The first is the need for a good distributed content management system. Since Knownet went Open Source and started using Plone as the basis of our sites, we have made a huge step in that direction. True, the workflow is still too difficult for many, and it still requires a degree of expertise beyond amy of our project partners to confidently add new items to the site, but we are getting there. The next big step will be an easy to use workflow manager providing an interface for users to place or move content to where they want it.

Another problem is keeping the sites up to date. At the moment I contribute to some 12 or 15 web sites (not all provided by Knownet, I hasten to add). Getting into the flow of each to write new ideas - or just post news - is increasingly difficult.

The answer - I think - is to use my blog as a management tool. In other words, I will write the entries for different sites in the blog and copy them into the right place. At first this will have to be done by sticking and pasting, but Mike, the systems architect at Knownet, is optimistic that we can provide a user interface to do this task. This requires more work on customising Plone - and more development (or a replacement for)of Core Blog - the Zope based blogging tool we use at them moment.

I am ever more interested in the idea of collective blogging - either by just sharing a blog site - or by using a series of interlinked blogs - all contributing to a 'central' web site.

In the next few days I will be writing a number of project news items in this blog.