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November 28, 2007

A must to have book for web project managers and developers

Filed under: English, News & Bolts, eLiberatica & ROSI — Lucian Savluc @ 3:33 pm

A week ago I received a new book about one of the most complex open-source CMS (Content Management System) on the market right now: eZ Publish.

The title of the book is Managing eZ Publish Web Content Management Projects and was published under Packt Publishing.

Now, the truth is, I planned just to skin the book.

I played a little with eZ some time ago and I really liked it; I think is one of the most performing and flexible enterprise CMS you could find these days. And is Open Source! Even more, you can get it for free, depending the license you take.

This was the reason we invited this year at eLiberatica one of the eZ key persons - I’m referring here to Aleksander Farstad, who had one of the most acclaimed by the public presentation at the conference.

Back to the book now; as I said, I didn’t planed to go too dip inside it but after I read the first chapter, I couldn’t let of my hand. It is not a book useful only if you intend to use eZ Publish; is a book that every person involved in customizing a CMS should read. Even more, it contains great information for web project management in general.

I’ll not go into details about the content of the book, you can find more information on the publisher website

http://www.packtpub.com/Managing-eZ-Publish-Web-Open-Source/book#indetail

The book author - Martin Bauer - based his strategies, best practices and techniques presented there on more than ten years of experience in the field of content management systems and it seems he knows this job. Some topics I really liked and can be used if you are developing a CMS customization in general:

  • Key differences between traditional web development and web content management projects
  • How to write specifications
  • Content modeling
  • Planning your project and approach its pricing
  • Risk management

Some other topics that are more specialized:

  • Configuring your eZ publish development environment
  • Risk management and how to apply it to eZ publish projects
  • Content population in eZ publish projects
  • Different types of testing required for eZ publish projects
  • Maintaining and supporting your eZ publish projects

Final note: this is a “must have” book if you are planning to use, implement or customize eZ Publish. Is not a book about programming (although is a good one for programmers to read for understanding the big picture).

More than that, it is a great asset for web project management in general: well written, easy to understand language (even for a non native English speaker), well structured and equilibrate.

I’m looking forward for more Packt books now. They seem they know what to publish. I’m curious too see one about Drupal too.

November 18, 2007

eLiberatica 2008 will make history in the Romanian IT

There is a high activity related to the conference preparation although there is not much on the forefront yet. I couldn’t find too much time in the last months to publish the news on my blog so I taught now it would be a good idea to give some details for the ones interested.

A month ago we launched the new eLiberatica 2008 website and published the first newsletter.

These days we launched another two sections: “Call for Papers” and “Help to Promote eLiberatica“.

We are working intensively to launch “Hotel and Travel” section next week, and present there detailed information about the venue, Bucharest and Romania.

World Trade Center Bucharest, the place for eLiberatica 2008In Romania, Agora team is working hardly to prepare the conference logistics.

Some news will be published soon, not yet officially, but 99% to happen is the fact that, we found a better place to hold the conference - World Trade Center Bucharest.
A stylish and modern space for a great event like this.

Also, we established the conference date: 30-31 May 2008.

All these news will be published under eLiberatica website as soon as Agora will sign the contract with them.

On the other hand, I just met with Zak a few days ago and we worked a great plan for inviting high profile guests and do strategic partnerships. And I can assure you, this time, the whole world will know about this initiative. We learned a lot from the last conference and we wish to have next year an event close to perfection.

Of course, all of these will not happen without the community support, without your support. I’m using this message to ask any person who loves IT, Open Source and Free Software, but also the ones who don’t know much about FLOSS (but are bright enough to understand that future means Open and Free technologies), to help us spreading the world about this event.

Details about how you can help this initiative are posted under Help to Promote eLiberatica.

And we would like to meet you all there and have another great time together.