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Over the last few months, the battle to define the meaning of the word "open" has intensified into one of the more interesting brand positioning exercises I've seen in the technology industry. I thought I'd do a quick report from the front lines, diving
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Is there such a thing as the open source community? A related question was covered here before, about whether the word community means anything anymore. But, I still see the term “the open source community” regularly lobbed. Here on opensource.com a search turns up 61 articles. [Some were for
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Over the last week, a handful of folks have reached out and asked me what I think about the events surrounding the launch, then crowdsourcing, then full repeal of the new Gap logo (if you haven't already heard the story, catch up here).Honestly, I'd been
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A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to meet Molly Dix and Jeff Cope, who run the Open Innovation Advisory Services group at RTI. For those not familiar with RTI, it is one of the world's preeminent research institutes, founded by a group of scientists in 1958
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A big part of my day job is to help organizations with their brand positioning and strategy. So when I read the article in the New York Times this past Sunday about TEDx, the relatively new (and incredibly popular) offshoot of the legendary TED conference, I thought it might be
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On occasion I get the opportunity to speak publicly about some of the things I've learned over the years applying the open source way in organizations. In almost every case, when the Q&A session arrives, I'm greeted with at least one question from a
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If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around to hear it, does it make a sound? I don't know the answer, but I can tell you that brand positioning not effectively communicated and embedded both inside and outside your organization will definitely not make
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Jonathan Rauch wrote in the National Journal Saturday on the “radical decentralization” of the tea party. A “Tea Party Patriots coordinator and co-founder” talks about it this way:“I use the term open-source politics. This is an open source movement.... The movement as a whole is smart.” No doubt, this
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I've never been much for clubs. When I was young, I made a lousy cub scout. I wasn't a real "joiner" in high school or college either (just enough to get by) and I still don't get actively involved in many professional
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Maybe some day we'll look back on the role of the manager in our organizations and laugh. Such a quaint trend. Kind of like having The Clapper in every room of your house, or wearing multiple Swatch watches, or working out to Richard Simmons videos. Each seemed really
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Almost exactly two years ago I left Red Hat to start what would become New Kind. I'd been there for four and a half years. It was wonderful and challenging; one of the great adventures of my life.There are several reasons it was so rewarding: + I was
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Last post, I discussed how governments, especially state and local, should be thinking differently about the ways they engage online with the people they serve. A quick recap: governments have a relatively indefinite shelf-life; they have powers and likewise responsibilities that come along with being a monopoly; and given people