The Beer and Wine sprint wrapped up on Sunday and it’s now a good time to report on what was South Africa’s first ever core Plone sprint. This was a joint sprint between Cape Town and Munich, which in hindsight, was a very good idea. The two groups of sprinters had daily meetings via Google hangouts, and the structure and support we received from Munich helped a lot. Connecting with the sprinters on another continent brought home the point that we are a global community and that no core Plone work is done in isolation. The daily hangouts also motivated us to get cracking so that we could have something to report on!
South Africa is geographically isolated from the places where most Plone development takes place (notably Europe and North America) , which results in the local Plone community not getting as much exposure to sprints and community events as would have been possible otherwise. The goal of this sprint was to help change that, and to provide an opportunity for us to contribute back to the Plone community from which we’ve received so much.
Most of the people who attended the sprint were first-timers, and it was a joy to see the enthusiasm with which people started working. Eric Steele and David Glick flew down to join us here at the tip of Africa, and provided much needed experience and support.
About 14 people met at sprint venue on Thursday morning and after introductions and a quick hello to the Europeans via the wormhole, we formed groups and started sprinting.
Mike Metcalfe and Campbell Mckellar-Bassset (rockfruit) started working on porting CMFPlone tests from Products.PloneTestCase to plone.app.testing. They kept at it with dogged determination for the next four days of the sprint and made good progress. Izak Burger and Jurgen Blignaut tackled some TinyMCE bugs, while Rudi Ackhurst, Witek, Johan Beyers and myself started working on Plip #13260. We did this via Dojo sessions, which we held for most of the sprint. Other people did tutorials and proofreading of documentation.
It appears as if the sprinting bug has bitten at least some of the people who attended, and there’s already been talk of doing this again some time. I personally had an amazing experience and learned a lot while organising this event.
To the bittereinders who sprinted every single day (Thursday to Sunday), thanks for your energy and support! This would have not been possible without you. We laid a solid foundation for future core Plone contributions from our local group.
Lastly, thanks a million to everyone involved in making this sprint a reality, Eric, David and all the people who attended, our sponsors the Praekelt and Plone Foundations, the guys in Munich and all those who helped with support and advice. And thanks to Liz Leddy who planted the initial seed in my head that this was not only possible, but a actually great idea!
P.S Credit for 3 of the photos goes to David Glick
