Traditional media companies are in big trouble. You may have noticed. You know who else has noticed? David Pakman, currently a partner at the prestigious Venrock venture capital firm. You may also know David as the former CEO of eMusic—a fairly disruptive media company in its own right. David has over 300,000 Twitter followers and regularly blogs here about the “undoing of big media.”

Today, we ask him five questions about where the future of music intersects with the open source way.

1. One of the beautiful things about the open source software revolution is it lowered the barrier to entry for developers who wanted to create useful software. Meaning, without going to fancy schools or working for big Silicon Valley tech companies, people in any part of the world with any level of experience could contribute, and if their code was good, they were in. Is the barrier to entry for artists trying to make it in the music industry getting lower too? It sure doesn’t feel like it sometimes.

I think the barrier to entry to write or make music has always been pretty low. Provided you can learn how to play an instrument, you can write songs. The encroachment of technology into every facet of music making has lowered this barrier even further. An entire album can be recorded at great quality in a basement with a Mac and some bundled software. DJ equipment isn’t even needed anymore — you can do it all on your Mac.

The challenges have always been around marketing and distribution, and the internet changed all that. Anyone can launch a site or a myspace page and offer downloads of their music. In 2008, more than 38,000 new records were released. This was the most ever.

Becoming commercially successful by selling music or touring has never been harder, and that is because fewer people are buying music and consumers have more entertainment choices than ever before. So while it’s easier to make music, it’s harder to make a living making music.

[Read the rest of this post on opensource.com]

Remember the Seinfeld episode where Kramer had the idea to make a coffee table book about coffee tables? I always thought that was a pretty elegant idea. Well, a few months ago, some of the smart folks on Red Hat’s community architecture team had a similarly elegant idea:

Write a book about building community the open source way… and write it with a community, the open source way. Meaning, open the text up, allow interested users to contribute, and see what happens.

Brilliant.

The book is entitled The Open Source Way: Creating and nurturing communities of contributors and you can access the current text here and the wiki for contributors here.

I caught up with Karsten Wade, who is leading the project, to learn more.

There have been other books written about community-building over the last few years, but I am not aware of any others that have been written by a community. Where did the idea to start this project come from?

Our team, Community Architecture, has a strategic community role in Red Hat, and part of that is learning, distilling, and sharing knowledge.  We bring the knowledge of how to produce software the open source way to different parts of the company.  We’re all in a community of practice here, and have much to learn from each other.

Once we had the idea of a cookbook or handbook for internal needs, it was immediately clear that following the open source way with the content would be better, have more impact, and protect important knowledge in case our team gets eaten by raptors.

[Read the rest of this post on opensource.com]

Lately we’ve been working with the public sector on some community building efforts. In a recent session we introduced a team to open source principles, general use of collaborative web technologies, and the latest on-line civic participation work. Then, we asked them to do some searching on their own for public sector platforms or campaigns for participation.

Here’s what they came up with during the short span of time. You may have seen most of these sites, and many more are out there. The team was quick to point out that some organizations are definitely doing it better than others. If you have stellar, or not-so-stellar, examples share them.

Open Government Innovations Gallery
Santa Cruz Budget
Wikified Army Field Guide
CDC IdeaLab
Regulations.gov
Apps for Democracy
Massachusetts Open Data Initiative
Data.gov
Kansas Transportation Online Community

Clearly, it’s no longer groundbreaking. And, as people make that necessary switch from evangelist to practitioner, the question should be: Are we paying attention and doing things as effectively as we can?

Not all these efforts have the same aim, and with the ever-maturing taxonomy of all things open it’s important to know what model is best suited for the situation. But, what we’re interested in is community building. The most basic distinction we can make is the difference between the two often-thrown around terms crowdsourcing and open source, as David and Chris each wrote here and here, respectively.

This is where the real work and next frontier for practitioners exists. It’s not just technology, press releases, or prize money. Rather, it’s the overall strategy, design, and message of the platform (loosely defined) constructed and carried out as a coherent method for creating and engaging a community.

There are some things to pay attention to here. They might be brushed off as questions and challenges, but more importantly they’re opportunities to do things well.

-Is what we’re asking of the community in line with interest and ability?

-Are there clear goals; ones either agreed to or developed by the community?

-Is this platform reinforcing or improving a representative democracy and all that comes with it, rather than replacing or detracting from it?

-How sustainable is the community, should it be a short-term or a long-term effort?

-Do we have a way to measure the health of the community and the know-how and tools to guide it when needed?

-Are the legal and technical dimensions set appropriately so that innovation happens within and external to the community?

-Do we bring the right physical world characteristics, attitudes, and norms that we want and maybe discourage the ones we don’t want?

-Do we have an idea of even what this “we” means and where that “we” should fall on the spectrum from free-for-all to facilitator to despot?

These are just a handful of the things we work on and pay attention to daily (along with my collaborators at Georgia Tech). Anyone embarking on a community building or participation project, especially in the public sector, needs to be, too. Community building like many things will always be more of an art than a science, but with the growing examples out there we need to do a better job generalizing knowledge from both successes and failures.

Tinkering with a brand, whether public or private, and requesting the participation and precious time of others, is not something where you just roll out a platform and hope. We can and should get to the point where there is a degree of certainty in practice. And, of course, share the knowledge.

As some of you know, I care a great deal about the U.S National Design Policy Initiative. From a previous post:

The Initiative exists to encourage the government’s use of design in order to improve U.S. democratic governance and economic competitiveness. Simply put, a national design policy offers a unified vision for how citizens and government can work together to design a better nation.

Last night, I received a note from the Slideshare editors — the Redesigning America’s Future booklet and my video describing why design policy is important is currently featured on the homepage. It’s great to be a part of the world’s largest community for sharing presentations — and thank you!

(You can also view it directly here.)

Last night I attended Shel Perkins presentation at an AIGA Raleigh event; I’m a big fan. I recommend Shel’s book— Talent Is Not Enough— to any designer who is interested in the operations management of a creative firm. Shel takes the complicated issues of trademarks and copyrights and makes them easy to understand. And his advice and guidance on Cash Flow is extremely valuable to any design business owner! Shel is a passionate advocate for our profession and I can’t say enough about his significant contributions to AIGA.

When responding last night to a question on the general topic of ’spec’ work and, more specifically, about the growing trend of on-line logo factories, Shel answered that he is not a fan. I agree with Shel on his stand against spec work and his ‘old-school’ disfavor with on-line business models that exploit young, desperate or amateur talent. We see eye-to-eye on these issues. But Shel went on to make an off-hand comment regarding open source that, uncharacteristically, missed the mark.

The comment was that such ‘crowdsourcing’ creative models are a part of the ‘open source’ movement. I can understand that these approaches may seems similar, but they are not; there are a significant distinctions between the two. This needs to be better understood by the design profession if we are to play a relevant role in modern innovation efforts.

According to wikipedia:

The difference between crowdsourcing and open source is that open source production is a cooperative activity initiated and voluntarily undertaken by members of the public. In crowdsourcing the activity is initiated by a client and the work may be undertaken on an individual, as well as a group, basis. Other differences between open source and crowdsourced production relate to the motivations of individuals to participate.

In short, open source occurs when like-minded participants form a community to solve a common problem. They form a networked model; all participants benefit in some way from the solution. The ’source code’ is transparent and ‘open’ for all participants to use and improve. The community sets priorities and decides which solutions merit support and which are dropped to the side. The community is in “control.”

Crowdsourcing is driven by the agenda of one central player. The model is more like traditional competitions in which the vast majority of participants will not and do not benefit at all from participating unless their solution ‘wins.’ Even then, they may be rewarded richly or not at all. In the final analysis, a central figure— good or bad— is in control.

Both models can lead to great innovation but there are significant distinctions important in light of last night’s discussion. Open source creates a model in which the community sets the acceptable standards of behavior. Such communities do not accept and typically punish exploitative behavior. Ask Novell. Crowdsourcing models offer no such inherent protection to participants.

What’s more, I think last night’s comments may be overlooking a more important factor in the debate of design factories, and that is the increasingly commoditization of the traditional design industry. As more and more people become more visually literate, and as the tools they are given become more and more sophisticated, the traditional craft of the profession becomes less of a craft and more of a commodity. This is a natural phenomenon witnessed in the mass production of everything from furniture to candlestick making.

As hard as it may be for us to hear, it is simply not that hard to make things look good these days. Designers who do not understand this will endure a fate much like our photographer friends are suffering.

Congratulations to our friend and Change Papers partner, Leslie Boney, on his appointment to the first ever North Carolina Innovation Council. Governor Beverly Purdue announced the establishment of the Council yesterday, which will take on the task of fostering strategic investments and forming policies to stimulate the growing knowledge and innovation economy.

We wholeheartedly agree with the Governor, who said in her announcement, “To continue growing jobs in North Carolina we must make sure this state is poised to compete globally in the 21st century. Innovation is North Carolina’s launch pad to success in the global economy, and it’s a primary way for us to maintain and sharpen our competitive edge.”

Look back to the Wright Brothers, the formation of the first ever State University and the men and women who assembled the Research Triangle Park, and it’s clear that North Carolina has a long and rich history of innovation. Our task for the 21st century is to build on this strength, grow our economy, and keep North Carolina competitive.

Leslie, our hats are off to you.

Georgia Institute of Technology recently launched the Center for Innovation in Local Government, a research center focused on improving the methods and processes of governing and better meeting the needs of citizens. New Kind is proud to collaborate with the Center through Art Seavey, contributing as a Research Associate.

Through the perspective of community governance, communications technology, and the public policy environment, the Center will explore effective ways for local governments to communicate and engage with citizens, revitalize community and develop innovative and effective ways to provide municipal services. CILG pursues the vision of effective governance that encourages a sense of cooperation, trust and understanding among citizens, administrators and elected officials.

Recent work includes studies on virtual community collaboration, municipal Wi-Fi, and the implications of outsourcing municipal services. The Center for Innovation in Local Government is led by James D. White, Ph.D. and Paul M.A. Baker, Ph.D.