Scientific Collaboration with Plone:

Sharing Bibliographies, Papers, Discussions

Boston World Plone DayNovember 7, 2008

Sally Kleinfeldt, Jazkarta

Overview

• Python tools and libraries

• Plone collaboration features

• Plone products for science

Python

• Implementation language of Plone/Zope

• Open source, object oriented, clean design

• Low threshold, high ceiling

• Popular in scientific community, especially astronomy, biology, math, geosciences, economics

Python Tools

• NumPy - N-dimensional array manipulation

• SciPy - statistics, Fourier transforms, image processing, linear algebra, genetic algorithms, etc. etc.

• matplotlib - 2D plotting library

• PCL - Python Cartographic Library

• ESRI tools

Python Resources

• http://www.scipy.org - mathematics, science, and engineering

• http://biopython.org - computational molecular biology

• http://matplotlib.sourceforge.net/ - matplotlib

• http://trac.gispython.org/lab/wiki - GIS

Plone Collaboration Features

• Out of the Box

• Document sharing

• Rich pages, news, events, calendars

• Wiki behavior

• Commenting

• Related content

• Member areas

Plone Collaboration Features

• Add-on products

• Discussions (PloneBoard)

• Blogs (Quills)

• Integrated news feeds (FeedFeeder)

• Multimedia (Plone4Artists)

• Calendar import/export (Plone4Artists)

Plone Products for Scientists

• CMFBibliographyAT

• Maps

• Lab notebooks

• Easy to create custom content types!

Example Sites

• http://conserveonline.org/

• http://conpro.tnc.org/

• http://www.watershedportal.org/

• http://mcdb.colorado.edu:8089/kiosk/kiosk6.swf

Finally...

• Let’s look at some sites!