Sprint, sprint, sprint!

Plone sprints are community events organized by members of all around the world. Lasting less than a week, a group of developers gather together in a location and work focused in the same topic or contribute to Plone on a variety of subjects and disciplines.

They are often focused on accomplish a specific goal towards a common interest feature, although anybody can attend a Sprint with his/her own topic and make it happen. They are also a good place for discussions and making strategic decisions, due to the in-person factor and the focussed, distraction-free environment.

The term Sprint does not come from the "agile" methodology world, since it was coined before it was widely used. Tres Seaver explains the origin of the "Sprint" term, back in the early days of Zope development in 2001 in this interesting post.

This year I've attended several Plone Sprints, and I plan to attend some others before the end of the year. I want to write about all of them.

Axolote Sprint (CDMX)

The Plone Axolote Sprint took over in Ciudad de Mexico (CDMX) in April, hosted by the Instituto de Matemáticas de la Universidad de Mexico.

Organized by Adriana Ramírez, Gildardo Bautista as our UNAM hosts and by my colleague Dante Álvarez, it was one of the best Plone Sprints I've ever attended. The venue was awesome, there are few places better to host a sprint than university premises. The side events were spectacular and refreshing, especially our visit to Teotihuacan pyramids and the Xochimilco channels. We even had a swag bag from the sprint!

Since the World Plone day happened in the middle of the sprint, It felt like a mini-conference altogether. Some Adriana and Gil university students attended the sprint and the WPD talks we did there. I've taken the opportunity to address them and teach them about Plone and its history in Spanish. By far, one of the best things that happened in this sprint.

It was the first time I was in Mexico, and the experience was delightful, the food, the kindness of the people, the event, the side tourism events, an overall experience that I would gladly repeat and that I can't stop recommending to my fellow Plonistas.

We also sprinted, of course. We had some interesting discussions and planned about new features and tools to happen in the next months.

• plone.distribution package
• CookiePlone - The new boilerplate generator for Plone
• plone.exportimport
• New VLT block model v3
• Documentation strategies
• Event content type PLIP
• Headless CMS story - features and market it in plone.org

The Sprint will probably happen again in 2025, stay tuned for updates! A totally recommendable experience. You can also combine it with a longer stay in Mexico for tourism or relax in a nearby beach location.

Beethoven Sprint (Bonn)

A classic of the Plone community already, the Beethoven Sprint happens yearly in Spring, hosted by kitconcept, GmbH. Having a median of 20-30 attendees each year is one of the largest Plone Sprints happening these days.

This year, it happened in mid-May, it was warm already and we had good weather. We were lucky enough that the weekend before one of the largest Star Trek / Sci-fi conventions (FedCon) in Europe nowadays, happening in Bonn, so some of us took the opportunity and attended to it too, unleashing our more geeky side just before the sprint.

Regarding the topics covered, we focused in:

• Improvements to the Teaser block
• plone.distribution package
• CookiePlone - The new boilerplate generator for Plone
• plone.exportimport
• New VLT block model v3
• Improve drag&drop experience
• Close all blockers for Volto 18

The main highlight was to close as many of the remaining blockers for Plone 6.1 and Volto 18 to happen, being CookiePlone and plone.distribution kings of the sprint.

The sprint was a success, as the Beethoven Sprint used to be. We had plenty of strategic and prolific discussions as well, all kinds of topics were covered, including finishing and agreeing on the release strategy being the fact that all the Release Managers were present at the sprint.

Buschenschank Sprint (Styria)

Another classic in the Plone events scene, the Buschenschank Sprint took place in Styria (South-East Austria) in mid-June.

Organized by Johannes Raggam, he once more delivered an amazing experience to the sprinters, while taking care of having the best venue and side activities. The Sprint takes its name, Buschenschank, which is something like a wine tavern, run by farmers who offer their own wine and cold plates. It's the South-Austrian equivalent of North-Austrian "Heurige". We visited several of them and had dinner there during our stay.

It was my first Buschenschank Sprint, as a summary, the wine and food are excellent and elevates the whole sprinting experience to new levels.

The sprint covered some interesting topics, mainly solving the blockers to make Plone 6.1 and Volto 18 happen. After the sprint, most of them were completed and thanks to it, Plone 6.1 will be happening by the end of the Summer.

Upcoming Plone Sprints

The next Plone Sprint is the Salamina Sprint, happening in Ferrara, Italy from September 24-27, 2024. The main topics are Plone accessibility and performance.

My main priority there will be to release Volto 18 and complete all the requirements before doing so. I will focus on one thing that it's on my list since a long time ago and currently is WIP: The removal of Razzle from the Volto build. The goal is to replace the old and unmaintained Razzle-based build with the modern bundler Vite.

After Ferrara, the next sprint will be the one happening at the Brasilia Plone Conference itself. The last two days of the annual Plone Conference event are devoted to a Plone Sprint too, since we are all together in the same place, why not take the opportunity to code and develop something great for Plone?

Conclusion

Sprints are great for learning, contributing and connecting with people in the community. You don't need to be highly skilled, nor your contributions have to be code-based. Other skills are needed in the community and non-coding abilities are welcomed as well. It took me a long time to realise of this fact, when I attended my first sprint I wished I had made that decision earlier.

See you at the next sprint?