[Zope] Zope Projects in NL/Europe?

[Jonathan]

> > Just wondering: are there any Zope projects are available in the
> > Netherlands/Benelux/Europe?
>
> What do you mean by 'available'?

Ai, just spotted a grammatical error in my own message. By available I
mean projects that might need extra people/expertise in programming and
design. Most of our income is made by putting our people to work on
other people's projects (contract programming).

What I am interested in is the 'general state of the market'.

> What do you mean by 'hard to find' ? Where did you look?

On this list ;)  My own network is not large enough, our sales people
are not looking for it because we already have Perl in our 'open source
toolkit'. I can recommend Zope for use in our smaller projects, but the
larger projects tend to be Java based because that's what most of the
people around here have experience with and the client requires brand
names.

> It's a matter of convincing the
> client. Basically your client has to find Zope with your aid.

Try selling Zope to a large bank or an insurance company. Yes sir, we
would like to connect it to your mainframe. No sir, Python is not a
snake, it's a programming language ;)

> I think there is (lots of) money to make, but if your company has no
> strategy for Zope (only a, short sighted, strategy based, only on the
> major brand names) you are going nowhere with your Zope expertise
> within your company. Btw, if you have Zope knowledge you know that
Zope
> has no problems with Microsoft and Oracle.

It's a matter of analyzing your clients needs/wishes etc. and matching
the outcome of this process with the right tools, platform etc. :)  And
don't forget experience and expertise available within the company. Most
of our clients require brand name products that are well supported.
Don't get me started on the quality of support you get from Oracle
though ;)

We have large amounts of experience with Oracle and Microsoft
technologies. We have few content heavy projects, the emphasis is on
transaction heavy applications and backend connectivity.

> Btw Zope can be integrated with
> JSP/Java, SOAP/XML-RPC and Perl.

Yes I know. JSP/Java not that easy, but SOAP/XML-RPC and Perl are doable
;)

> My background,
> I''m co-president/owner of a Dutch based ICT consultancy firm
> (founded in
> 1987). Our strategy is now focussed on Zope webapplications
> based on our
> 'crystal ball' (content management is the keyword) and input from our
> clients.
> Besides that I'm one of the keymembers of a small team that developes
> webapplications, with Zope, for the Faculty of Social
> Sciences of the Leiden
> University. Part of this system is an advanced webbased
> learning system.

Impressive :)  Well, if you need any help, let me know ;)

Cya
Jonathan