen, connect wirelessly to the Internet and have a library of addon widgets. What is probably more interesting, especially to the Alfresco community, is that Chumbys are Linux-based, open-source development platforms.

Most people will use them as an alarm clock to wake them up in the morning, to view digital photos, to listen to Internet radio, to check the news, weather and sports, to look up a recipe — all of the usual ways that we interact with Internet-based devices.

We couldn’t think of a better way to reward community participation each month than to give a Chumby to the person who has answered the most questions on the forums. We can’t wait to see what clever Chumby web scripts our community members will build (think URL-based access to content and content services).

While we know that coming to the aid of your fellow community members in the forums is its own reward, we are excited to be able to offer a little additional incentive.

Fine print: the winner will be selected based on the number of points accumulated and you can only win once.

It’s been a busy time around the Alfresco community lately. One of the highlights of the past few weeks was our first technology BarCamp that we held on March 11th, the evening before our North America Community Meeting in San Jose, California.

Alfresco engineers and technical field staff spent a few hours with a small group of community members exchanging ideas, showing demos and talking about best practices over sandwiches and a couple of beers. We’re planning a similar event in Barcelona the evening before the European Community Meeting on April 21st.

You may have noticed several new projects pop up on the forge in the past month including Opsoro, short for OPen SOurce ROcks, an AJAX-based repository browser developed using web script technology. You’ll also find an Ingres/Alfresco bundle and a custom Alfresco action that sends a document as an attachment to an email message. All forge projects are open source, they are there for you to use in your business, to extend or to learn from.

Thanks to everyone who has contributed a submission to the Web Script Developer Challenge. We’ve received several entries many of which are both clever and have real business application. We’ll announce the winner of the first Apple iPod Touch on April 4th. The challenge will continue through July.

Don’t miss the first in our new series of developer-focused webinars. On April 3rd, Dr. Yong Qu, an Alfresco field technical engineer will talk about the Alfresco iPhone integration that he built.

Do you have ideas for future webinar topics, locations for local events or other community-focused activities? Email me!

Here’s your chance to show off your web scripting skills and win an Apple 16GB iPod Touch. Submit your best work to our first ever Alfresco Web Scripts Developer Challenge. The competition is open to all Alfresco community members and you may enter as many web scripts as you like. We will announce the winner on April 4th, 2008.

Everyone who enters a valid web script gets a limited edition Alfresco Community Contributor t-shirt. Read more.