June 12, 2009
Something is changing in the video world, slowly but surely. And who knows, it may suddenly accelerate and take us all by surprise. In about a week from now, visionaries as well as those hard at work at making it happen will be meeting in New York City for the Open Video Conference.
Open video is not just about codecs and the underlying technological infrastructure, but also the content. But beyond “the medium is the message” often quoted from McLuhan, we are beginning to see that “the means is the messenger”. The future of video promises to be one intertwined with participatory culture, where we hope that the prevalence of open media makes a real difference.
September 14, 2008
The June 2008 report on “Collaboration and Social Media” by the Gilbane Group suggested that “the future of social media focuses on delivering vertical solutions complete with rich domain expertise.” This is a view that I have found to repeatedly ring true.
This further reinforces my belief that open source collaboration solutions are inherently superior to non-open source alternatives because open source allows for the widespread proliferation of different vertical solutions based on the same platform, by different members of an extended community. Open source provides the framework within which each vertical solution provider can maximize their chances of success by being extremely focused, at the same time benefiting from economies of scale and scope by being part of a larger community.
In open source environments, value is primarily created (and monetized) by “maintainers” of the code who keep each vertical solution up-to-date and relevant to the needs of targeted users, since the “stock value” of the code has been communalized. The cost of maintaining the code is shared, enabling each vertical solution provider to incur far less cost than if they were to develop the solution using a proprietary model. At the same time, their competitive differentiators are not undermined, since code does not stand still – it requires constant maintenance and “flow values” generated by the “maintainers” is what customers will pay for.
As there are countless vertical solutions possible with a platform as comprehensive as TikiWiki, this presents a remarkable opportunity for entrepreneurs and consultants to take on responsibility for maintaining new vertical solutions for markets that they have relationships in, and to monetize it in the way most suitable for each market.
We hope more and more open source entrepreneurs and consultants will join in. There are significant developments at the core of the TikiWiki community to facilitate this, for example, the upcoming Installation Profiles system and TikiWiki “Magic” (codename for the new data driven admin panel) will make it much easier to configure and maintain different vertical solutions.
June 15, 2008
As the launch of Firefox 3 draws close, it is time to reflect on how revolutionary open source has been and how it still has so much to grow into. Being part of the Firefox support team has provided a brand new perspective that brings the open source way of doing things into a non-software arena – namely, providing customer support. The Firefox Support Knowledge Base is a collaborative work of dozens of contributors, the Support Forum is bustling with people answering questions, and Live Chat is manned by dedicated team of community members.
The Firefox Support Knowledge Base that is implemented using TikiWiki has unique features that encourage contribution and at the same time ensure the quality and accurary of the articles. David Tenser, Firefox Support Manager, said this in a recent interview, “Since the Knowledge Base is a wiki, anyone can sign up and make improvements …… we have a pretty neat review system in place to ensure that the accuracy of the articles are maintained. Although anyone can sign up to the wiki and start editing articles, a reviewer must read the changes made and approve them before they’re visible to our users. If a contributor proves to be a good writer whose edits are mostly approved without comments, he or she can become a reviewer as well.”
The Knowledge Base is also a platform for translation of articles, using features in TikiWiki derived from the Cross-Lingual Wiki Engine project of the National Research Council of Canada. The open nature of the wiki provides a lower barrier of entry to begin translating an article. “If an article is not yet available in your language, it’s easy to just get started and translate it yourself, which immediately helps your fellow local Firefox users,” David Tenser remarks.
The most remarkable thing I realized working with Mozilla is its unequivocal support for open source. They are absolutely committed to making sure that any improvements made to the source code of TikiWiki as a result of the Firefox Support project makes it back to that community. One of my main priorities for the next 6 months is to make this process smoother, by encouraging even closer collaboration between members of both communities.
June 3, 2008
Congratulations to Peter Deitz for being a winner at the NetSquared N2Y3 Mashup Challenge! My favorite project from the beginning – I found the value proposition provided by his Social Actions project clear and compelling.
The problem: There are too many social action platforms around. People have not enough time to monitor or search all of them for actions that they are interested in contributing to.
The solution: Provide a platform that aggregates the social actions of the other platforms, a central place to monitor and search for actions of interest.
The a-ha!: The platform creates a better fit between contributing donors/volunteers and recipient social action organizations/platforms. This raises aggregate giving for those on the platform.
The so-what?: Aren’t there already other social action platforms that aggregate the needs of individual non-profit organizations?
The difference: Many of these existing platforms serve an important function to collect and organize grassroots needs into higher-level social actions, e.g. end homelessness, or end global hunger. However, Social Actions provides an open API that provide these platforms as well as larger non-profits a way to exchange and trade opportunities with each other, and to expand the channels through which they can more effectively reach potential contributors.
Thanks again to the NetSquared organizers of the conference and mash-up competition for organizing a remarkable event. Their work in bringing emerging Internet technologies into the non-profit sector cannot be understated.
March 23, 2008
At Penguin Day New Orleans, in response to request for speed geeking volunteers, I decided to show my latest open source passion – Kaltura.
Kaltura is the world’s first open source collaborative video platform. This is quite awesome stuff. Think of it as a YouTube type system for embedding videos on a webpage with the following important differences:
- There is an “Add to this video” button.
- There is an “Edit this video” button.
- This is open source, creating unparalleled opportunities for further innovation of the technology.
Kaltura allows users to collaboratively add video, audio and images to an existing video. This is similar to the YouTube Remixer, but designed for multi-user collaborative editing, and not just personal video mash-ups.
Kudos to the Wikimedia foundation for helping to make this technology free and open (see press release and beta project landing page).
I am now in the process of developing a TikiWiki extension that will provide integration between TikiWiki and Kaltura. This extension will leverage the comprehensive TikiWiki permissions framework to provide managed collaborative video editing in a variety of settings.
The potential for non-profits and for-profits to use this technology to engage constituents and customers is immense. Keep in mind though, that the project is still young, but with something as game-changing as this, I am sure a rapid community will grow around the project to make it a big success in the months and years to come.
January 17, 2008
TikiWiki has been named to the Seventh Annual EContent 100. The annual list contains the companies “that matter most in the digital content industry.”
The wealth of new features and enhancements contained in the upcoming Release 1.10 will no doubt maintain Tiki’s position as one of the best digital content and social media platforms.
Read the complete 2007 EContent 100 List.
