Weblog

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: , , ,

Marnie Webb  |  Comment [4]

Mar 3, 05:59 pm: Open Source is Hard

At MashupCamp, I spent some time talking with Kieran Lal of CivicSpace Labs. Terrific ranging conversation—what nonprofit users need and/or want from a CMS, the difference between a CMS and community-ware, what technical assistance providers need, how do you provide motivation for consultants. But one of the bits that hit me is that open source is hard.

I use TextPattern to run this site; WordPress to run my other blog. At work, we use Drupal and Civic Space. The neglected nptech community is on Civic Space. SharpReader feeds my news habit and you can guess what I browse with. I love the idea of flock and use it when I know I’m going to be doing a heavy browse-and-blog session.

I’ve never contributed word one to any of those efforts.

I’d wager I’m a good user. I’m savvy. I can express what does and doesn’t work for me. I can probably learn to write a good bug report. But I don’t. And I don’t because open source is hard and I just want it to be easy.

Open source – real open source – is more about community than about software. The range of free riders like me, we aren’t really using open source. We’re benefiting from the folks who do. But really using it means being a part of it. It means writing about the features that you want or don’t want. It means taking the time to make sure the bug you found is properly logged and logging it if it isn’t. It means contributing documentation and code if you’re so inclined. I say all this like I know what I’m talking about.

I say I use open source but you know what? I don’t.

tagged: , , , , , , , , ,

Marnie Webb  |  Comment [7]

Oct 5, 06:19 pm: [Web 2.0] Open Source Infrastructure

Presenter:

Marc Canter, CEO, Broadband Mechanics
Tantek Çelik, Chief Technologist, Technorati
Brian Dear, Founder and CEO, EVDB, Inc.
Matt Mullenweg, CNET Networks
Toni Schneider, VP Yahoo! Developer Network, Yahoo!

Session description:

Open APIs and standards are quickly becoming the infrastructure of Web 2.0. But these standards are moving beyond the scope of just large players like Yahoo! or Amazon. Open standards are now the differentiating factor for leadership, allowing small startups to contribute significant functionality to a growing world of interconnected applications and services. This vision of a mesh-like Web 2.0 is driving their energy and business models.

This workshop will review many of the leading standards and present those leaders in an interactive format so that new standards, functionality and potential can be discussed in an open manner. Panelists will present their technical standards, while also discussing the ramifications of what happens when these standards go viral and trickle down the pyramid to the mainstream. More specifically:

The world of micro-content will be discussed both from a “microformats” worldview, as well as a “structured blogging” perspective.

Open Media will be a general theme, and tagging will be discussed as well as how tagging fits in and drives ALL of these standards.

Advanced services such as pinging and aggregating will be discussed as well as new eco-systems (such as Events or Reviews) and what happens when trends are combined together—like social networking and blogging (a la Y! 360 or GoingOn.)

Finally, discussions will be geared towards whether or not non-profit organizations are the right vehicle for organizing and establishing standards (as opposed to a free and open marketplace) and what is the future of open source infrastructure and what audience participants can do to contribute to this open movement.

Session Notes:

  • Canter: do we need an open source infrastructure for web 2.0? if we don’t have that are we just switching our alliance from companies like Microsoft to companies like Google? Both proprietary and able to claim ownership.
  • Dear: events are still hard to find. eventful is working to solve that problem; making it easy to share events in multiple ways; looked at what has worked in the blog world and what has made blogs discoverable and take those lessons; indexing and searching information, for example; built a ping server for events; looks like it’s a way to aggregate events without having to use one specific system; way to save unstructured events
  • Canter: requires that people to sign on to a specific event standard so that the type of ping server described above would work
  • Mullenweg: Ping-o-matic helps to collaborate and provides a free way into dealing with various ping servers and providing services to companies like Technorati; a ping is a way to indicate something has been updated so that the information can be indexed. A ping server helps to manage that information flow. Things other than blog posts can trigger pings but that’s nascent at this point; still decisions to be made about the fields that describe a ping (title, content, etc)
  • Schneider: Yahoo! is working to provide access to their tools via APIs; opens up the platform and gives people a way to remix the tools and to participate
  • Canter: when do you decide to work with others and when do you decide to buy something (flickr, upcoming.org)?
  • Schneider: RSS is an example of embracing something instead of owning it. Yahoo! spits out more RSS feeds than anyone wants to count.

(lost some track of the session)

  • Microformats should solve a very specific problem
  • Microformats.org couldn’t have been done without the open source tools that exist.
  • Microformats are an example of one type of infrastructure
  • general discussion that an agreement on formats allows people to use a variety of services on a variety of different platforms—mix-and-match—so that you can pull together all of your participation
  • what’s the benefit of this structured data? How does it help the end user? That’s the question that people need to be talking about at next year’s Web 2.0
  • discussion of how you create a nonprofit to manage these standards and the services that maintain them
  • MusicBrainz

Other notes:

tagged: , , nptech, ,

Marnie Webb  |  Comment