My snips from today’s closing sessions at Euro OSCON…
- Robert Lefkowitz’s Architecting Babel raised some interesting questions on the quality of open source, notably the human language in which source code is available – code isnt usually localised for the developer, though the user is catered for. Lefkowitz argues that the open source community is perfrectly placed to localise code as well as applications. Lefkowitz closes by exploring options for Sub or Dub (subtitling or dubbing code) and a roadmap that encourages localissation of identifiers, comments, keywords and dynamic libraries.
- I missed Florian Mueller’s New Innovation Models, Policy-making & Lobbying as it took me 30 minutes to checkout of my hotel and then another 20 to walk over to the venue…
- Chris Heathcote’s My Life Has Value! Making Sense of Public and Private Data on the Internet emphasises that applications are now no more than vessels for data, hence data ownership, trust and privacy are critical to open source. Chris explores the same inversion of privacy, strategies of personal privacy and issues around deriving intentions from actions. Chris goes on to explore what he describes as self-revelatory software, aggregation of IM presences, publication of location and ‘selfish software’ that enhances a user’s life, but adds to public value (like del.icio.us). What Chris describes socially acceptable software being enabled with machine readable capability becomes unacceptable (the addition of FOAF to ecademy)…Chris suggest users need the capability to lie in social software and that privacy will ultimately become a luxury.
- Simon Wardley’s Making the Web Of Things, speculates about the future of 3D printing, spimes and blogjects postulating that open source in hardware will be as important as open source in software. Simon raises the concept of a Spime script as a common instruction set for both hardware and software production, moving software engineering to a new paradigm. Interestingly, Simon drew a parallel between Drew Endy’s work on BioBricks and the notion of ‘printers-printing-printers’ in the race to viral manufacturing technologies. I’d love to get some thinkers from genetics, biology, tech and manufacturing together for a symposium on this emerging field 🙂
- Colin Brumelle’s Music 2.0: The Coming Revolution revisited the history of music recording and recent P2P developments before exploring discovery services. Colin posits that music is getting cheaper to produce and distribute, coupled with recommendation services and long tail economics, the record company is set for reinvention. Labels and companies that can build band brands, concert and merchandising as well as offering the source ProTools files can out maneuvre traditional ‘disc-shipping’ companies as well as nullifying the effect of file sharing and piracy. Colin also noted that copyright is likely to evolve into universal artist funds.
- At lunch, I talked with Martin Graney about his GeekMeets concept; an aggregtor of tech industry events, conference, camps etc. The concept is kinda like Nico’s proposed London Design Events service. Martin’s ‘scratching his own itch’ (to use the terminology of Open Source) and simply volunteering his time. However, I suggested he had the basis for an important filter for the technology industry. As well as a basic calendar, could GeekMeets enable demand-generation, allow people to plot a course of sessions across conferences and orient themselves around place and people as well as times? I wonder if GeekMeets could become the TechCrunch of technology events.
- I missed Mark Shuttleworth’s Ubuntu: Improving Collaboration in the Free Software World, a session I really wanted to see, but had to get to my flight home 🙁
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