Thanks to Geek and Poke for a great cartoon.

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Technorati Tags: Cluetrain, Enteprise 2.0, Insincerity

Today I am attending Blog Carolinas a social media conference being held in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park (that’s halfway between Raleigh and Durham). I am particularly interesting on hearing Andy Beal’s session on Online Reputation Management. Andy recently launched Trackur, an online reputation monitoring service (which I am interested in using for Zenoss).

Here’s what I expect to get out of today’s conference (paraphrased from their website)

• How Social Media is impacting Marketing and Communications Strategies
• How Community can serve as a model to improving organizational productivity
• Network with experts in the fields of On Line Reputation, Search Engine Optimization, Web 2.0 Technology and On Line Community Building

Not sure what the program will be like but just the fact I get this kind of content five minutes from my house seems very cool to me.

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Technorati Tags: Andy Beal, BlogCarolinas, online communities, RTP, Social Media, trackur

Matt Asay spun up a cool video just like Soylent Green, open source software is people.

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Technorati Tags: Matt Asay, Open Source, People

It seems that open source maven, Matt Asay along with well-known Microsoft blogger Mary Jo Foley have come to the conclusion that Microsoft doesn’t need open source. Asay contends that Microsoft’s open source activity has more to do with regulators than best practices and user collaboration.

Microsoft’s open-source charade is not about customers. It’s about regulators. Until Microsoft can convince U.S. and European regulators that its market power is not as bad as it once was, the company will need to hide behind expressions of openness.

Hence, Microsoft “opens” up its protocols (i.e., lets everyone read but not touch…without forking over cash). It inks “open” interoperability agreements with Novell and others, which actually do nothing more than bind otherwise open-source success to Microsoft’s proprietary technology. Microsoft general counsel Brad Smith acknowledges the shift, or lack thereof:

“It is (a change in philosophy) in some significant ways and yet it has also other aspects that are a continuation and we’re probably thinking a little bit about both pieces,” Smith said, explaining Microsoft’s twin thrusts of promoting intellectual property rights by encouraging interoperability among various software platforms.Business as usual. Just under the openness guise.

I suspect that’s a reasonable assumption. Though the folks working in open source software from Microsoft like Sam Ramji seem pretty sincere. With Bill Gates retiring and Microsoft’s initiatives on open source wouldn’t it be a sardonic turn of events for open source spread like a virus inside the walls of Redmond (especially since that’s how detractors likes to describe open source software).

There are a number of ventures run by ex-Microsofties who are seeing success. Maybe the the question real question is, “How far does the apple fall from the tree?”

Read the rest

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Technorati Tags: Black Duck Softwware, Deki Wiki, Koders, Microsoft, MindTouch, Open Search, Open Source, sharepoint