Using Open Source Software for Developing Web Sites - What's your flavour?

The IITP Canterbury Branch invites you to this special panel event - to hear from and share your views with three of Christchurch's most experienced developers using Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) for their Web development work.

Using Open Source Software for Developing Web Sites - What's your flavour?

Our panel members are all passionate about FOSS and the particular software they have chosen to specialise in - Drupal for Dave Lane, Plone for Paul Roe and Joomla for David Noah.

Dave, Paul and David will share their insights on using this software.  In particular, they will discuss Drupal, Plone and Joomla relative to the following aspects:

• Selection process: date when they selected that software; the criteria used for its selection; functionability; standards and the client base it's aimed at.
• Background: communities, resources, developer forums, conferences.
• Architecture: design for maintainability and extensibility.
• Security and performance of the software.

About Dave Lane

Dave is a Director of Egressive, which is dedicated to providing kiwi businesses with technically superior FOSS solutions and support.  He holds an MSc (Mech Eng) and BSc (Physics).

In 1998, Dave left his job as a research scientist at a Crown Research Institute to found Egressive. When not acting as an advocate for FOSS and making submissions to select committees related to the evils of software patents and ACTA, Dave specialises in web development on the Drupal CMS platform, and system administration with Ubuntu Linux.

In addition to his technical activities, Dave tweets and blogs actively, is a keen cyclist and cycle advocate, an enthusiastic cook and baker, is in a rock band, enjoys dancing swing and loves being a dad.  Dave also does a weekly, tech-related radio segment on PlainsFM 96.9.

About Paul Roe

Paul is a Director of TheVirtual and has been using FOSS to do all in-house development since the late 90's.  He holds a BSc (Physics).

Having worked in IT since the mid 80's, Paul has developed software in a variety of languages on a diverse range of systems, from micro-controllers to mainframes.  He founded his development company in 1990 and it was rebranded as TheVirtual in late 2002.  Paul's frustration with orphaned and closed tools and platforms is what led him to FOSS.  After experimenting with a few different languages and frameworks, Paul settled on Python and then Zope.  Once Plone stabilised in 2002, most of his company's work was moved across to Plone, which has been a good fit for their web business.

Outside of work, Paul enjoys sailing hydrofoil skiffs (rclass.org), cycling and chasing around after his two boys.

About David Noah

David is Solutions Architect and Development Team Lead with hairyLemon Media Solutions, a Christchurch-based digital media agency.  He holds a NZIM Dip Management and NZ Cert Data Processing (Computer Programming).

Since cutting his first website in 1995, David has enjoyed fooling around with content management, portal and intranet solutions.  He has particular interests in usability, web standards and information architecture.

hairyLemon have been using the Joomla! Content Management System for approximately 18 months.  They use it for traditional client site builds and also as a web application development platform, to deliver custom web functionality for clients with specialised needs.

Refreshments kindly sponsored by Novell.

Registration Details:

You can register for this event via Credit Card online now by using the link below, or alternatively call 0800 252 255 with your Credit Card details.

IITP Corporate Partners and approved organisations can opt to pay by invoice by calling 0800 252 255 or emailing attendee and business details through to [email protected]. Credit criteria and other conditions apply.

Please note that this session may be video or audio recorded for viewing by other members at a later date. As it is possible that audience members may be incidentally recorded, please let us know if you specifically want to be excluded and we will ensure you are not shown.

Attendance Cost

ITP Financial Members: FREE
Staff of Corporate Partners (20% Discount): $13.91 + GST / $16.00 incl GST
Non-Members: $17.39 + GST / $20.00 incl GST