Open Source Business Social Software

Two projects I’ve been looking at this summer show just how far the Open Source world has come with respect to social business software. Eureka Streams, which is a new open source project sponsored by Lockheed Martin, and based on the Open Social standard, and Drupal Commons, a project sponsored by Acquia and based on Drupal. Both offer a compelling feature set by leveraging existing platforms but with a focus on the needs of the collaborative, knowledge seeking business employee. Both also now have videos, feature tours, and communities of participation growing around them, so you won’t have to go it alone.

Photo by ThinkPublic, http://www.flickr.com/photos/thinkpublic/3042777307/

CMS Debate from North Shore Web Geeks

A few weeks back I was part of a panel at North Shore Web Geeks which they titled The Great CMS Debate.

John Eckman, Jay Batson, Marc Amos, and Tom Herer. Photo (c) Trev Stair

Unfortunately Jake Goldman was ill and couldn’t make it, so Christine Greene agreed to step in and moderate in my place, while I represented WordPress in Jake’s. (See also Trev’s iPhone sketches of myself, Jay and Marc – he was unable to get Tom).

It was a fun night – I’m not sure I represented WordPress as well as I might have with a bit more prep. (On the security question in particular, see Brad Williams’ presentation from WordCamp Boston.)

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This Week: The Great CMS Debate

Happy to announce (a bit late, I suppose, in that the event is sold out - though folks coming who don’t get to see the debate can still join us for networking and beer) that I’ll be moderating the Great CMS Debate this Thursday, Feb 25th, 7:00pm, upstairs at The Grog in lovely downtown Newburyport.

The event will be hosted by North Shore Web Geeks and sponsored (as in some free beer) by The Atom Group.

North Shore Web Geeks

Open Source and Design: Ideologies Clashing (SXSW Extended Content)

One of the panels I proposed for SXSW Interactive 2009 was on the intersection of open source and design:

Thesis: Open Source and Design are fundamentally philosophically incompatible. Antithesis: Open Source and Design are profoundly similar in core beliefs and approaches. This talk works to articulate a meaningful synthesis between these two positions.

The talk, unfortunately, wasn’t accepted for presentation at the conference, but they suggested that instead I do a shorter, podcast or video podcast version for the Extended Content program.

I did, and that content now has gone live on the SXSW site:

In our first installment of the Extended Content series, John Eckman tells you everything you need to know about open source and design. The differences and similarities, how they benefit each other and why they have trouble getting along.

Extended Content at SXSW Interactive

(Unfortunately they don’t allow embedding, so you’ll have to go there to watch it – and at least on two browsers I tried it on, you’ll have to wait for the whole thing to preload before it starts playing – so go get a cup of coffee or whatever while it loads).

It’s just shy of 20 minutes, and having been created back in February 2009 feels (to me) a bit outdated in spots – mostly the continued evolution of the work Mark Boulton and Leisa Reichelt have been doing with the Drupal community (not just on Drupal.org but also on Drupal 7 itself), which I encourage you to check out if you’re interested in the subject.

Zeldman on the maturity of Open Source CMS

Quick excerpt from an interview with Jeffrey Zeldman which includes some discussion of the impact of Open Source, and particularly open source CMS’s, on the process of designing and building web applications:

Although I think it’s important to draw a distinction between simple, relatively cheap licensing (the Expression Engine model) and Free and Open Source software, I generally agree that

Now, we have really powerful comparatively easy to understand, open source content management systems

And that this shift- from needing a large scale custom development project or an expensive proprietary CMS to now being able to leverage open source platforms – represents a key point in the maturity of web development.