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Category: OpenSource

Monitoring the pulse of Open Source

Rick Turoczy on February 25, 2008

Impressed by the Pulse of PDX tool that gives anyone—whether they use Twitter or not—a view into what Portland-based Twitter types are saying, Raven Zachary saw an opportunity to provide a similar view into what the Open Source proponents are saying on Twitter.

The result? The Pulse of Open Source.

Lisa Hoover of Download Squad sees it as a stab at Twitter groups and deems the Pulse concept—appropriately—“cool”:

Twitter doesn’t have a grouping feature yet (even though they said 7 months ago it was “at the top of their list”) but that hasn’t stopped a group of open source aficionados from finding a way to form one anyway. Five Twitterers including SourceForge’s Ross Turk and open source analyst extraordinaire Raven Zachary launched The Pulse of Open Source today, calling it a “collective stream of consciousness from the open source community.” We just call it “cool.”

And Portland’s Marshall Kirkpatrick takes the concept even further in his Read/Write Web coverage of the Pulse concept:

With a little editorial judgment, this model could work well for any number of niche topics. Integration to display recent bookmarks on social bookmarking sites and blog posts wouldn’t be difficult either. Think of it as an industry-centric version of social lifestreaming, instead of a user centric one as is more common these days. I think both models are fascinating.

Wouldn’t that be interesting? I think so. And I see Portland continuing to innovate on how Twitter, as a platform, will be used.

Open Source Software meeting of the minds

Rick Turoczy on February 21, 2008

Today, I had the privilege of sitting in on an Open Source meeting of the minds at OTBC, where a sizable contingent of folks from the Open Source community in Japan—programmers, entrepreneurs, professors, reporters—shared their vision for establishing a Mecca for Ruby enthusiasts—and a hub for Open Source—in Japan.

The bulk of the Japan team heralds from Matsue, a town on the north end of the main island in Japan. They are in the midst of developing the “Ruby City MATSUE Project,” a concentrated effort to make Matsue the “Mecca of Ruby.” The OSS Society Shimane also works in conjunction with the project to promote Open Source and Ruby.

Much like the efforts around the Portland-area Open Source scene, the MATSUE project is working to foster community building around codefests and the sharing of ideas on how to apply Open Source technologies.

The community is also lucky enough to have a university that provides a full semester load of undergraduate course work on Ruby, Rails, JRuby, and applying the technologies.

Besides their dedication to and focus on this effort, the group also commands some substantial geek-cred from the participation of Yukihiro “Matz” Matsumoto, one of the original developers of the Ruby language, who is a resident of the town.

After spending today with the OTBC and dinner with the Portland Ruby Brigade, tonight, the Matsue contingent will head down to Corvallis to visit with the Oregon State Open Source Lab.

So what’s the Silicon Forest angle here?

An hour into the meeting, the two sides of the table were already pitching ideas back and forth. Sharing concepts and benefits of pursuing Open Source development.

And that’s a thing—I’d like to think—that we’d be very happy to keep going.

This is the first—of hopefully many—meetings of the minds between the Portland Open Source community and the Matsue Open Source community that, with any luck, will develop into a “sister city” arrangement to foster both of our communities’ continued learning and development.

The next time these folks are back in town, I’d highly encourage trying to meet up with them.

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