mindtouch is a fascinating research project by university of east london smartlab phd candidate camille baker. using mobile phones, body sensors, and custom software, baker creates a platform for collaboration and exchange of visuals and non-verbal experiences.

The intention of this project is to contribute to performance technology studies by investigating’liveness and presence’ within the context of a specific networked, mobile media performance research project, currently underway, in order to uncover any new understandings that may have emerged from the use of new wireless  and mobile technologies.

This project involves creating a mobile networked performance that utilizes a database of archived of streamed and/or archived video clips created by video enabled mobile phones, to then be retrieved, streamed and remixed during a live visuals performance(s). The event or events will form a performative, collaborative, non-linear narrative montage or remix, that will possibly be streamed back out to anyone’s phone and the internet, and then archived. These events will be starting in London, UK in July + October, Vancouver in Aug/Sept, and possibly Perth and Asia next year.

This research explores mobile video/media on phones for their immediacy, low quality – imperfectness, but spontaneity, at the speed of thought – with its rewriting, superimposing, and remixing of ideas, flashes and clashes of images and emotion, layering of meaning and stream of consciousness and equivalent – or simulation of telepathy and collective, if chaotic intelligence.

Know what’s cool? Scrolling through your Twitter feed and seeing a post like this from a reporter you have an amazing amount of respect for:

Know what’s also cool? Seeing your first accepted submission on Slashdot for a great client (if you are a geek, you’ll understand how unbelievably cool this is):

MindTouch, an open-source provider of enterprise collaboration software, announced today that its platform is now available in the cloud. You can find a video on how the platform, dubbed MindTouch Cloud, creates “a federated collaboration network” here.  MindTouch competes with Microsoft’s (s msft) SharePoint, but can eliminate many of the inflexibilities of proprietary collaboration software, and MindTouch Cloud’s prices are being kept low. A 10-user group can use it for $10 per month per user, 30 users can for $8 a month per user, and 50 users can for $7 a month per user, with lower costs for larger businesses.

MindTouch Cloud incorporates desktop productivity tools, database adapters and more, as OStatic notes. “What sets it apart from other collaboration systems is the ability to use other popular enterprise systems atop this platform,” OStatic says. Web applications, ERP frameworks, Salesforce.com usage and so on can be integrated with MindTouch. Intel, Cisco, Mozilla and many other companies use MindTouch’s platform.

This has been a busy week for hosted collaboration tools, with Salesforce announcing its Chatter collaboration solution yesterday. You can read more about MindTouch Cloud here, and the company’s CEO, Aaron Fulkerson, did a guest column for OStatic on the future of collaborative networks here.

I was recently on TWiT.tv: FLOSS Weekly with Randal Schwartz, Jono Bacon, and Leo Laporte. Download MP3 file | Shownotes

All three of these people (and Dane) are wonderful people I thoroughly enjoy speaking (and drinking) with.

Visit the FLOSS Weekly Episode 89 show page to stream the episode in a click. You may also subscribe to the show in your preferred podcast or RSS client, which you should because it’s an awesome show.

I really enjoy podcasting. I’d like to participate regularly in a podcast(s). If any readers have a podcast that you think I would find relevant to my areas of expertise please let me know. Or if you have an idea of a podcast you would like to start, ping me about this too. I wouldn’t mind starting a new podcast if 1. it were on topics I’m interested in and 2. I didn’t have to worry about any of the infrastructure for supporting it.

MindTouchers Steve and Arne have a fantastic podcast on concurrency called: ‘Concurrent Podcast’. Here is their schedule:

I encourage you to subscribe and listen to it.

We’ve been thinking about startup branding for a while. I recently touched on branding when I posted ‘Do startups really need branding straplines?’ and concluded that top level marketing straplines embody the vision of the startup. This brings clarity of purpose, consistency of understanding and direction. It seems to me that ‘brand identity‘ is a vague and fluffy term.  However branding is not just for the big boys. It’s also great for startups. Brand identity helps brings credibility to a startups customer, investor and partner relationships.

“It’s the Real Thing“

Startup branding certainly isn’t anything like coca-cola with their big budget corporate brand personality. However  both big company and startup branding is about personality. Branding is very, very, very important for the big companies. It’s worth an awful lot to these giants. It is also really important for tiny little startups like our new web monitoring service. Branding sends out a consistent recurring and reliable message of what the company and product stands for. Customers love consistency. They want to know what they are going to get and they will be satisfied. This builds brand and product/service trust.

In a startup brand personality means the founder’s personalities. Like it or not its about  the founders character’s!  The startup is a reflection  the founders values, beliefs and the way they behave. Startups have the ability to be much more human and friendly than the big faceless corporations. This means startups can use their founders personalities to their advantage. They can be so much more human, personal and engaging.  This is particularly effective in the new world of social media. However startup founders need to have a clear message on what they stand for and who is their the target audience. The founders also have to live and breath the brand for it to be real.

My friend Aaron Fulkerson, the CEO of MindTouch, has taken branding
to the extreme by tattooing the company logo on his leg!!

Most business relationships, whether B2B or B2C, are based upon trust. Potential customers need to know that a supplier will deliver on their promises and they will be around in the future. The challenge for startups is  that branding and trust takes time to build up.  If the founder chops and changes  messages or brand personality too much this trust will not buildup. It takes patience and persistence on a single course to buildup branding identity. This is what makes it so valuable for both the big companies and startups alike.

Kaltura é uma plataforma, de código aberto, para vídeos colaborativos como em um wiki. Incorporado pela MindTouch – a intranet de código aberto baseada em wiki – o Kaltura está sendo usado pela Wikipedia para a edição de vídeos. Através do Kaltura, os clientes da MindTouch poderão editar, publicar e mesclar vídeos colaborativamente, tanto dentro como fora da firewall, com todo histórico do processo. Por ser de código aberto, o Kaltura oferece uma oportunidade para programadores desenvolverem outros aplicativos personalizados. Veja como funciona o vídeo player interativo, o console de gerenciamento, o editor online e o uploader. Oferece também plugins para integração de vídeos para WordPress, Drupal, MediaWiki, PHP, Ruby, etc.

Artigos relacionados:

• MindTouch: The First Enterprise App to Get Collaborative Video (readwriteweb.com)
• MindTouch Upgrades Collaborative Platform With Video And Developer-Friendly Tools (techcrunch.com)
• The New MindTouch Collaborative Intranet: Way More Than Just Wiki (readwriteweb.com)
• MindTouch Enhances Wiki-like Enterprise Collaboration Platform (techcrunchit.com)
• Get Ready for Video on Wikipedia: Al Jazeera Has Started…..Have You Heard of FireOgg Yet? (beet.tv)
• Video Coming to Wikipedia……Will be Viewable on Microsoft Explorer Too (beet.tv)

MindTouch, the open source, wiki-based intranet, brings fully collaborative video to the enterprise; http://tr.im/tvaD

SharePoint es un software de colaboración de Microsoft de gran difusión entre las empresas. Es un buen producto y sirve a muchas empresas para mejorar escenarios de colaboración, especialmente en aquellos casos de equipos de trabajo donde se manejan documentos de MSOffice. PERO…Sharepoint no siempre es la mejor opción para las empresas que buscan software para mejorar la colaboración y compartir conocimiento. Existen muy buenas alternativas open source a MSSharePoint (también conocido como MOSS MS Office SharePoint Server), y además éstas alterntivas pueden encajar mejor en los requerimientos de algunos escenarios de colaboración. Estas alternativas open source pueden resultar más económicas (¡en licencias seguro!), no requieren otros productos de Microsoft y al menos pueden servir de “benchmark” y comparativa con lo que ofrece SharePoint:

Mindtouch:  Evolucionado a partir de una aplicación “wiki”, cubre muy bien escenarios de gestión de conocimiento: manuales, soporte, base de conocimiento. Muy, muy, muy fácil de utilizar (imprecindible si quieres que un proyecto de colaboración no caiga en el olvido de las aplicaciones bien intencionadas pero que nadie utiliza),  estilo web 2.0.  Una arquitectura muy abierta (XML, REST) le permite converstirse en un Intranet muy flexible, configurable y fácil de actualizar e integrar con otras aplicaciones web.

Alfresco o Knowledge Tree:  Sun muy buenas alternativas si los requerimientos exigen una gestión documental avanzada: check-in y check-out, workflows de aprobación, .. . Alfresco tiene funcionalidades más avanzadas pero requiere mayor esfuerzo de implantación, configuración y personalización, knowledge tree se implementa más rápido.

Liferay: Cuando se trata de crear un portal, Liferay es una tecnología java basada en el standard de “portlets”. Acceso a mulitples aplicaciones o funcionalidades, control de acceso, configuración personalizada, etc… Liferay está ganando terreno especialmente en portales de administraciones públicas.

Evidentemente cada caso requiere un análisis más en detalle, pero al menos espero que os pueda ser de utilidad como guia. Espero en futuros posts hablar más en detalle de los pros y contras de Sharepoint y las alternativas open source, en base a nuestra experiencia en Tinval implementando  éstas soluciones. Como algunos ya sabéis, el open source permite probar, testear e incluso auditar el software antes de usarlo en producción.

Comentarios, ideas y experiencias son bienvenidos.

In an effort to encourage others to blog their support for MindTouch in the Sourceforge.net Community Choice Awards I’m providing this simple vote for MindTouch HTML snippet:

When you copy/paste this it yields:

Please consider placing this in your blog sidebar, in a blog post, to your facebook wall or on your websites. Thanks!

Related articles by Zemanta

• MindTouch Enhances Wiki-like Enterprise Collaboration Platform (techcrunchit.com)
• The New MindTouch Collaborative Intranet: Way More Than Just Wiki (readwriteweb.com)
• On Open Source and Open Core (oblogn.com)
• Mindtouch – Glue To The Cloud Apps (cloudave.com)
• Collaboration Networks v/s Social Networks (sociableblog.com)

A week or so ago I wrote about MindTouch and their take on social business software, including that popularized by vendors such as Jive. Some of what Aaron from MindTouch writes about applies to Jive, while some does not — if only because Jive does not include microblogging, instant messaging or really much of any mashup capability out of the box. It’s also not easy to hook Jive into existing Web tools, so Jive tends to be a Web 2.0 ‘introvert’ by default. Conversely, MindTouch lets vasts swaths of your organization create mashups that bring the best of the Web together with data from your own systems.

Jive strikes me as a tool that’s a jack of all trades and master of none. What I mean is that it does document management, but not as well as SharePoint. It’s a wiki, but one that’s not as good as MindTouch’s. It claims to be social business software, but there is no built-in Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, chat or even instant messaging capability. It has social bookmarking, but it still lacks the community mojo of Facebook or Twitter. Making matters worse, it doesn’t have Outlook or Microsoft Office adapters (unlike MindTouch or even startup Infovark), so Jive users are forced to choose between using these established business tools and Jive’s parallel, wiki-only approach. There’s also no real integration with Salesforce.com or other existing enterprise systems.

Even apart from taking a social business software approach, Jive’s more basic Achilles heel seems to be that it lacks many extensions, and thus offers really basic functionality. You’ll get blogs, wikis, comments, groups and even rudimentary project management, but not much by way of workflow, mashups and dashboards that show real ROI. If my CEO or CFO were to ask me for a sales dashboard for Jive, for example, I’d be hard pressed to provide him with one. Jive seems to stub its toe on the ‘So what?’ question that business owners like to ask about the value of new tools. (If you want dashboards for BI, you’ll need to use another tool from SAP that then integrates with Jive — at a considerable extra cost — or some other back-end reporting tool.)

On the other hand, what intrigues me about MindTouch is that it focuses on getting the most from existing systems. If you’re an organization that uses Salesforce, MindTouch can provide you with CEO-friendly dashboards, using real-time data, without the need to generate static reports. If you want to integrate Twitter, no worries. Google Maps? Check. LinkedIn? Yes. Outlook and Office? Of course.

Oh, and your data is 100% portable, so there’s no vendor lock-in. MindTouch seems to be built to use communication and collaboration as a means to an end, and not as an end unto themselves. Jive seems to have assumed that more sharing and communication would automatically generate greater — and easy-to-calculate — ROI, but this doesn’t seem to be the case — hence their partnership with SAP.

What do you think? Has your mileage varied with Jive or even MindTouch?

With the impending release of Google Wave, an insidious thought has crossed my mind: Would it indeed be possible to outfit an entire office and even develop a complete online presence for yourself or a client without spending any money on software? I’m talking e-mail, office applications, Web sites, analytics, CRM, social media, etc. What if you took a contrarian approach to your enterprise software and developed a bias toward the free and easy instead of the expensive and difficult? Would you or your clients really be missing anything essential?

If it is true that most users don’t use all the fancy features in many commercial products, why not give them tools — yes, less powerful in the abstract — that they will actually use? Isn’t the point that customers use the software? And if the tools were free, you could spend your money on training, customization or even change management.

Sure, Linux has been offering a free suite of alternative software for years (I’m typing this on an Ubuntu-powered laptop), but now it’s becoming increasingly possible and viable to use free tools to accomplish the tasks and objectives that most customers want to achieve. (Now, whenever I hear the phrase enterprise software, I tend to cringe at the expected cost and complexity.)

Or, failing the totally free route, what if you used, for example, a combination of free and low-cost tools that included Pipeline Deals (a Salesforce alternative), Box.net (a SharePoint alternative), OpenOffice.org/Google Docs (an Office replacement), MindTouch (collaborative networking), Joomla!/Drupal/WordPress (CMS), GMail/Google Wave (e-mail) and Google Analytics? Or what if you just used as many free Google tools as possible?

What do you think? For consultants, is there a business in helping customers configure and use free tools? And is this another example of the ‘freemium’ model at work, where some companies would choose to outsource customization and training?

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Muchos nos preguntamos como afectan a las herramientas de gestión de información que usamos a diario en las empresas, todos los cambios que estamos viendo alrededor del fenómeno web 2.0 y las redes sociales.

La Intranet o Portal corporativo hoy debería ser una red de colaboración profesional. Pero en la empresa ésto tiene unos condicionantes:

- Todo gira alrededor de los contenidos de la empresa

- Hay que conectar con otras aplicaciones ya existentes (ERP,CRM, BI,…)

- Hay que fomentar y facilitar la participación, eliminar silos de información,…

- El departamento de IT debe tener gran capacidad para extender la intranet, facilitar la integración y fomentar la particpación. Administración sencilla, integración segura LDAP, mashups, REST,…

Sí, pero… en la práctica qué tipo de herramienta puede proporcionar ésta nueva Intranet.

Mindtouch es la empresa líder en aplicaciones de colaboración para las empresas, en el ámbito del open source.  (Sus soluciones són las descargadas en Sourceforge en su categoría). Acaban de lanzar una propuesta concreta para Intranets llamada “Mindtouch Collaborative Networking” que os recomiendo.

Aquí podéis ver un vídeo demostrativo:

Comentarios bienvenidos

Nota: Tinval es partner de Mindtouch

Confirmada la tendencia por parte de “The Economist“, de un gran nivel de adopción del software libre por parte de las empresas. Ésto confirma nuestras impresiones del día a día, en que cada vez más responsables de informática ya han implantado soluciones basadas en software libre o bien están contemplando la posibilidad de hacerlo en breve. Según el estudio de “The Economist” al menos un 70% de las empresas entrevistadas o ya han implantado software libre o están en fase de pilotaje o evaluación.

¿Cual es el gran catalizador para éste cambio?, el ahorro en costes. Ahora que el software libre no representa un riesgo, puesto que muchas empresas lo han implantado con éxito y además están informando de ahorros en costes, no existen barreras ni riesgos que impidan considerar seriamente el “open source” y beneficierse del ahorro.

Además el software libre no está limitado a la capa más básica de software:  Linux o  Apache (servidor web), las aplicaciones de negocio también disponen de alternativas de software libre. Especialmente están triunfando en el mercado soluciones CRM, BI, EAI, ECM e intranets, portales y redes de colaboración y gestión del conocimiento. Algunas pistas:  CRM: SugarCRM;  BI: Pentaho y Jasper; EAI: Talend y Jitterbit; ECM: Alfresco, Nuxeo y Knowledge Tree; Portal: Liferay; Intranet/Colaboración/KM: Mindtouch.

Creo además que también ha sido importante la maduración de un ecosistema de empresas de servicios y consultoría IT alrededor del software libre, que puedan dar soporte a las empresas en el proceso de selección, implantación y soporte. Tinval se encuentra en entre éstas empresas.

Os recomiendo la lectura del reportaje de “The Economist” , también encontraréis más información en la web de Tinval. En éste blog seguiremos tratando el tema en próximos posts.

¿Que pensaís sobre ésto? ¿Tenéis la misma impresión? ¿Falta información a las empresas sobre el software libre? Los comentarios son bienvenidos.

Aclaración tipo “disclaimer”: Tinval es partner de Talend y Mindtouch.

People tend to either be listening or taking at at any given time.  Something that I have noticed recently is that one of the most common traits in people with true leadership skills is that they are always in learning mode.  It seems especially prevalent these days that everyone is racing to call themselves an expert on a range of topics (with “social media” being the worst offender, but there are plenty of others), but I fail to see a rush of people looking to pay for this expertise.

(sidenote:  if you actually hired a “social media expert”, please let me know;  I have yet to even see an ad that reads “Looking for social media expert.  Must twitter constantly, have lots of followers, have unhealthy relationship with iPhone.  HASHTAG ABUSERS NEED NOT APPLY”)

One common thread that runs through many successful members of the business community is that they never stop learning.  Before you accuse me of having an inappropriate sample set, I assure you that I am not just speaking about observations of my MBA class, but many people that I have met in my personal and professional life as well.  Those that are the best leaders are the ones that are always listening and analyzing and if there is one trait that has been developed over the past few years of grad school it has been my ability to slow down, listen and most importantly, ask questions.  Jim Collins, the Auther of “Good to Great” recently said that leaders are not the ones that have the answers, they are the ones that ask the right questions.

The simple irony is, once you call yourself an expert you now have incentive to stop learning; the best leaders however, have the opposite trait.  It seems that the best leaders are open to learning all the time, living the phrase “you learn something new every day”.

I wrote two blog posts at the MindTouch blog today that I think are of import. The first is about Open Core models. The second post is about my belief in open source.

80% Of The Functionality For 500% Of The Cost

The title of this blog post could be: Why open source matters to me, but I like the former because it’s racier and I hear that gets readers. Anyway, I was prompted to write this because of a comment and question posed me by a MindTouch open source community member that really is best answered/satisfied by me explaining this and also sharing my ideas about Open Core. At any rate, to answer why open source matters to me I really have to respond from two distinct perspectives. First I’ll answer it on a personal level and then as the CEO of an enterprise software company.

Here is my “Aaron hat”. I received my degree in Computer Science from UNC-Chapel Hill where I did pretty much all my course work, like most CS students, on an open source stack. I’ve helped to start several non-profits tasked with bridging the digital divide in under-served and predominately minority communities where I primarily used an open source stack. I’ve owned a couple small businesses in which I benefited a great deal by building on, guess what, primarily an open source stack. So, let me tell you on a personal level I have very strong convictions about open source. There are many reasons, but I will present you my top two.

Read more….

Although I am glad to not be traveling as much as I once was, one that I do miss is flying; not necessarily because I like small seats and bad food, but because I can get so much more done when I am forced to sit in one place, face straight ahead and focus on a single task at a time.  It’s been over a month since my last personal blog post and at least a few weeks since I’ve posted anything to the MindTouch blog; I’ve finished the MindTouch post, and now I’m onto this post for my personal blog.  Maybe I should fly more often.

The past Friday, I had the opportunity to participate in the Government 2.0 conference together with our CEO Aaron Fulkerson.   This was my second government-and-technology conference, and I can’t even begin to express the new vibe that is in the air in Washington, and how energizing it is to be in the middle of what is, really, a revolution.  It’s as if we had all been waiting in the wings with these new social applications for government, and the new mandates for transparency handed down by the Obama administration just opened the floodgates.  The energy in the room is contagious, to say the least.

I am currently gearing up for Web 2.0 Expo this week, if you are going to be in attendance be sure to stop by the MindTouch booth, I’ll be working the floor Wednesday and Thursday.

This is the first in series of posts covering the Web 2.0 Expo starting tomorrow at the Moscone Center, in San Francisco, California. I am very excited about the number of companies offering Enterprise 2.0  tools, platforms for developers and end-(business)-users at the event this year. Many of these companies  have plans to announce exciting new social-sharing features and tools at the show, stay tuned for more details. 

 Here’s a sneak peak at some of the more interesting Enterprise 2.0 collaborative platforms and developer tools at the show this year:

ooVoo provides a high-quality video chat and communication service for people to call and connect over the Internet. ooVoo’s technology enables people to experience a face-to-face conversation and share a full range of emotions as if they are in the same room together, whether they are across the street or across the globe.

Huddle.net combines unified collaboration with social networking. The two year old company, based in London UK, provides asynchronous collaborative tools (document management, project management, discussions, team management) and live collaboration (web and telephone conferencing) via their online application and rich API. Huddle’s founder Alastair Mitchell will be talking at Web 2.0 Expo on April, 1st.

MindTouch is an open source enterprise collaboration and community platform that enables users to connect and remix enterprise systems, social tools and web services. The MindTouch Deki i’s built with a Web Oriented Architecture (WOA), enables users to connect teams, enterprise systems, publishing systems, Web services and Web 2.0 applications to create unique content oriented experiences while maintaining IT governance.

ProtoShare is a collaborative website prototyping tool for teams to build, discuss, and refine clickable website wireframes and their creative design comps. Team members, management, clients, and marketing can all  participate in the discussion at an early stage of the interactive development process. ProtoShare is a web-based tool, it supports a wide range of interactive prototypes, from gray-box wireframing to rich Internet functionality.

DreamFace Interactive  develops and markets an Open Source Ajax Framework for creating Enterprise Web 2.0 Applications and Mashups. The new DreamFace version, called Outsider, allows tech-savvy business people to create, personalize and share their own web applications through a unique and innovative concept called Web Channels.Web Channels are mini dynamic applications designed for change. They incorporate DataWidgets; widgets which use diverse data sources coming from both corporate data and the internet, to display information and interact with other DataWidgets.

Last but not the least, CoreMedia CMS is a content management system powering corporate websites, Intranets, public and high traffic media portals. CoreMedia CMS provides a foundation for strategic content platforms for corporate websites, intranets and high-traffic media portals. Soeren Stamer, German entrepreneur, CEO of CoreMedia and Author of “Enterprise 2.0 – The Art of Letting Go” will speaking at Web 2.0 expo on Wednesday, April 1st.

I’ll be blogging on social media tools and platforms for the enterprise space throughout the show, if there’s an enterprise-focused company/product that you would like to see on here or if you want to tweet up, you can find me at Twitter.com/MiaD. 

You can also follow the conversation on the Web 2.0 Expo website or on Twitter (#w2e).

There was an article in the San Diego Business Journal (SDBJ) last month about MindTouch. I’ve had many people congratulate me on the article. I was somewhat perplexed because MindTouch was also recently in the New York Times and I’ve had more people congratulate me about this SDBJ article than I did when were in the New York Times or Wall Street Journal! I didn’t realize how well read SDBJ is locally. Then I learned yesterday the article was on the cover, above the fold. No wonder.

I don’t know what photo was used in the print edition. Probably the same above,. However, I hope they used one that doesn’t highlight my greasy forehead. If anyone has a copy of the print issue please send me a copy.

The other day, I was pontificating (as I often do) about how technology has changed our lives. If you think about it, our lives are completely different than there were a mere 5 years ago, not to mention 20 years ago. I remember the days before e-mail, but I can’t remember what it was like in the workplace without e-mail. I remember that cell phones started taking off right when I got my first traveling sales job, which made my life so much easier. Technology has fundamentally changed how we interact, build relationships, and do business.

Naturally, my thoughts migrated to social media and the underlying question, “how has social media changed our lives?” So, I decided to pose the question to my various networks out there on the social web. The answers varied, but were fascinating and very telling. I thought I would share a few with you:

Sarah Lewis of Findable Blogs, a Boise based blogging expert, said: “Social media helps me both professionally (leads & collaboration) and personally (reduces isolation, even as a new mom).”

Mike Diliberto, Sales Engineer at MindTouch and fellow T-Bird, said: “Social media has increased my cognitive breadth; pre-social media, maintaining connections with hundreds of people would be impossible.”

Norris Krueger, founder of Entrepreneurship Northwest and noted social entrepreneurship expert, said: “Getting less done but.. maybe just maybe… getting better things done!”

Martin Johncox, PR Director for Alexander and Associates, said: “It’s opened up new business opportunities in lean times; connected me with long-lost friends; re-connected me with colleagues.”

George Condit, Account Manager at Seybold Scientific and distinguished curmudgeon, said: “I can ask the world a question and get an answer.”

Donna Geisler, principal at FusionSet, said: “Social media makes me feel overwhelmed with opportunity and underwhelmed with time. Otherwise, it’s great!”

Tia Markland, Publisher of Eagle and Meridian Magazines, said “Increased sales and awareness for business.”

However, I would have to say that one of the most personal answers I received was from Chris Barger, who is the Director of Global Communications Technology for General Motors, who wrote me a fascinating and in-depth answer. Here is a snippet from his response: “Social media turned out to be the Acme Rocket Pack strapped to the back of my career, and made my American Dream a reality.”

I would have to say that I have found my experience to be in line with all of these wonderful answers. Social has made life more meaningful for me. It has helped me create deeper relationships, build my network, and has proven to be an invaluable business tool. However, I would have to say my answer most closely aligns with Chris Barger’s. It is because of social media that I have the career I do today.

How has social media changed your life?

I authored a substantive article on the evolution of consumer social media tools into new enterprise software tools at the MindTouch blog. I put some sweat into this one. Give it a read.

There can be no doubt that one of the hottest spaces in enterprise software today is collaboration. It’s no surprise collaboration is getting a lot of interest. The old metaphors for capturing, authoring and sharing information are stale and inefficient. As such, there is a lot of room for achieving productivity improvements through improved user experience. This has been true for all software, but especially so in the enterprise software space where collaboration is essential to daily operation and where every ounce of productivity translates into big dollars.

In the last several years a software renaissance has been taking place in the consumer space that has begun seeping into, and benefiting, business and enterprise systems. The innovation in software during this renaissance, more commonly referred to as Web 2.0, has been almost entirely about improving user experience metaphors. AJAX, new social metaphors, lessening of the file/file system metaphor, making structure implicit rather than explicit and just generally simplifying user interfaces are all trends evidenced in this new wave of software. While most pundits think “Web 2.0” has been about making the Web participatory, enabling social connectedness and conversations these are but side effects of the improved ease of use and increased stickiness (fun of use) software has experienced.

via MindTouch, Inc Blog: Full Article.

I know, I know. I’ll stop tooting our horn, but I checked in at Sourceforge to look at the MindTouch project rank tonight and I noticed MindTouch Deki currently bests even Azureus, arguably the most popular torrent client. You know what this means? MindTouch is more popular than porn and piracy.

It comes as no surprise to me that MindTouch is a topped rank open source project and a fast growing business. We have an amazing product. What is surprising to me how quickly we did this. In addition to the impressive expediency with which we’ve achieved our many impressive milestones it is also impressive how little resources that we’ve achieved this with. I look at the competitors we’ve surpassed, one in particular that has raised $16+ Million in tier one Venture Capital investment, had a three year head start on us, is stacked with weblebrities, is a darling of many A-list bloggers…and yet they don’t hold a candle to our community, our distribution and are likely barely beating us in revenue. I expect this year will change the last point. Anyway, I can’t help but smile and look to the next competitor to draft and surpass.

Next topic. I’ve been using Microsoft Live Writer periodically to post to WordPress. Because I’ve consistently had problems with stability and buginess with Live Writer I’ve abandoned it. For the time being. Again. As such I needed a Flickr plugin. A Google search turned up “10 Amazing WordPress Plugins for Flickr“. I’ve installed a few of these. I can report the only plugin that’s worth installing is WordPress Flickr Manager. It works great. Makes embedding your Flickr photos a snap.

Need a free AVI player for Windows? I’ve plugged a couple players on the open source applications page here, and I finally got around to trying VLC Media Player. Superlative! I’m merrily watching ChiRunning.

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Last Thursday, January 22, we (at MindTouch) helped launch a new Washington Post online property named WhoRunsGov. This launch was particularly satisfying for me both personally and professionally and causes me to reflect on the past.

I’ve rallied for transparency in government and for freedom of access to information since I was a child. Yes really, since I was a kid. I was bit of a radical and read a lot of political manifestos in addition to Huxley, Orwell, Machiavelli, etc… and I was a Lennon “wannabe”. All well before puberty. Case in point: I was eleven years old during the Iran-Contra scandal and I had a rehearsed satirical rant about Oliver North. Needless to say I was pretty well misunderstood by my peers.

For obvious reasons, WhoRunsGov caters to my desire for transparency in government. In addition to the superlatively authored profiles the site hosts I’ve also lobbied the smart people at the Washington Post to leverage open APIs; such as those provided by the Sunlight Foundation, an organization I’ve been tracking gleefully since its conception. Thankfully with MindTouch Deki querying web services is trivial. I’m optimistic the Washington Post will make the right decision in this matter and also in the matter of allowing others access to MindTouch Deki’s extensive APIs.

I’ve been a news junkie from a young age too. Indeed, I began reading the San Jose Mercury, my hometown newspaper, when I was nine or ten years old. The Mercury was then, and still is, one of the best newspapers in the country. I have always immersed myself in news and been keenly interested in media. The Post is breaking new ground with MindTouch technology. This will become even more clear as the property matures on the MindTouch platform. The opportunity to work with one of the most prominent news and media organization has been elating.

I’ve watched the Washington Post with interest as they’ve set a standard for quality and innovation in new media and continued their tradition of exceptional journalism.  As a result I’ve developed a great admiration for the company that reached a new height with the hiring of Rob Curley, who has since moved on to the Las Vegas Sun. While the Post has recently been refreshing their talent pool with a new generation (there have been several high level retirements) it’s exciting to have MindTouch play a significant role in launching and defining a new business unit.

Finally, well shit, I’m a founder and the CEO of MindTouch and we power a Washington Post property. That’s pretty exciting. Newt Gingrich thought so too. I got a call from his office on Friday. Turns out “Newt visited WhoRunsGov” and asked his technical lead to contact MindTouch about a project his office has been working on. More information about the platform and technology that powers WhoRunsGov.

MindTouch has many millions of users. Is ranked in the top ten open source projects in the World. Is the most popular open source collaboration product in the World. Strangely, has an Alexa rank of ~37,000, this is an indication of www.MindTouch.com popularity, which is remarkably high for a young enterprise software company. A massive community of many thousand developers. A large and growing ecosystem around the world of companies employing MindTouch technology to build businesses and new products including: Amazon, IBM Global Services and NEC. MindTouch has been featured in the New York Times, the Washington Post, The Wall Street Journal and every technology publication there is. And a long list of marquee customers like: The Washington Post, Microsoft, Intel, US Army, USA Department of Defense, Mozilla, The United Nations, Harvard-Kennedy…. MindTouch Deki turns three years old this July, 25. Astounding. I think back to the early days of MindTouch. I worked from my basement in a rental condo in Maplewood, MN. Or even earlier when Steve and I held regular midnight Monday phone calls to discuss MindTouch while I was finishing my degree at UNC. We’ve come a very long way in a very short time and we’ve done so with remarkably low cost efficiency and without the influence and reputation of folks on Sand Hill Road. The team at MindTouch has a lot to be proud of and it’s already clear our achievements in 2009 will eclipse all years prior.