Yesterday, I attended the first ever StatusCamp held in Montreal, and came away being very impressed with what I saw. How often does one get to attend an public unconference organized by a venture funded startup?
Present in full force was the power-packed Status.Net team which included the former CTO of the Wikimedia Foundation, Brian Vibber, and seasoned entrepreneur/open source business pioneer CEO Evan Prodromou. This is a team that understands the DNA of the Internet and its open source roots, and how its future that includes microblogging will eventually be moulded in accordance to its genetic makeup. An illustration in point: the instinctive openness exhibited at StatusCamp towards supporting open protocols such as ActivityStreams, PubSubHubBub, and Salmon within Status.Net highlights the value of being part of on-the-surface seemingly chaotic open source ecosystems, and how we can all be stronger when disparate but open parts can be combined to work together than when we work in silos.
Yes, the Internet has grown up and is a platform upon which commercial activities thrive. In this respect, Status.Net’s WordPress.com/wordpress.org analogy summarizes their business model very well, has been validated with the success of WordPress, and is easy to understand to even people not familiar with open source. I am very much looking forward to the upcoming public beta of the Status.Net hosted service.
At Citadel Rock, we will be actively incorporating Status.Net into our Online Collaboration and Social Media offerings. Customers will have the option of using the Status.Net hosted service (we will normally recommend this) or on their own premises (software maintenance subscriptions can be purchased from Status.Net). Citadel Rock will provide customization and integration services. In 2010, We will be proactively working on integrating the open source TikiWiki platform with Status.Net, similar to what we are doing right now with Big Blue Button, an open source web conferencing system.
Crossposted: http://citadelrock.com/www/blogpost5-The-First-StatusCamp-in-Montreal
