Posts – Page 7

Introducing New Blog

So it has been ages since I had a blog. I used to blog on the Netsight blog whilst I was there, but I’ve been up a lot of exciting things since then and needed somewhere to start posting interesting stuff I’ve been working on. So this is it :)

For 15 years I’ve been working on some pretty heavy duty Python-based web systems and content management systems such as Plone. So I thought I’d try something very different. I wanted something extremely lightweight that would allow me to just do some very simple blogging and have a presence online.

I looked at a number of static website generation systems, and in the end settled on Jekyll and starting with a simple foundation for Poole.

So some topics I will be blogging about here:

  • Python web development.

    Python is still my ‘go to’ language for any web development or server scripting and integration jobs

  • iOS deployment and development

    I’m currently working on a team doing iOS development, and I’ve managed to do a lot of battle with Apple’s, often arcane, provisioning system.

  • Networking & Security

    I’m interested in getting data from A to B in a reliable and secure fashion

  • FreeBSD / OpenBSD

    In my opinion, two of the best operating systems around. I’ve been working with them for nearly two decades now and both have their uses in different scenarios.

  • Quantified health, wearables and tracking

    I’m currently working with enquos, building the best tools out there to track, measure and improve your health, fitness and wellbeing. I’ve developed a personal interest in this, as I’m currently working on improving my own health.

  • Embedded Development / Internet of Things

    I like tinkering with Arduinos and the likes, so will probably be writing up some of the stuff I’ve been using them for here. We are moving to an ever-more connected world, and it’s exciting looking at how this interacts with our society and the way in which we deal with data (privacy and security).

A Journey Through Open Source

This talk was given to the 2nd year MEng Computer Science students at the University of Bristol. It is a talk about my experiences in Open Source and working with a global community.

The audio and screencast of this presentation is at:

https://vimeo.com/113033350

Plone Intranet talk at Plone Open Garden 2014, Sorrento

This is a talk I gave at Plone Open Garden 2014 on the Plone Intranet project. This is a collaborative project to develop an enhance platform for intranets on top of Plone

Open Source, The Natural Fit for Content Management in the Enterprise

This is a talk I gave at "Adopting Open Source Software within the corporate ICT strategy" in London on 5th December 2013.

* How OSS reduces long term risk for CM

* Integrating with the unknown

* Authentication in heterogeneous environments

* Case study - NHS Health and Social Care Information Centre Intranet

Supercharge Your Career with Open Source

A talk I gave at the University of Bristol to the 2nd Year Computer Science Students on how to use Open Source Software to further your chances of getting a job. I draw upon the Plone community and software for examples.

Plone and Sharepoint

A talk on integrating Plone and Sharepoint. This talk was from Plone Conference 2013 in Brasilia.

It covers integrating the authentication, content, and search between Plone and Sharepoint. It showcases the collective.cmsbrowser addon for Plone.

How to get started with the Pluggable Authentication System

A presentation given at Plone Conference 2013 in Brasilia. This presentation explains Plone’s Pluggable Authentication System (PAS) and how to get started with writing your own PAS Plugin.

Plone and Single-Sign On - Active Directory and the Holy Grail

These are the slides of a talk I gave on Single Sign On in Plone via Active Directory using netsight.windowsauthplugin

BathCamp #32 - CMS Smackdown! - Plone

A bit of a different format for BathCamp in June. We’ll be cage fighting.

No.

Actually, it’s a sort of follow on from our previous BathCamp – a comparison of as many CMS systems as we can get people to talk about.

Obviously any comparison of CMS system is heavily caveated with an “it depends…” but nonetheless we think it’ll be interesting to hear from people talking about the good, the bad and the ugly of the systems they use.

The format of the talks will be “5 things I love about this CMS and 5 things I hate”, followed by time for questions and general CMS-like banter.

We’ve got the following lined up:

WordPress

Drupal

Expression Engine

Plone

PyroCMS

Perch

Umbraco

Defacto

Online Information 2011: Global and Social A case study of the implementation of a large-scale social intranet

Belron International is the global parent company of brands such as Autoglass and Carglass. With a turnover of nearly €3bn, they employ 25,000 people in 32 countries, repairing or replacing a windscreen every 3 seconds.

In 2007 the organisation developed an intranet based on the Open Source CMS Plone. This year the intranet was extended and re-focussed to add a range of social media functions to integrate with (and enhance) the existing suite of content management and workflow tools.

Over 5 years the intranet has evolved to provide features that are used on a daily basis by all functions within the organisation. The challenge with the introduction of ’social’ content creation and collaboration has been to manage and integrate these new ways of working into established processes.

In this talk we will show how a large, multinational organisation has overcome the common concerns relating to social media in the enterprise, including governance, loss of control and the risks of reliance on services outside the firewall. Once these concerns are mitigated, the social media model can be used to drive …