Photographer: Unknown / Illustration by Brendan Davis

Paul Everitt- Director, Zope Europe.

Professionally, most of the action in Zope is happening in Europe. If you look at Zope 2, CMF, Zope 3, or Plone, most of the development itself is being done outside the U.S., and primarily it's been in Europe. 8 of the last 9 sprints (counting forward to the DZUG meeting in March) are in Europe. Many of the new "marquee name" Zope-powered customers are in Europe.

I've only been here 5 months, but I'm already surprised at how Zope's name recognition is higher here than in the U.S. Finally, I know a lot of the folks at the Zope companies here and I have really enjoyed working with them in the past.

There's certainly a lot happening in other regions as well -- Brazil, Australia, and India come to mind. As they say, the sun never sets on the Zope empire. :^)

Personally, I have another reason. My wife is French, and I always said I wanted to live here while our kids were young. Thus it's good timing. We're having a blast.

Something people often hear from you these days is the goal of growing Zope “10x”. What does this mean to you? What would be examples of successful 10x growth?

New technologies have a path they follow for getting adopted. They start slow amongst a certain type of technology enthusiast audience, gain word-of-mouth growth, and start to attract attention.

However, it is hard to jump from steady growth amongst the crowd of earlier adopters to large growth amongst the more mainstream users. The second group thinks differently than the first one. However, if you can get there, you have entered the big part of the bell curve. This is where real market penetration happens.

Thus, 10x is my way of saying that we need to get the momentum and gravity to carry Zope from the first group to the second group. It is also my way of drawing attention to what's needed for this jump. We've already attracted many of the people who are interested in the code. To get more growth, we need the other parts of the solution that show a mature product with a diverse, well-rounded group of business services around it.

Clearly, in Europe Zope is reaching that jumping point. Somehow the Zope idea wove its way into institutional awareness in the last year. For the Zope businesses in Europe to really capitalize on this, though, we need to start telling a story these people are interested in hearing.

How many Sponsors does Zope Europe expect to have by the end of 2003?

I'd like to have 5-7 sponsors and a good number of members. I'm a big believer in (ahem, inside joke) helping the little guy. I feel that a broad number of smaller, diverse Zope companies in many parts of Europe is the best way to sustain what Zope is really about.

It is really important to hit these goals for sponsorship and membership. When it comes to publicity, marketing, communications, etc., we have a good story to tell. I simply need enough budget to get out and tell it. If we can get blanket coverage in 2003, we can attract the momentum and energy needed to penetrate the mainstream market.

How does Zope Europe want to use the money it collects from Sponsors?

While I don't mind living a vow of poverty for a while, the monk's lifestyle doesn't suit me long-term. Thus, I need to earn enough to make a reasonable living, and I need to earn my salary in a way the keeps me as a neutral player in the Zope market.

Beyond that, the money from sponsors and members goes primarily to travel expenses for talking, talking, and more talking. We need a 10x increase in the number of decision-makers that have heard of Zope. We need a 10x increase in the number of influencers that will write about Zope and recommend it. We need to collect every success story in the world of Zope, then go out and repeat these stories.

It's a rather simple proposition. Do you need Zope to grow in the market? If so, do you want to wait for Zope to grow accidentally, or do you want to invest in making Zope grow?

None of us out here in Zopeland can afford the expense of growing Zope business single-handedly. With Zope Europe, this is a shared goal and a shared expense. And as a non-profit, the association's mission is clear and directed: "Grow Zope business in Europe."

The 1250 Euro personal Membership seems high. Is this fee designed for Zope Professionals/consultants?

If you approach the association as a social club, then yes, it is very high. However, if you approach it as a natural extension of your business strategy, it is around half the price of a decent laptop and far less than an ad agency. The point of the association is to have someone work full-time on growing Zope business in Europe.

Again, some companies will choose to wait for Zope to grow, others will deem market growth worthy of investment.

I do hope, though, that another organization springs up to tap into a more user-oriented association. I think there is a role for an organization to represent "the voice of the Zope community". I'm certainly interested in assisting such an effort.

What do you think about Plone?

I love it. For years, going back I think to the Paris meeting several summers ago, most of us have felt that Zope needs a killer application that works out-of-the-box. You just can't point many business people at an empty canvas and say, "Imagine your cool web app."

Plone certainly isn't for everybody and everything, and in fact, that's another thing I love about it. They know what what they're trying to do, and they know what they're not trying to do. And I think they're a great example of playing by the rules. They contribute back to the stuff underneath (CMF and Zope), they participate in Zope 3 sprints, and they've volunteered to help on a new zope.org.

Of course there is a negative sentiment out there about Plone. It's hard to pin down, but it reminds me exactly of the attitude a Python friend of mine had towards Zope. And just as with that situation, a large part is that the newcomer (Zope for Python, and Plone for Zope) is bringing in a new crowd to the party. That is hard to accept at first. Then after a while, everybody gets to know each other and realizes that we have different strengths and we need each other after all.

I guess the thing I like most about Plone is the community. They're as big and active as the Zope 2 community, Zope 3 community, the CMF community, etc. But it's a little different, because it isn't purely OO developers. You have a mix of people higher up the value stack, in Web design and the like.

Plone now has 25 translations. That alone is an indication that they are doing something new and good for Zope.

Do you see any difference in code developed by the community vs. code that is developed by Zope Corporation?

That's a hard question to answer, because the line has really become blurred. Two years ago, ZC was the only one developing the core of Zope. But Zope Products from the community really provided much of the total value in Zope. These products tended to follow the patterns and approaches set forth by the core Zope code.

Now, of course, it's a whole new ballgame. Zope 2, Zope 3, and probably CMF are all getting most of their checkins from the community. As part of Zope 3, Jim Fulton has managed to establish an entire software culture that is followed pretty well by all the contributors. This alone is remarkable, and would be a great topic for a follow-on article. :^)

There's lots of smart people at ZC, and now that I no longer show up there, the institutional IQ has gone up dramatically. But wow, some of the people out here in the community are so smart, I feel guilty being in the same room with them. And the best part is, they *love* to help others.

What Software would you like to see developed for Zope?

I've become a believer in Big is Bad, and that centralization is a future problem waiting to happen. So I've become interested in ways to distribute content and still get the benefits of content management. This means things related to syndication, peer-to-peer, and of course, metadata.

It's also related to OSCOM, which I'm a part of. I get along great with the guys from PostNuke, Midgard, Wyona, Bitflux, Xopus, and the others. I think that tribalism serves an initial purpose of forging a common bond, but has a real limit. I think we all have more in common in Open Source content management, and I'd like to find ways that we can succeed together.

Tell us about MozTop -- why are you so interested in its development?

Part of it is because of my WebDAV curse. I can break any computer within 10 meters, but I can also find any bug related to WebDAV. This makes authoring content a daily exercise in agony, because I badly want WebDAV to succeed.

For Moztop, though, I want to find ways to get the power of Zope 3 into the hands of poor schmucks like me. I'm reminded of Randy Pausch who gave the best Python keynote for any of the IPCs. He talked about the "other 99%" who don't think like the 1% that write the software.

Several of us that talk about it keep coming back to Hypercard. For some reason, Hypercard found a way to energize a huge group of non-developers. Although neither Zope 3 nor Moztop are trying to be Hypercard, I'm curious about experimenting with ideas that generate the same effect. Is it all a matter of what you *don't* put in? Is it all a matter of crafting a pleasant experience? I think the book "Don't Make Me Think" does a good job addressing this motivation.

I also enjoy the process. I get on IRC and walk through things with folks in Australia, New England, and Brazil. It's gratifying to work with others.

Finally, it's way past time that I back up all my incessant chatter by doing some form of technical contribution to Zope.

Are you happy with the amount of documentation now available for Zope?

Actually, yes, but just barely. Chris McDonough has, almost single-handedly, kept the Zope Book and friends up-to-date. He asks for contributions, and sure he gets a few, but let's face it: people would rather complain about documentation than write documentation.

We have plenty of books out now, in several languages. The Zope Book and the Zope Developer Guide are in reasonable shape. With Zope 3, we'll have a documented API with a process that encourages its maintenance.

Plus, as Amos Latteier always said, if you have a good user interface, you don't need documentation. Thus, other than people getting off their butts and helping shoulder the load Chris has been carrying, the major improvement in documentation might come from an improved UI.

What kind of articles would you like to see in ZopeMag?

Let's make the average schmoe feel successful. I like the articles at O'Reilly Network. They are informative but not long, they cover topics about which I'm genuinely interested, and they give examples that are almost guaranteed to work.

Also, I'd like to encourage the spirit of community. This can be done with profiles of contributors, companies that are doing good work, and high-profile success stories.