Web 2.0: What CIOs Want vs. What CIOs Have

Published on March 21, 2007 in cio, enterprise, forrester, intelpedia, web 2.0 and wiki. Closed

I was just reading Richard MacManus’ coverage of Forrester’s recent reports about web 2.0 in the enterprise:

“Forrester Research has just released two reports concerning ‘web 2.0′ in the enterprise. Forrester recently surveyed 119 CIOs on the topic and their answers illustrate what IT honchos want – and don’t want – from social software technologies such as blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, social networking, and content tagging.

According to the report entitled ‘CIOs Want Suites For Web 2.0′, the enterprise Web 2.0 market “is beginning to consolidate”. Apparently CIOs have a strong desire to purchase web 2.0 products “as a suite, as well as an equally strong desire to purchase these technologies from large, incumbent software vendors.” 61% of respondents indicated that they would prefer both a suite solution and a large, incumbent vendor. According to the report, “integration issues, longevity concerns, and the occasional lack of polish” are counting against small vendors.” (Quote from Richard MacManus on Read/WriteWeb)

The data is interesting, but I am not sure that Forrester was asking the right questions or the right people. My experience with web 2.0, and other innovative technologies (open source, etc.) is that there is a big gap between what many CIOs want / think they have and what is really happening within their organization. Those of us who are passionate about web 2.0 technologies just tend to use them. This often means that we bring things like IM, wikis, and more into our corporate life as productivity tools regardless of whether or not the technology is officially sanctioned. For example, Intelpedia, an internal Intel wiki, was started as a grass roots effort on a test server without “official” buy in because Josh Bancroft and other Intel employees thought that Intel needed an internal wiki to help manage information. A better study might have been to ask people a few levels below the CIO about the web 2.0 technologies currently being used in their organization.

CIOs may want web 2.0 suites from larger, incumbent software providers, but I suspect that the reality of what is actually used within enterprises over the next few years will differ significantly from this CIO vision.

Web2.Open

Published on March 19, 2007 in barcamp, tara hunt, twitter, web 2.0 and web 2.0 expo. Closed

A few people are organizing a BarCamp style event dubbed Web2.Open to coincide with the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco on April 17th and 18th.

“This open event blends some pre-scheduled content with an open grid where the attendees fill in the sessions they either want to discuss or present themselves. It is the perfect space to provide the community at large with a place to connect with other attendees, learn more about elements of Web 2.0, and share one’s knowledge and experiences.” (Quote From the Web2.Open Site).

I found this thanks to Tara’s Twitter feed.

I haven’t decided if I’m going to attend or not. It’s pretty hard for me to justify a purely web 2.0 conference with my open source job, unless I get invited to speak on an open source or community panel (hint, hint).

Save the date! BarCamp Portland Tech Unconference, May 11-12

Published on March 17, 2007 in barcamp, portland and portland barcamp meetup. Closed

I am pleased to announce that BarCamp is coming to Portland on May 11-12! We will also be kicking off the regular DemoCamp event series during BarCamp to highlight tech startup activity in the Portland area.

Tech + Geek + Culture. The event for the Portland tech community, produced BY the Portland tech community.

What is BarCamp? It is an ad-hoc gathering born from the desire for people to share and learn in an open environment. It is an intense event with discussions, demos, and interaction from participants.

BarCamp is a FREE event and the content is determined by the attendees. The event will be hosted at CubeSpace, which has a number of conference rooms for breakout sessions, a large main meeting area, wireless access, easy access to public transportation, bike storage, and ample parking. Thanks to Eva and David at CubeSpace for signing up as space sponsors for the event (and to Ray at AboutUs for sponsoring the additional space costs).

We need your help to make BarCamp Portland a fantastic event for the tech community in Portland. Here’s what you can do…

1) Forward this information on to people in the Portland area that may have an interest in attending. As we have done little marketing of the event (so far), assume that your local tech social network doesn’t know about it yet.

2) If you have not already added yourself to the BarCamp Portland wiki page as an attendee, please do so. This will help us get a more accurate attendance count and plan accordingly (you want food, right?):

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland

3) Add a session idea for the event. This could be a talk, a demo, a roundtable discussions – whatever! Please add it to the Proposed Sessions section on the wiki page:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortland

4) Attend the BarCamp Portland Meetup this Thursday (03/22) evening 5:30-8pm at Jive Software downtown. Free beer on tap (thanks, Jive!), the opportunity to network with the tech community in Portland, and help plan for BarCamp Portland. More details:

http://barcamp.org/BarCampPortlandMeetups

5) Help identify sponsors. CubeSpace and AboutUs are already onboard as sponsors for the space and related costs (and Jive Software has been our ongoing meetup and planning sponsor). We are looking for sponsors to cover food, drinks, and t-shirts.

I hope to see you this Thursday evening at Jive Software for our monthly tech meetup and BarCamp Portland planning meeting!

Informal Portland BarCamp Meetup March 22

Published on March 16, 2007 in barcamp, portland and portland barcamp meetup. Closed

Our next informal Portland BarCamp Meetup has been scheduled! We have also settled on the fourth Thursday of every month as a regular date for the event. Any local techies are welcome to attend.

When: Thursday, March 22nd
Time: 5:30pm – 8:00 pm
Where: Jive Software Office (317 SW Alder St Ste 500)
Sponsored by: Jive Software

Jive Software

Jive Software is located on Alder near 3rd. Parking is available in a nearby parking garage, and it is short walk from the Max / Bus (directions to Jive Software).

If you plan to attend, please RSVP on the Portland BarCamp Meetup wiki (RSVP required):

The meetup will be very informal and similar in format to previous meetings. We’ll do a few introductions, talk for a few minutes about organizing the BarCamp, and then see where the discussion goes.

If you would like to receive notifications about any last minute changes, future meetups, and other PortlandBarCamp communications, please join our Google Group to receive email announcements.

Google Groups
Subscribe to BarCampPortland

Email:

Browse Archives at groups.google.com

We have also created a BarCamp Portland Google Calendar for upcoming events and posted the event to Upcoming.org.

We are also trying to gain support for a real BarCamp event in Portland. We will start the planning process when we get enough people signed up on the Wiki, so please add yourself to the wiki if you want to attend a Portland BarCamp event!

She’s Such a Geek

Published on March 14, 2007 in annalee newitz, geek, sxsw and women. Closed


I highly recommend reading “She’s Such a Geek” edited by Annalee Newitz and Charlie Anders. Annalee and I were on a panel at sxsw, and I picked up a copy of the book during her book signing at the event. The book contains a series of essays written by various woman geeks of all types (science geeks, computer geeks, gaming geeks, and more). Even though I was already reading another book, I decided to read one of the essays while I was waiting for my plane home from Austin. I kept reading until I finished the ENTIRE book (granted, I had several delays making the trip from Austin to Portland a little longer than normal, but I could not put the damn book down!)

I do not typically read books “for women” or “about women”. Why? I am not entirely sure. Maybe it is my way of rebelling against stereotypical gender expectations. As a child, I was a tomboy more comfortable playing with snakes, salamanders, and frogs than with Barbie Dolls. Today I work in technology, blog for fun, and watch BSG religiously. Maybe I try so hard to resist gender stereotypes that I go too far in the other direction avoiding anything that looks feminine. This may just inspire me to write my own geeky girl essay.

I agree with Katie Hafner, Technology Writer for The New York Times, quoted on the back of the book: “These personal essays are exhilirating, hilarious, inspiring, and infuriating. Anyone with a daughter should read this book. Then make sure she applies to M.I.T.”

Open vs. Controlled Knowledge at sxsw

Published on March 13, 2007 in community, content, sxsw and wikia. Closed

I attended the Open Knowledge vs. Controlled Knowledge panel this morning, and Gil Penchina, CEO of Wikia, made a really good point. Robert Capps from Wired had just been talking about how vandalism has been a big issue for Wired whenever they open something up for community contribution. Gil’s point is that if things have been tightly controlled and are suddenly opened up as a free-for-all, you can end up with what he called “principal for a day” mentality where the community wants to change everything and really mess with the people who have been in control for so long. At Wikia, since it has been completely open from the beginning, they have seen less vandalism. The Wikia community feels ownership for the content: they watch the content, monitor changes, and make immediate corrections when things go wrong because they have a vested interest and feel ownership for the content.

Gil also pointed out that not everything should be transparent. At Wikia, the content is open, but the bathrooms still have doors and walls – there are some things that people want to see and other things they do not need or want to see.

From my perspective, this balance is important. Too far in either direction (open or closed) can create problems within the community, and a drastic shift in the balance between open / closed can also result in issues. Achieving and maintaining this balance within a community can be a difficult and tricky process, but it seems to be better to err on the side of open rather than closed.

About Our sxsx Panel, “Open Source: Tell me Why I Care”

Published on March 11, 2007 in annalee newitz, blogher, conference, elisa camahort, erica rios, open source, speaking and sxsw. Closed

This morning, I was lucky enough to be on the “Non-Developers to Open Source Acolytes: Tell Me Why I Care” panel with Annalee Newitz, Erica Rios, and Elisa Camahort organized by BlogHer. We had quite a few people attending, and some great questions and lively participation from the audience; one comment from Erica even drove the audience into spontaneous applause!

I love doing panel sessions, and this one was a lot of fun. Liz Henry was even kind enough to post a great play by play, live-blogging style post for the session, so I will skip the detailed summary here and point you to Liz’s detailed notes.

Kimberly Blessing even called this the “Best SXSW Panel Ever” … cool!

Update 3/14: A few additional reviews of the panel at InformationWeek, Techory.com, BlogHer, On Women and Technology, and probably others I missed.

Picture is also courtesy of Liz Henry – thanks, Liz!

BarCamp Austin near sxsw

Published on March 10, 2007 in barcamp, barcamp austin, coworking and sxsw. Closed

BarCamp Austin is running in parallel with sxsw today, so I have been spending the afternoon here at BarCamp. The side conversations with really cool people are one of the biggest benefits of a BarCamp. I found another person to help organize BarCamp Portland (Thanks Alex!), talked to Chris Messina and Tara Hunt about coming to kick off BarCamp Portland, hung out with Scott Kveton (is it a bad thing that we both have to travel from PDX to some other city to chat?), and discussions with many other cool people.

Chris and Tara also held a meetup to talk about co-working. We hope to get something like this started in Portland, so it was really interesting to hear about what has / has not worked for them. A few dos / don’ts: don’t hold it in a space where someone lives; do use word of mouth rather than marketing to attract interesting and like-minded people; do have good insurance. I should have taken better notes in this session, but it was just too interesting to open the computer.

They are also doing print on demand T-Shirts, which we should think about for Portland. Pick a size, pick a color, pick a design, give them a little $$, and viola! you have a T-Shirt (they even had small T-shirts!) If you know anyone in Portland who can bring a mobile, on demand printing unit, please drop me an email (geekygirldawn at the gmail).

Thoughts on Anonymity and Identity in Communities from SXSW

Published on March 10, 2007 in blogging, collaboration, comments, community, Jyte, OpenID and sxsw. Closed

I just listened to an interesting panel at sxsw on World Domination via Collaboration. One of the many great conversations during this discussion related to anonymity in communities. One panelist allows anonymous comments on her blog because she wants to know what people really think, even if she don’t like it or agree with it. Another panelist mentioned Slashdot’s use of anonymous coward, which highlights the fact that people value comments more from people who share a name and identity. I also allow anonymous comments on my blog (with captcha and other spam filters). Some trolls hide behind anonymity to say nasty things, but I have been lucky so far to only have a few of those comments. I find that the vast majority of people commenting will chose to share a name or other identity, but I am not comfortable forcing it on people. I prefer to have people share an identity because they want to, not because it is required in order to leave a comment. Like many people, I value the comments from people who associate their comments with an identity over those who choose to remain anonymous.

The panel members talked about how people in a community can be anonymous from the standpoint of not sharing a real name / real identity, but having a log in and identity on the site. This is a better solution from a community perspective where people tend to interact together over a longer period of time. Community members get to know each other based on the site identity. I have noticed this recently with my interactions on Jyte. Some people share a real name, others share some other identity, but you get to know these people based on this identity whether it is an “anonymous” identity or a “real world” identity. Jyte uses OpenID, which is a great way to facilitate identity management within a community, since it gives people control over their identities and allows them to use their identity (or multiple identities) across sites.

I am looking forward to more really great sessions at sxsw this weekend!

OpenID Gains Additional Traction with WordPress.com

Published on March 6, 2007 in JanRain, OpenID, scott kveton and wordpress.com. Closed

I have become a big proponent of OpenID lately. I think it is a great solution to the growing problem of managing your online identity and login across many sites.

Today, WordPress.com announced that they would begin supporting OpenID:

“OpenID is a new standard that hopes to alleviate some of the pain, and we’ve just made it available to everyone who has a WordPress.com blog. This means you can sign in to a growing number of sites using your existing WordPress.com account.” (Quote from WordPress.com)

This is great news, but so far, it looks like a one way deal. You can use WordPress.com OpenID credentials to log into other sites, but you cannot use other OpenID providers to post to WordPress.com:

“Unfortunately, you cannot login to WordPress (at least from what I can tell) with an external OpenID. This means that WordPress.com is just a provider of OpenID’s and not a consumer of OpenID’s. So I can’t use my MyOpenID or my LiveJournal OpenID post comments on WordPress.com blogs. Hopefully support for that will be coming soon.” (Quote from Scott Kveton, CEO of JanRain)

I suspect that WordPress.com is testing the waters by becoming an OpenID to provider as a first step. If it is successful, I would not be surprised if they decided to accept OpenID’s to login and post to WordPress.com.