As he wrapped up, Aslam Raffee reflected: “We’ve done very well in terms of setting policy, but very poorly at implementation. We’ve got to fix that.” Aslam is one of three people leading to roll out of South Africa’s government-wide commitment to open source. And he’s willing to admit: making it work ain’t easy. More Under the Hood: Open Source @ gov.za
Category: opensource
Mozillian brainpower and passion. Yay!
As the old saying goes: ‘There’s nothing like getting stuck behind a rockslide with 400 of your closest friends.’ Okay, maybe it’s not an old saying yet … but it will be as people mythologize and remember the 2008 Firefox Plus Summit — float planes, candles and all. More Mozillian brainpower and passion. Yay!
Open Education at OSCON 2008
Danese Cooper has organized what promises to be an excellent conversation about open education at OSCON in Portland. Mark Shuttleworth will be part of the mix. Karien and I prepared some quick background notes for Mark re: what think is exciting in this space and the specific work we’re doing. I figured it would be useful to share here: More Open Education at OSCON 2008
Open salad
Salad makes a perfect open source project. While most people think it’s a drag to produce a whole salad, it’s not so hard to get them to cough up one or two ingredients. The ingredients people contribute automatically turn out to be complimentary, most of the time. And, as more people contribute ingredients, the salad gets better and better. Yum. More Open salad
Unconferencing collaboration (and public policy)
I was just reading on the Doors of Perception blog that Collaborative Innovation is this year’s theme at the World Economic Forum. Maybe this is a good thing (Jimmy Wales got to talk), and maybe it’s not (Don Tapscott got to talk). In either case, the really sad thing is the continued trend events about mass collaboration that are as uncollaborative as possible. Davos is just one long-lecture-fest, with most people zoned out in the audience in passive listening mode. It’s not collaboration, it’s television. More Unconferencing collaboration (and public policy)
Next steps: digging into open source thinking
As hinted in previous posts, I’m planning to spend the next few years digging deeper into how we can use networks and open source thinking for social change. Part of this is continued work with the telecentre.org community. Another part is open philanthropy and open education work with the Shuttleworth Foundation. A third bit is now coming into focus: reflecting more on ‘the meaning of open’ and feeding it into experiments with the Centre for Social Innovation and others here in Canada. More Next steps: digging into open source thinking
Undefended territory
My favourite Ubuntu Live slide so far was Stephen O’Grady‘s Sun Tzu quote: “You can be sure of succeeding in your attacks if you only attack places which are undefended.” More Undefended territory
Open source chamber of commerce
Community-business-minded-ness
Vancouver, Canada More Community-business-minded-ness