Why you should consider a Plone internship

Since 2004, UW Oshkosh has been fortunate in having been able to employ students to develop our Plone infrastructure and participate as key players in the deployment of Plone throughout the entire campus.  In particular, we have had great success with Computer Science and Information Systems student employees, at Administrative Computing, Reeve, MIO, the College of Business, and the College of Letters and Science.

Each student had the opportunity to acquire new skills, hone them, make contacts in the international Plone developer community, had a transformative role in how the campus looks on the web and in how thousands of faculty, staff, students, and the general public connect with UW Oshkosh, have become highly visible leading developers in the Plone world, contributed lots of code to the community -- code that is being used around the world.

These students went on to get full time jobs on campus either working directly on Plone or in related areas, or were able to point at their accomplishments here, the skills they developed, to go on to good full time jobs elsewhere.  Some are still currently employed full time on campus.

• server stack
• Python
• Zope
• object databases
• Plone
• modern OO design & coding
• complex frameworks
• coding practices and methodologies
• distributed/remote work processes
• modern software development tools
• client contact
• requirements gathering
• implementation strategy
• test frameworks
• production deployment methods
• repeatability

Be a Key Player in the Transformation of Campus

Years ago, the campus web sites were a hodge podge of chaotic, not particularly aesthetically pleasing sites, with content that was often out of date.  The sites were hard to use and to navigate because they were not consistent in their appearance or design.

In early 2004 we discovered Plone - the open source content management system that lets you do everything through the browser, and is easy to use from anywhere you have an internet connection and a web browser.

The first transformative Plone effort was a grass roots campaign to get the campus to adopt it officially, and two years ago when it was adopted officially a wholesale web site migration project began  - and we are currently at 270 sites and counting.

What's in store for the future of Plone on campus?  We will continue to convert web sites to Plone, and we will create new Plone sites for new programs, initiatives, and projects.  The campus-wide intranet project has been in development and will allow us to move our business processes online in workflow applications.  We need bright, motivated students to help us continue developing the tools to bring workflow application design and deployment to users across campus, and to exploit better the features of Plone.

Who is Hiring?

As of this writing (Dec. 10, 2011), there are no officially open positions for students, but these are the units who currently employ active Plone programmers and/or Plone web site maintainers/designers:

• Polk Library
• Administrative Computing (for Plone in general on campus, and for the campus Intranet project)
• Academic Computing
• Reeve Union
• ResLife MIO
• Administrative Services
• College of Nursing
• College of Education and Human Services
• College of Business
• Lifelong Learning and Continuing Education
• Integrated Marketing and Communications
• various departments and programs

There is demand for a wide range of Plone skills across campus - many units know they need help with their Plone site, but do not have the time to dedicate to it or would like assistance from someone with a more technical mindset who can show them how best to make use of Plone's powerful features.

If you think you have the qualifications necessary to contribute to our Plone effort, please contact us and we will try to find something for you!  We are always interested in meeting and working with people, young and old, who want to learn and apply new skills.