Posted by
stephen – October 14, 2009
Today I attended the IBM Academy of Technology’s annual meeting and saw Prof. Barry Wellman’s keynote talk entitled “Networked: The New Social Operating System”. Wellman’s talk (based on his soon to be released book of the same title) was centred around pervasive social networks and their effect on society, culture and everyday life. In this post I am going to summarize some of Wellman’s talking points and add some of the thoughts I took away from the lecture.
A quick note on Barry – as you might have guessed based on his research, Prof. Wellman is well connected and posts a lot of interesting information and papers. Check out his website, or follow him on twitter.
More…
Tweet this 
Delicious 
Digg This Post 
Facebook
Posted by
stephen – October 7, 2009
Posted by
stephen – September 17, 2009
Based on research being undertaken at Carleton University’s TIM program (of which I am a graduate) Peter Carbone (Nortel) and Tony Bailetti (Carleton) have developed a model of the open source engagements strategies organizations use. Broken into 5 types of interactions, Carbone & Bailetti break down the actions and benefits of each strategy. This type of work highlights the shifting maturity of open source users who now realize that open source can be used for much more than a shortcut to product release.
The Carbone/Bailetti interaction strategy model
The model is comprised of five interaction strategies. Appropriated value is increased as the number or projects interacted with increases. In latter stages value is created and captured based on the interactions with open source. (from http://www.slideshare.net/brianhurley/day-2-morning-open-source-carbone-and-weiss)
More…
Tweet this Delicious Digg This Post Facebook
Posted by
stephen – September 14, 2009
The majority of people who make it here probably have a very good knowledge of what open source is and how it works. For the rest of you this will be a short primer and I will leave you with a few links for further reading.
Open source software (OSS) is becoming increasingly popular in many organizations from small start-ups looking to decrease startup cost to multinationals trying to establish and steer billion-dollar ecosystems.
So what is open source anyways?
OSS is software for which the source code is freely available. This means that whether you purchased, downloaded or otherwise obtained the software you will always be able to obtain the source code, look at how the program works, tweak it, compile it, etc. There are many different open source licenses which dictate the use of a particular piece of software. In open source terms, an application is often called a project, so to rephrase the last sentence: there are many different open source licenses which dictate the use of a particular project. For a list of licenses currently approved by the Open Source Initiative (OSI) go here: http://www.opensource.org/licenses. More…
Tweet this Delicious Digg This Post Facebook
Posted by
stephen – September 11, 2009
Innovating is an important factor in growing your business, even more so in the midst of an economic downturn. The problem with innovation is that it is hard to consistently generate new innovations that can brought to market. Innovation often occurs sporadically and in small pockets in different areas around the organization. In order to create meaningful innovations on a regular basis, a culture of innovation must be adopted within the organization and a centralized innovation centre can be helpful in fostering such a culture.