Archive for the 'Event' Category

Open Source Junction: cross-platform mobile apps

Published by Gabriel Hanganu on March 1, 2011 in Community, Development, Event, Mobile technology and Software. 1 Comment
The open source mobile app space is getting increasingly crowded. The recent opportunities for developers to produce and distribute mobile apps through a range of app stores is taking the developer world by storm. If, as the saying goes, all people dream of writing a poem at least once in a lifetime, then perhaps there aren’t many developers out there either who haven’t dreamed of building a great mobile app themselves.
I don’t have any stats on the percent of open source developers producing apps for app stores. However, a number of concerns reported in the past by open source developers contributing to the Mac App Store suggest that alternative solutions, such as the rising Android Market, may stand better chances to attract contributors used to work in an open development fashion.
The popularity of the mobile apps in the developer world is reflected by the significant number of events organized on related topics. A quick search on Eventbrite listed 283 mobile-related UK events within the next few months. As expected, most of these events target business audiences. Some of them, such as OSIM, specifically explore solutions for developing and distributing mobile open source software.
As the education sector tries to keep pace with the recent developments in the mobile world, a number of academic projects have looked at how mobile solutions may help educational institutions fulfil their teaching and research remits. Most of these projects address issues specific to their teams’ teaching or research interests. As mandated by JISC’s software collaboration policy, more than one institutions took part in these projects and the software produced was released under an open source licence. However, as far as I am aware, no long term mobile partnerships between the academic and industry sectors emerged as a result of these initiatives so far.
This is precisely the type of event missing from the crowded mobile software space. There are virtually no events bringing together business and academic developers working on open source mobile apps aimed at building sustainable partnerships using lessons learned from open source development.
OSS Watch has identified this opportunity, and in collaboration with 100% Open has put together a series of two-day workshops in order to fill this gap. Open Source Junction aims to connect industry and academic innovation emerging in open source mobile technologies. The first event in the series focuses on open source cross-platform mobile apps, and will take place on 29-30 March in Oxford. More information about the programme, speakers and sessions is available on the registration page.
If business and academic teams working together on open source mobile apps is something that appeals to you, whether you are a developer, a researcher, a project manager, a mobile open source strategist, or a funder interested in industry-academic partnerships, then you can’t miss this workshop. There are no other UK events where open source and mobile apps join forces and academic and business developers rub shoulders together in one of the most atmospheric historical venues in Oxford.
I hope to see some of you there.

The spirit of innovation

Published by Elizabeth Tatham on October 19, 2010 in Community, Discussion and Event. 1 Comment

In his article ‘The secrets of changing the world‘, Stephen Sackur explores the characteristics that he believes unite genuine innovators. To identify the common qualities that ’seem to separate us sheep from the innovative goats’, he draws on interviews he has conducted over the years with some of the world’s great innovators, in spheres as diverse as business, science and art:

- an indestructible will
- passion beyond reason
- outrageous optimism
- a super-sized ego
- the rebel spirit

This got me thinking about how I might expand the list – you could add creative thinking and self-discipline, for example – and about people I know who possess these traits, and how they use them. But what I found most thought-provoking, not to mention disturbing, about Sackur’s article is the suggestion that ‘most of us, in our youth, have the capacity to be innovators, free-thinkers, resolute refuseniks when it comes to accepting the status quo’, but that we ‘figure out from an early age that it’s easier to conform than rebel’. If this is true, what can we, as parents, do to keep that spirit alive without creating monsters?

But that’s a debate for another day. Here at OSS Watch, one of the ways in which we foster the innovative spirit is by promoting open innovation. Open innovation is a specific form of innovation, which recognises that in the modern world no single organisation has a monopoly on invention. Accordingly, it advocates the sharing of inventions and/or innovations across organisational boundaries, by such means as licensing, joint ventures and spin-offs.

Open innovation was one of the themes we explored at TransferSummit. If you missed it, catch up by reading Sam Jordison’s blog post on the innovation track, or his report on the whole event. You can also find out more about open innovation in our briefing document ‘Open source and open innovation‘.

Grow your own veggies and keep an eye on your neighbour’s

Published by Gabriel Hanganu on July 14, 2010 in Community, Event and Strategy and Policy. 0 Comments

Last Saturday I happened to watch a TV program on the Hampton Court Flower Show. Among this year’s winners of the garden design competition was the Bangladeshi Allotment, a small garden designed by Jeff Travers with help from the Adelaide Community Gardening Club in Camden, N. London.

As Jeff explained, about 20 years ago the central Camden residents were offered a gardening plot in an attempt to counter the effects of the visually appalling derelict buildings and tall blocks of flats that dominated the area. People started growing vegetables, and over the years the plot became the hub of a thriving gardening community.

Bangladeshi women in particular became effective users of these allotments. They grew vegetables for their daily needs using techniques they had learned from their parents and grandparents in Bangladesh. For them gardening was a key source of food, and over the years they became experts in producing sustainable gardens with minimal financial investment. One way of increasing cultivation space was to build ramshackle supports that favoured the 3D expansion of the plants.

It was these string-bound wooden structures that intrigued Jeff Travers in the first place. He examined them with his architect hat on, but at the same time he was curious about their role in increasing vegetable production. By growing his own plants next to those of the Bangladeshi families, Jeff learned a lot about sustainable gardening using traditional techniques, such as saving seeds and using recyclable natural materials.

Jeff’s collaboration with the Bangladeshi women gardeners brought him a silver medal. The right topic in the right place at the right time, one might say. However, according to Jeff, designing and building the garden was not such a simple task:

It’s quite an architectural problem to translate Bangladeshi allotments to suit the Hampton Court setting. We’ve used the intensive Bangladeshi horticultural techniques in the growing of the plants, but we’ve arranged them in a way that conforms to the written rules of 18th century potager of which the garden of Hampton Court Palace was modeled.

This story is a good illustration of open innovation facilitated by connecting groups with apparently disparate sets of skills. To design his prize-winning garden Jeff put together the knowledge networks of the traditional Bangladeshi gardeners, the skills of their British offspring who adapted these techniques to the London context, and his own ‘architect-cum-gardener’ ability to translate these in the lingo of a professional garden design competition.

In fact such processes happen all around us at various levels. As Roland Harwood pointed out in his recent keynote at TransferSummit:

Many organisations are beginning to embrace more open and collaborative approaches to innovation. Inspired by the success of open source products such as the Apache web server and the Firefox browser, many multinational companies such as Procter and Gamble, Orange and IBM have made ‘open innovation’ – the sharing of the risks and rewards of the product development process with partners – a top strategic priority.

Academic institutions had been there long before the businesses:

The open source software movement has been a pioneer in product development which many others have sought to emulate. Like the open source movement, academic institutions have laid the foundations for a model of shared knowledge and incentives based upon reputation rather than ownership.

Increasingly however this academic model is fading out. As recent evidence demonstrates, especially in academic research funding and publication-driven assessment distort the natural balance between peer recognition and institutional hierarchy:

Research assessment exercise encourages individuals to publish independently, to keep things secret while there can be many advantages to their career, no matter if they have been funded publicly or not, because by doing that they appear to be better by the criteria used for measurement of the research assessment exercise. That’s a major cultural problem, because it makes it too difficult to persuade scientists to be open with their data, they fear losing it, and therefore their current position.

TransferSummit revealed that both academic and business teams are seeking inspiration from open development practice. More and more academic departments and businesses understand that by pooling together the expertise of their diversely skilled people they maximise opportunities for mutually beneficial innovation.

But understanding diversity in terms of domain or product expertise is not enough. While brainstorming with inter-disciplinary or professionally diverse teams can be productive, we need to bear in mind that innovation is not just generating new ideas. In fact, as Roland suggests, in the context of our expanding access to global knowledge, one’s expertise is becoming less important:

The cost associated with finding new knowledge is falling fast, to a point where in the not too distant future we can reasonably assume that all knowledge will be in principal accessible [...]. In this scenario our knowledge will no longer differentiate us as individuals or organisations.

The professional diversity of the innovation teams will remain important, but increasingly cultural diversity will become their true unique selling point. As Jeff’s success story implies, his prize-winning garden was less the result of him acquiring in-depth knowledge of Bangladeshi gardening techniques, and more of him experiencing this knowledge in action, in the ways his Bangladeshi gardening mentors had internalized and used it for their daily needs.

In other words, what is becoming important is the diverse cultural practice of the innovation team members, rather than just their external expert knowledge. More than just being clued in about growing veggies differently, the ideal candidates for open innovation will be eating their own grown.

TransferSummit – making open accessibility connections

Published by stevelee on July 8, 2010 in Community and Event. 0 Comments

Being involved with the TransferSummit was one of those experiences that I will look back on with great pleasure for years to come. Not only was the theme of innovation and collaboration through open source something  I have for long time wanted to see become reality in the accessibility arena, but being part of such a great team has been of enormous personal benefit. If only I could have concentrated more on all the talks and BOFs, but that would have required the TransferSummit to run 3 times so I could attend everything.

Of course one of key values of such conferences derives from the connections and discussions that go on between the presentations. Having spoken to some of the people who attended from the open accessibility space I’m really pleased to hear they wasted no time in connecting up. For example Garry Paxton of Straight-street.com said he found it extremely valuable and hooked up with folks like Matthew Lee of Pengwern Mencap National College. I’m extremely pleased to see the strong community of open accessibility collaborators that is forming in UK HE. I understand from those of the community present, that they found TransferSummit provided them ample food for thought and discussion opportunities.

Equally pleasing was that the TransferSummit hosted the rather impromptu introductory launch meeting of REALISE, a new JISC funded project exploring open innovation in accessibility software. EA Draffan and Peter Cudd from the lead institutions of Southampton and Sheffield met with Ross Gardler of OSS Watch (and chairman of the conference committee). There could not have been a more perfect setting for this first REALISE meeting.

I’m sure there must be other stories of successful connections made at the TransferSummit. Please do let us know about them in the comments to this post

TransferSummit – Industry and the Open Source Community

Published by Alastair Harper on July 5, 2010 in Discussion and Event. 0 Comments

Buildings that last are always open

How is the open source model like Oxford’s Sheldonian Theatre? Ross Gardler, in his introduction to the TransferSummit conference this June, put forth this theory: the Sheldonian, Christopher Wren’s greatest early work, required a huge range of transferred expertise and what was then the latest technology in its construction. A swath of different individuals’ skills were employed to produce a cutting-edge building that, finished in 1668, is still used today. The end result was not only a magnificent building but also new construction and architectural techniques shared with the craftsmen brought in. Ross’s point is that the University of Oxford looked outwards to leading figures in construction and architecture to fulfil their needs – and, with open source, this relationship between academic and business interest continues to flourish today.

A shared future

Traditionally, universities have been seen as research institutions not unduly concerned with value. But Ross hoped that at TransferSummit, those working in academic institutions and non-profit communities, and those working in industry, could show, over the course of two days, how both can work together to their mutual benefit.

These are exciting times to be involved with open source. As many mentioned over the two days of TS, the average person encounters Linux ten times a day without even knowing it, all thanks to a quiet revolution in industrial attitudes to the open source community. Many talks recounted the difficult journeys taken by companies over the last ten years, learning how and why to use open source software to deliver the most innovative products to their consumers. If companies are to produce their own Sheldonians they must look to open source.

Why industry is becoming more open

Matthew Langham spoke of his own experience of combining two very different worlds – the corporate and the open source. He remembers back in 2000 the difficulties he had as a software developer in getting his boss to embrace a new, apparently insane business plan: ‘We give away our code for free?’ But Matthew, who now runs a company connecting the corporate and open source worlds, explained the benefits of going open source: the strength the company would derive from allowing other people to improve its code, the advances made in their software that they could never have come up with alone, and, ultimately, how much more use their software would enjoy by being offered in this way. Open source provided their company with hugely increased exposure, and allowed them to make a good profit by offering support for their freely available products. Having proved the commercial viability of going open source, Matthew started suggesting these benefits to other companies, inspiring them to have a go too. He has found it easy to persuade them to try it out, but perhaps one of the biggest challenges has been getting them to admit that they do so. Phone companies, big banks and other organisations all embraced open source at a developmental level but were wary of admitting it to their employers and certainly of being evangelical about its benefits.

Of course, this is set to change. Matthias Stuermer’s talk investigated the ways in which Nokia has been playing with open source and Linux for the last ten years and how since 2005, they have been openly working with the open source community. One benefit of that relationship came about when the Nokia 770 was hacked to allow the use of flash cards as RAM – something Nokia’s own developers thought couldn’t work. They were then able to adapt the design to allow the feature.

An army of R&D

This ability to innovate as a community is also something that Phil Andrews spoke about. If SourceForge were to pay, as R&D, the 50,000 people they have involved in their community, the annual wages bill would come to £4.5 billion. He also pointed out that the number of coding errors generated within an open source community is much smaller than those produced by a closed company.

This change in approach can be seen outside of coding, too, as Roland Harwood from 100%Open pointed out in his keynote speech. His organisation encourages businesses to look at sharing their skills with very different industries, investigating how technology can be deployed in new and unrelated contexts. This use of ‘open innovation’ has led to companies such as McLaren F1 having their software used in hospitals and in air traffic control towers. Roland pointed out other examples – organisations like Virgin Atlantic embracing an unofficial group of around 50,000 customers who started their own community analysing the quality of Virgin’s services, from the website to their planes’ seating. By reaching out to and working with this community, they improved their services at an estimated 10% of the cost of doing so in-house.

But why should the open source community get into bed with business?

If the benefits of open source are clear for business, another question was raised and dealt with during the two days of TS  – what’s in it for the open source community?

Certainly, Simon Phipps fears that unscrupulous business practices can often destroy what makes open source brilliant. Having worked with Java and Sun Microsystems before becoming a board member for the Open Source Initiative, Simon has seen both the good and the bad of open source companies. He believes that the nature of open source is being undermined by some companies taking the benefits of others’ innovation without giving anything up of their own – such companies declare themselves to be ‘open core’ , which he sees as a euphemism for traditional closed software.

To Simon, in fact, such businesses are reptiles without souls or ethics. They can’t embrace the principle of openness for any reason other than to benefit from the growing marketing power of the term ‘open source’. They use open source as a way of making short-term savings rather than to generate long-term freedoms.

Companies must be honest

Some of these issues were dealt with by Gerv Markham from the Mozilla Foundation, which focuses on ensuring that no one company has control of the internet. Mozilla has an unusual corporate structure – a charity that wholly owns a number of conventional companies. Gerv has many suggestions as to how companies can be ethically involved with the open source community – for instance, Mozilla makes no distinction in worth between their paid members and those who volunteer. Even one of their security managers was not allowed into the Mozilla security discussion group until eight weeks after he had been hired – he had to prove his worth to the whole community, not just those who paid his salary, before he made the grade. Markham is also deeply aware of the importance of having a clear and transparent licensing scheme. It took many years to refine, but now users of Mozilla’s code get the choice of three different licences.

He also understands the ethical difficulties inherent in persuading volunteers to sign over copyright to an organisation, though, as Rowan Wilson pointed out, in his talk, that assignment of copyright is not the only way to manage IP in open source. Still, many companies have betrayed their volunteers’ trust by deciding that their ‘open source experiment’ has failed and absorbing the work of outsiders as they turn back into closed companies. Companies must avoid abusing open sourcers’ trust if they are to succeed in the open source world.

How companies are learning

The issue of earning and preserving trust is familiar to many previously closed developers attempting to make the transition to open source. Matthew Langham mentioned that it took about a year for his company to become welcome in the open source community, and that many large companies just don’t get how it works, expecting it to be an online pool of free employees. David Woollard, a senior software engineer at NASA, encountered similar difficulties. Only in 2005, where NASA used the skills of two big open source developers already on their staff (Sean Kelly and Chris Mattaham), did the necessary cultural shift begin within their section of NASA – and it took five years until they were finally able to enter the Apache Incubator in January 2010. The largest problem they faced during this time was persuading their own lawyers that, as publically funded organisations, they should be giving away their resources (i.e. their code) for free. The next problem was persuading contributors to mix in. They dealt with this by creating a clear framework to define how to get involved, what is expected of contributors and what they can expect in return. Finally, this transparency is reaping its reward – their community is starting to take off.

Open source communities – the future of society?

But the future of open source, as discussed at TransferSummit, should soar far beyond its relationship to industry. As Simon Phipps argued, in inspiring terms, it could well be the future of society. In the past, we have been accustomed to a societal model involving a group of individuals centred around one powerful ruler, or, after the Industrial Revolution, one large organisation, whether a company or a parliament. Open source removes the need for this central figure, allowing all members of a society to contribute in different ways. But if the idea is potentially so revolutionary, how should the open source community ensure that it is strong enough to achieve its ends?

As Steven Pemberton’s keynote on the first morning of the summit made clear, a good open source community will involve everyone, not just coders. After good content, what users want most from the websites they visit is good usability. Programmers, typically, cannot achieve good usability alone – they need designers, writers and testers to create a new structural way of ensuring that open software addresses the needs of the general public. Like the Sheldonian, any successful open source project will need to draw on a broad spectrum of expertise.

Led by none, led by all

Bertrand Delacretaz acknowledged this in his own talk, explaining the studies he has made as to who is most involved in various open source projects. Showing visual maps of people’s involvement, he demonstrated that it was rarely the originator of a project who was the most influential – as the project grew, so did the community’s input and influence, drawing it away from the originating individual.

Mark Johnson looked in detail at the process of how an open source community comes together and develops in the talk he gave about his involvement with the Moodle project. Beginning with his initial experiences of working on simple bug fixes, he told his audience how the satisfaction of working within a community and getting recognition for his work got him hooked on using their issue tracks and forums to contribute more and more.

Becoming part of a bigger world

Excited, valued community involvement was also a preoccupation for Noirin Shirley, employed by Google but talking about her work with Apache. Given a good community of forums, bug trackers and credit always being given where it’s due, a project will inevitably be stronger. Noirin argued that to get people involved in your project, the best rules of open source communities are actually much like those of kindergarten – share your toys, don’t be selfish and always be generous with praise. Also, don’t expect people to dive into the complexities straight away. She pointed out that it’s wise not to bother fixing the simplest bugs in your code, but to leave them for the community, so that – as was the case with Mark and Moodle – someone else will fix them, derive confidence and satisfaction from doing so, and get to grips with understanding the more challenging aspects of your project.

From military tech to the schoolyard

Given a strong, multi-skilled community, there is very little to which an open source project cannot turn its hand. Miles Berry hinted at the breadth of the spectrum by arguing the usefulness of greater open source involvement in schools, not just in dedicated ICT lessons. Berry made a commanding case for the positive impact open source could have in all classrooms, from geography lessons using open source gps software, to language work using Moodle. His case was greatly strengthened by the fact that he had masterminded such a broad, school-wide adoption of open source software at the St Ives Prep School, where he was formerly headmaster.

Code speaks louder than words


What the two days of TransferSummit made abundantly clear is that with a strong community, a mixture of disciplines and a willingness to embrace and pursue innovation, open source can do just about anything. But as Bertrand Delacretaz argued, its potential best displayed not in the giving of talks but in the writing of code. So the most exciting glimpse at what the future might hold for open source happened during the Birds of a Feather meetings – informal, community-led gatherings at which attendees and speakers exchanged ideas, learned from each other and arranged to pool their projects. From visual communication tools for those who don’t speak the same language, to ideas as to how universities can better reach out to industry, the groups’ advice to each other showed conclusively that for open source communities, the sky’s the limit.

Transfer Summit – Innovation Track

Published by Sam Jordison on July 2, 2010 in Discussion and Event. 1 Comment

I’ve just returned home after a fascinating two days writing the live blog for the Innovation Track, one of three tracks at the TransferSummit, a conference sponsored and organised by OSS Watch. This track was billed as a ‘top-level immersion into the world of open source’. It delivered comprehensively.

Far too much ground was covered to hope to include every detail in a piece like this one. Hopefully, the live blog should demonstrate how informative the discussions were. You can also get a good feel for the breadth of the talks if you click through the links on the TransferSummit programme to look at the speakers’ slides. Here I’ll just aim  to provide a few general impressions.

Keble in the sunshine

The first thing to note is how pleasant the whole event was. Even though I was working hard to keep up with the blog, I enjoyed myself. True, when I had to pull down a blind to stop the strong sun shining on the screen of my laptop, it gave me a slightly sad feeling – but being at the conference still beat being in the office. It was certainly far more interesting than the average day’s work. Indeed, bathed in that sunshine, in the beautiful Victorian Gothic enclosures of Keble College, there was a feeling of respite from the problems of the world.

That’s not to say that delegates didn’t have such troubles in mind, however. The budget cuts faced by projects across the education, public and commercial sectors were clearly causing serious concern.  Even so, the overall atmosphere was optimistic. There was a a definite sense that progress was being made in the arguments for open innovation – and indeed that in a time of financial hardship that case becomes even stronger.

As Steven Pemberton said in his keynote speech, Open Source Is Not Enough!, ‘we are through the first stage’ in getting open innovation technology accepted and now the main task is to make it better.

Of course, there are still difficulties and complexities relating to the use of open innovation. Martin Michlmayr in his talk on The State Of Open Source Licensing and How To Improve It and Mark Taylor in his talk on FOSS Business Models ably demonstrated the tangled wood of licences and legal complexity faced by anyone hoping to launch an open source project – as well as providing a good route through.

It should also be noted that delegates again and again returned to the point that although open innovation may reduce some costs to close to zero, it shouldn’t be seen as a free for all. Andrew Savory, the open source manager for Limo Foundation, stressed in his talk about the Economics Of Innovation In Mobile Technologies, that open source is not an ‘all you can eat buffet’. It works best when the companies that use it give something back. It’s then that it does offer real cost savings, as well as access to reservoirs of talent that couldn’t otherwise be tapped, and an economy of scale begins to build up.

On that note, Steven Pemberton gave the famous example of wikipedia compared to the  hugely expensive Encyclopaedia Britannica of old and how ‘little things’ (such as the many individual wiki contributions) can join together ’to make a big thing better and better’.

The savings that open source software (OSS) can deliver in all sectors were also widely referred to, but one of the most striking examples of its benefits came from the fiercely commercial mobile technology sector. Andrew Savory pointed to the smartphone market, where consumers are demanding ever more features for ever less money, meaning that we have now reached a point where companies are having to invest more than they get back from their technology. So those companies have now started to look more seriously at open source software. They have discovered that it brings not only reduced costs to the acquisition of software, but also reduced costs of access to innovation and - crucially – reduced costs of software ownership (since there is a greatly reduced maintenance burden for true OSS). So it is that HTC has leapfrogged the competition thanks to its use of open innovation.

Clearly there is going to have to be a big cultural shift among companies who are generally secretive, and who are unused to the meritocracy that exists within OSS development, but evidence that OSS is the way forward is beginning to stack up. Andrew also highlighted the Mobile Open Source Economic Analysis white paper, showing that it’s even cheaper for companies to merge early and contribute early to OSS development streams – rather than ‘forking’ off and trying to keep their own innovations with regard to the software to themselves for as long as possible.

Coming back to the question raised by Steven Pemberton, about how to make open innovation work better, there were a number of well-attended talks about how to build up and value communities. Paul Walk of UKOLN stressed the simple importance of giving recognition to the work that developers do and helping them better explain their ideas and projects to the world away from the keyboard. Gianugo Rabellino, the former CEO of Sourcesense told us that if we recognise communities as places ‘where individuals come together to reap a reward …  we come to understand why collaboration works so well – and why people are producing open source software’. Gill Rysiecki gave excellent practical examples of how the Technology Strategies Board initiative, Knowledge Transfer Partnerships, can help academic developers reach out to the business community – and vica versa. Scott Wilson, the Assistant director of CETIS also made the important point that ‘inclusion and openness depend on collective responsibility’. open source works when people feel they have a stake in it.

In his keynote speech on day two Roland Harwood also gave powerful arguments about the importance of community  - and how effective exchanging ideas with different companies can be – a particularly striking example being how the McLaren Formula 1 team were able to help improve processes in A&E at Great Ormond Street Hospital. To emphasise his point he quoted the proverb: ‘If you want to go fast, go alone, if you want to go far, got together.’

Happily, this latter theme was well demonstrated by the conference itself. The buzz was all about open innovation and how best to achieve it. All the delegates I spoke to were deeply involved in the subject and determined to use the conference to learn as much as they could. They were also eager to make those vital connections with people heading in the same direction. There was just as much debate at lunchtime as there was in the formal talks and plenaries.

Naturally, since this was a gathering of technologists, there was also a lot of interest in the ipads, smartphones and various pieces of kit that people had brought with them. Samuel Klein, speaking as a a volunteer Trustee of the Wikimedia Foundation (who had been re-routed into the Innovation Track after being delayed in Boston),  provided a great firsthand account of the history and development of wikipedia and many of its related projects – and how MediaWiki has scaled up using open source methods.  However, he caused the biggest stir with a demonstration of one of the first new OLPC XOs that also run Gnome, which he had with him as he is also the director of outreach for One Laptop per Child.

Samuel Klein and the new OLPC XO

Yet even when it came to gadgets, the conversation kept coming back to licensing and the openness of various software platforms. My own HTC phone was several times singled out for approval (gratifying for a technological layman such as myself). But it was the arguments rather than the compliments that left the strongest impression. The innovation track had generated a real feeling that open source is only going to become more important in the next few years.

Live Blogs from TransferSummit

Published by Ross Gardler on June 24, 2010 in Event. 0 Comments

TransferSummit is will be underway very soon. We have a couple of live bloggers at the event so keep an eye on their reports.

We are using the #TS10 hashtag for delegates to use in tweets, blogs, photos etc.

TransferSummit hits the mark

Published by Ross Gardler on June 17, 2010 in Community and Event. 1 Comment

Next week sees tha launch of our new conference TransferSummit. Despite it being a new conference and despite it being possibly the worst time to launch such an event we are already looking at making it twice the size next year.

TransferSummit provides a forum for business executives and members of the academic and research community to discuss how they might benefit from one anothers activities. It seems that we’ve hit the mark with this topic, as evidenced by the recent report that UK universities deliver £2.97B in services to business and industry.

TransferSummit is all about connecting our universities to our businesses in order to capitalise on the wealth of knowledge and experience

We are very proud of the programme we have put together, with speakers from all walks of the academic, commercial and not-for-profit sectors. We have talks ranging from first steps towards open innovation in software through to case studies ranging from the niche (such as the University of Nottinghams TexGen project) through the the large scale academic (such as Sakai) to massive cross-sector foundations (such as the GNOME Foundation).

Take a look at the full programme, you are certain to find information of value to you.

We are also proud of the sponsors who have lined up to support the event, again with all sectors represented. The level of support we have gathered is testament to the importance of this event.

Two days, three tracks, a Gala Dinner and a BarCamp… Endless Possibilities!

We still have a very small number of free tickets for the academic community and a few discounted tickets for everyone else, all you need to do to get your discount code is mail us.

BarcampOxford – making our own conference

Published by stevelee on June 10, 2010 in Community, Discussion and Event. 0 Comments

This year I’m tasked with being the lead for the BarcampOxford. Given the great success of the previous BarcampApacheOxford and my newbie status this is a little daunting. Fortunately Barcamps have the mentoring sorted and we have a team consisting of the someone local, someone experienced, someone new and everyone else who volunteers to do something. That way the experience gets passed on and we have more great BarCamp events.

Ross assures me that as Barcamps are self organising on the day the key is to make sure folks turn up and the resources are in place to make the day run smoothly. Mind you, there’s plenty to do, and leaving so much to be decided on the day is a little scary. However having been to a few BarCamps and similar events I know they provide attendees with  a much more valuable experience than a traditional ‘passive’ conference. However you do need attendees who want to roll up their sleeves and get stuck in. Well at least, attendees who want to discuss topics that matter to them. That’s not often a problem with those with open source or geek leanings, as are our target ‘barcampers’ .  The reward is a feeling of something achieved through new connections made, new ideas formed or new projects started.

If you’ve never experienced a BarCamp then I highly recommend you go to one the very first chance you get. Why not join us as a taster? To whet your appetite here’s an introductory email that was sent out recently.

Building on the great success of last year’s BarCampApacheOxford, OSS Watch and Torchbox are again running the popular BarCampOxford unconference at the Oxford University Club on the 26 June. Expect many great conversations, including topics such as open source, open development, open innovation and web 2.0 mashups. Full details are on the BarcampOxford wiki page [1]

If you’re not sure what a BarCamp is, fear not. It’s a friendly, flexible and informal event where everyone who attends has a say in what happens on the day. The idea is to come with a topic you’d like to present, discuss or even hack-on. We figure out exactly what happens in the morning, and then get on with it.

We already have people who like to get together on topics as diverse as; open source, cloud computing, semantic web, mobile tech, agile development, UIX and accessibility, Python, Dojo and Javascript. If something else takes your fancy, then just a look at the wiki [1] and add your interests in the attendees list or come up with an idea on the day.

We’ll have food and drink to keep you energised. This year the TV goes on and club bar opens at 3 for those who just can’t bear to miss the World Cup football. Those who want to carry on a great conversation or hack session can do so in the upstairs spaces.

So why not join us – just add you details to the wiki page [1] or email us [2]

This year the Barcamp follows on from the TransferSummit [3] open innovation conference being held at Keble College, and a number of attendees will stay on for the Barcamp. They will no doubt have a lot to talk about after the Summit which promises to be exceptional given the programme [4]. Note: there are still spaces at the Summit, you can register on the website [3].

1: http://barcamp.org/BarCampOxford
2: info@oss-watch.ac.uk
3: http://www.transfersummit.com
4: http://www.transfersummit.com/programme

We hope to see you on the 26 June.

Is UK research ‘wired for innovation’?

Published by Gabriel Hanganu on June 4, 2010 in Business, Community, Development, Discussion, Event and Strategy and Policy. 0 Comments

Apparently French research is not ‘wired for innovation’. The reason, according to Presans who reports from a recent Lyon round table, is the low levels French public research score on the Technology Readiness scale. Technology Readiness is a model used in the aerospace and defence sectors to evaluate the maturity level of a new technology. According to this model, levels 1-2 correspond to basic research, 3-6 indicate intermediary stages as the project moves from demonstrator to prototype, and 9 is assigned to a technology ready to be released on the market. According to Florin Paun, Deputy Director for Industrial Innovation at ONERA, technologies produced by public research should reach at least level 4 on the Readiness scale in order to attract industry partners, but most French research units, with some notable exceptions, tend to score below this mark. Research and industry do not speak the same language, the author of the post concludes, therefore there is a need for translation and  reformulation of the needs of businesses and of the solutions provided by research laboratories.

The lack of a common language for all categories of research stakeholders was also identified in studies of UK research infrastructure, as OSS Watch pointed out. Despite an impressive array of online systems and services aimed at helping researchers carry out their research, these technologies are often employed below their full potential. One way to improve this situation is to take stock of some key lessons from open source development, which include providing an open space for expressing the needs and concerns of researchers, software developers, service providers, and indeed all external partners, including businesses, who may wish to join the community.

OSS Watch conceived TransferSummit precisely to address this lack of mutual understanding between the academic and business research stakeholders interested in open development and open innovation. Two of the academic projects we advised recently have started to benefit from collaborating with non-academic partners. TexGen’s decision to make their research software freely available resulted in attracting supplementary grants and facilitating industry collaboration, while Wookie’s choice to join the Apache Software Foundation’s Incubator attracted interest from both the academic and commercial sectors. Both these and other academic projects will feature at TransferSummit, along with key representatives from open source businesses and software foundations, including in no particular order, Red Hat, Sourcesense, Sirius, WSO2, Indiginox, Day, HP, Amazon, Gnome, Apache, Codeplex, Mozilla, LiMo, Wikimedia, who will discuss the challenges and opportunities associated with academic-industry partnerships.

French research may not be ‘wired for innovation’, but is UK ready to reap the benefits of open innovation emerging from the dialogue of the academic and business sectors? Join us at TransferSummit to find out.