Symphony.

Following the initiative of the German Symphony Developers Network I have been thinking (and registered http://www.symphony-cms.nl) and would like to discuss a similar initiative with you.

I have been talking with @kanduvisla and others about the 'state' of Symphony CMS in the Netherlands. Unfortunately Symphony CMS is still quite unknown. Although there are 288 known members there are only a handful of active developers. Besides some freelancers and small businesses I can think of only one bigger agency using Symphony on a regular basis (please correct me if I'm wrong).

Aside: my guess is that 80+% of NL members are inactive: probably people who signed up to check it out but later abandoned Symphony. Although the numbers are 'nice' it might be a good idea to think about a way to 'garden' these member lists too…

Besides Wordpress there's quite a strong Dutch userbase for Joomla, Drupal and (lately more and more) Typo3. I know Typo3 is 'up and coming' partially because it is 'marketed' as the ideal CMS for compliance to the Dutch Web Guidelines (something, IMO, Symphony is equally - if not better- suited for). Anyway, we know Symphony CMS definitely has a lot to offer to people currently using those systems… I am convinced many more Dutch webworkers would embrace Symphony if they were to be 'introduced'.

To this end I believe a small, 'local', symphony-cms.nl website could be valuable. It could be an introduction to the Symphony CMS specifically targeted at a Dutch audience and could contain some Dutch articles and/or translated Guides/Tutorials, Dutch translations, Showcase, Testimonials etc. @Kanduvisla and I are also quite keen on organizing informal 'off-line' meetups etc.

What do you think? I am particularly interested in the opinion of Core members since one of the things I would, obviously, want to avoid is to distract from the official 'source': getsymphony.com

Are you OK with the .nl domain name? Would it be OK to use (part of) the Symphony branding (i.e. logo, colours)?

Do you have other ideas on how we could effectively 'evangelize Symphony' locally?

<dutch>Nederlandse Symphony gebruikers/ontwikkelaars? Zien jullie dit zitten? Zou je mee willen werken (vertaling/testimionals, etc) Ik hoor graag van jullie!</dutch>

I'm in! Additionally, I will definitely put in a good word for Symphony when we are going to review a new CMS for funda.nl. With 350.000 unique visitors and 10 million page views per day it would be a great showcase :)

@Remie thx. Funda on Symphony sure would be awe.some ;)

Do you have any thoughts on how to best go about this? Do you think there's a 'need' for a Dutch translation of e.g. Tutorials? Most Dutch developers are quite comfortable with the English language so my first guess is that it's mostly a matter of 'spreading the word'.

Cool idea! I'd definitely in get in touch with German guys and see if their site is available as an ensemble that you could use as a starting point (if you wanted to that is)

Yes, our site is available on Github. Have a look here.

@Nils nice! I'll sure have a look. One thing I'm thinking about, though, is the target audience: I think I would want to focus more on 'users' than on NL developers per se.

Well, we defined "developer" as those working with Symphony – let them be designer or PHP developer. Those creating site with Symphony.