After 13 years at ONE/Northwest, I’m feeling a little fatigued. Worse,  I feel like I’ve become disconnected from the wellspring of inspiration that makes social change work possible.  I need to simultaneously unplug and reconnect.

I plan to use this time to relax, recharge, do some hiking, take some photos, read a bunch, talk with lots of folks and refill the idea-tank that has sustained my journey in the environmental and open-source movements over the past decade.   Of course, I don’t expect to find much of that inspiration in my navel, so I hope to be buying many of you coffee, beer and/or ice cream in the next few months, or at the very least to hit you up on Skype.[1]

I’m profoundly grateful to ONE/Northwest for getting a sabbatical policy in place and allowing me to beta test it.[2]  Time to recharge is an incredible gift, and it’s an amazing feeling to be part of such a supportive team and to know that the work will be in such great hands while I’m gone.

A few logistical notes:

• My ONE/Northwest email will continue to work, although I will be checking it much less frequently.  Please feel free to email me (jonstahl at gmail.com) if you need to reach me.  I’m eager to hear about what is exciting and inspiring you to change the world.
• Dave Averill is ONE/Northwest’s main point of intake for new work, so if you’re not sure who to talk to at ONE/Northwest about something, he’s a great starting point.  (davida at onenw.org)
• Plone community friends: I’ll continue to serve in my role as Plone Foundation board president, and I look forward to seeing you at Plone Conference 2009 in Budapest this October!

Be seeing you!

[1] If that plan sounds a little vague, you’re right!  My plan is to have no plan for at least a few weeks.  I know many of you have taken sabbaticals: if there’s something I absolutely must do (or avoid doing), I’d love to hear about it!

[2] I hope we follow in the footsteps of Sightline Institute and make sabbaticals mandatory.  That’s hardcore sustainability!

This is substantially similar to how Plone and Drupal have always thought that GPL applies to themes and add-on products, and it’s nice to see a project as large as Wordpress putting its heft behind this common-sense interpretation of the GPL.

Thanks to Google Summer of Code 2009, Timo Stollenwerk is leading the work on plone.app.discussion, a modern, lightweight, easy-to-extend commenting system for Plone.   Martin Aspeli is serving as the project mentor, and is playing a large role in designing the architecture, project management and quality assurance — all with a goal of ensuring that we have code of sufficient quality to land in Plone 4 later this year.  I’m playing the role of the “customer,” helping to articulate and prioritize requirements and testing the results.

Check it out!

Our roadmap and progress log is public at http://www.pivotaltracker.com/projects/15135.  As you can see, we’re using an Agile development process on this, thanks to Martin.   Basic commenting functionality is now working, and we’ve got iterations planned out for the rest of the summer (and beyond!).  You can give our development version a try at http://gsoc.timostollenwerk.net/.  More experienced users can get their hands on the code with our development buildout.