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Jun 18, 03:00 pm: Has anyone tested out the Buzz Monitor
The Buzz Monitor) is a great example of the way that organizational learning and software development can happen in an open source world. From the site:
It is hard to make sense of the amount of information available on the web today, yet it is critical to listen and engage. We developped the BuzzMonitor, an open source application that “listens” to what people are saying about the World Bank across blogs and other sites in order to help the organization understand and engage in social media.After receiving positive feedback about the application and seeing how many organizations are struggling to make sense of online conversations, we decided to release it as a packaged, open source application. We think it is a good, affordabe tool for non-profit organizations, NGOs, foundations and think-tanks to see and hear what people are saying about them, their programs and understand the perception around important issues.
It’s that second paragraph that’s the real kicker. It would be great to see a way for that kind of development to happen on a regular basis. As someone in an TechSoup that does some of that kind of development, I know how tough it can be to make the extra investment to make it available to others.
I’ve heard folks banty around a variety of ideas — a hacker lab, a development co-op, a bounty system for doing joint development — but I wonder, short of having the assets of the World Bank, what will really work?
tagged: buzzmonitor, worldbank, tools, development
pierre guillaume wielezynski
Hi Marnie, thanks for your post on the buzzmonitor and thanks for your blog, if I’m correct, you are the one behind the collaborative use of nptech no? Definitely was a great idea, as shown by it wide adoption. Anyway, we are pretty excited about it…yes the bank has assets but trust me, the buzz was developed on a shoestring budget, we are looking for other org, if they like it, to perhaps help develop it a bit more, and a bit more and a bit more ;)
Cheers,
PG
David Geilhufe
After two years of actively providing the service of developing software so it can be redistributed broadly through the sector, my conclusion is that no, there is no way to regularly distribute innovation… there simply are no incentives to build reusable tools unless there is a high-profit revenue module attached.
At the same time, Buzz Monitor is the direct result of an open source culture… Buzz Monitor is built from Drupal (www.drupal.org) by Development Seed, a Drupal vendor.
First the client has to believe in sharing and redistribution.
Then the client has to invest their shoestring budget in a healthy, sharing ecology (Drupal), making redistribution possible.
Because the client chose a vendor, Development Seed, that had a values alignment with sharing and redistribution, the software was actually made available. (Keep in mind that even in the Drupal community, those vendors are few and far between)
So even though there is no regular way to redistribute innovation, there is a reliable way to do it.
Eric Gundersen
Marnie,
Thanks for your kind words. You are very right on the longterm support/development needs. While the system we built for Pierre was designed to be a first round version, it has already had huge benefits to the open source community. For example, Leech – the aggregator powering the BuzzMonitor – is now the most downloaded aggregator in Drupal. We work to get it all committed back :). This is just one example of how the Bank’s support of Drupal has made the open source community stronger.
And this tool isn’t finished yet. In addition to the work done by the World Bank’s team, we’ve invested an additional 100,000 hours into the system in the six months (http://www.developmentseed.org/blog/managingnews) since we build the BuzzMonitor, and we’ve rolled it out for several other organizations. Each new version is built off the previous one and we focus on fixing bugs, improving performance, and adding new features. Our next big step is to turn this tool into an installer profile. My hope is that the installer profile, once upgraded to Drupal 6 or Drupal 7, will put this tool into the hands of hundreds of organizations.
Things are really jamming now. We’re working on a new aggregator during the Google Summer of Code ( http://groups.drupal.org/rss-aggregation) and will have some exciting developments to show in the next few months. We’ll also continue to coordinate with Pierre and his team to make sure our we don’t duplicate efforts and can all benefit from each other. That’s the real beauty of the open source community
Eric
dug
Hi Marnie, I was wondering if you received any feedback re users’ experience of the product?
My LAMP environment is Perl only for admin/security reasons and I was trying to find out how useful the Buzz Monitor is. I’ll fire up PHP if I need to but for the time being it would be great to find out more.
Best, Dug