I’m going to pursue the answers. I’m not gonna sit still and accept the status quo.
Kismet has brought me here and I’m letting fate guide me.
My current class has us building the user experiences for the Case Connection Zone. Stay tuned on that one. It’s installing 1,000 megabit connections into 104 homes and apartments on Hessler St. - directly adjacent to the CWRU campus.
Chris is one of those rare reporters who actually listens, understands and reports truthfully what he heard. I sure wish all my encounters with reporters and bloggers were as rewarding.
Anyway - Chris hits it on the head - I’m focusing on innovating in the area of workforce development, we’re going to use our PeopleAggregator platform and live video Helpto get peopel comfortable using computers and learning the job skills they’ll need - in the future.
We’re going to build LOTS of great interactive multimedia content in the process - and teach folks the job skills necessary to do that - along the way.
Oh yah - we’ll also help build out a software infrastructure that will enable a NEO wide alliance of cities, municipalities and neighborhoods to have their OWN platforms, dashboards, etc. - and mesh us all together.
Another thing Chris got right - NEO doesn’t have the slightest idea what’s headed their way.
Well except for Lev Gonick, George Nemeth, Ed Morrison, Hunter Morrison, Jim Cossler, Kent Smith, Anthony Houston, Mayor Eric Brewer, Jim O’Bryan, Ron Copfer, Angela Seifer, Cara Keithly, Tom Williams, Jorge Delgado, Karen Baker, Bob Chalfant, Susan Sharp, Frank Revy, Bill Calahan, Cindy of the Beachland, Charley Daane, Peter Whitehouse, Nick Berente, Jon Cline, Mark Smith (and Patty), Joe Cimperman, Ben Blanquera, David Akers, Rep. Mike Foley and Anne Hill.
They know - cause they’ve met me. And I’ll be teaching a class at CWRU - called “How to build a Digital City” starting Aug. 25th.
So we’re seeing open permeate throughout our world and raising it’s head in lots of interesting ways.
My friends David Recordon and the Plaxo dudes (Joseph and John) along with Chris Messina have a IPTV show called “theSocialWeb.tv” and it’s probably the best thing out there to highlight the status, trends and memes of this world and which dives deeply into the geeky issues surrounding “open social networking”.
But in fact - it goes beyond just social networking. Social features will soon be built into all software. That’s something else Fred Wilson is figuring out. So we’re seeing him (and his VC cohorts) start to invest in all sorts of open platforms and products, but they’re missing a crucial element to the game - contributing back to teh community. So that’s why I created the post “Taking advantage of open for proprietary reasons“.
Yahoo has finally launched their underlying ID layer - almost four years after I first asked Jerry Yang and Dan Rosensweig for that. Over the subsequent 3.5 years I was told “it was coming”, “yah yah - we’re gonna do that“, “yah sure - we’ll have APIs for MyYahoo” - but yet as of this writing we still don’t have two-way APIs into MyYahoo.
The BBC seems to be getting their open act together - and building their own underlying ID layer under the leadership of Eric Huggers. They’d better - they promised us Open BBC almost four years ago.
Microsoft has launched their Open Live Mesh Cloud thingie - Azure. And Facebook and MySpace (though clerarly closed meshes) are opening up - in their own way.
iGoogle appears to be positioning itself as a key aspect of Google’s “digital lifestyle aggregaton” strategy. With clean integration with OpenSocial, Reader, Gmail and (one would assume) ALL the suite of Google apps - iGoogle will soon be the state-of-the-art dashboard which I talk about in Chapter 6 - “UI Objects” - in my book.
And lord knows what’s gonna happen once Clearspring and Gigya start running ads in their widgets. That is one of the key milestones of our monetizable distributed business model. And heaven help us once Twitter declares their business model next year. Or FriendFeed starts to ‘experiment’ with ads. Watch for stampedes of new proportions.
Some call it the open stack. Others are bent on user identity oriented focus or an enterprise approach. It really doesn’t matter. Open will come in a myriad of sizes, shapes and packages.
Yes indeed - Open is the new Black. Everyone is doing it, in their own way - which is EXACTLY how it’s supposed to happen - to build an open mesh - where others can come in and participate.
Here is an annotated video of the speech I gave in Rotterdam recently (Sept,. 18th.) I now have these versions of this treatise (which is a guide for practitioners and marketers on the future):
As time goes on and new trends enter our space - I will continue to update the book, utilizing the wiki to collect feedback and input from everyone. Based upon WHEN you buy the book will dictate which version you get. And to all your mainstream publishers out there - I’m willing to cut down a whole bunch of trees and print up a BUNCH of copies - if you’re into it.
My wife just said it perfectly.
And lord knows what’s gonna happen once Clearspring and Gigya start running ads in their widgets. That is one of the key milestones of our monetizable distributed business model. And heaven help us once Twitter declares their business model next year. Or FriendFeed starts to ‘experiment’ with ads. Watch for stampedes of new proportions.
