Christine

Take 2 with a "Mid-Sized" Photo

CIMG5331
Originally uploaded by Auren Hoffman.

Huh. I was surprised that the first try didn't work out - the photo at "original size" was too wide for the standard Typepad layout, and instead of resizing the photo, Typepad cropped it. Yuck. Maybe this one will work:

Testing Flickr-Typepad from Dhaya's Birthday Party Bus

CIMG5331, originally uploaded by Auren Hoffman.

Random Burner Request

This isn't my usual post, BUT....I like to help out Blyss Abyss where I can, and I haven't had much time to make hands-on contributions to this year's art installation:

Mitch Kapor on Wikipedia, Collaboration, and the Knowledge Commons

Mitch Kapor gave an impassioned talk at OSBC West on the future of collaboration and the emerging 'knowledge commons,' using Wikipedia as a model. The themes in this keynote resonated strongly with my Omidyar Network-related values, so it was thought-provoking for me on multiple levels:

Open Source Business Women

Environment: The Open Source Business Conference (OSBC West) in downtown San Francisco.

How do Open Source Communities Best Flourish?

There is no mysterious monolith of Open Source Community. Given this, what are some best practices for establishing and growing open source development and distribution communities? Here's what was talked about at OSBC West:

Crossfire: Buyers vs. Sellers of Open Source

Some very friendly seller-bashing happened at the Open Source Business Conference (OSBC West) this week. The session was more fun than informative, but there were thoughtful points to mull on nonetheless:

The Commercialization of Open Source

Is the commercialization of open source malignant, benign, or beneficial? My day at OSBC West (the Open Source Business Conference) included this important exploration of how customers are incorporating open source products into their typically closed-source systems:

Women at DEMO 2006

Environment: DEMO 2006, the classic and best product launch conference. I was consciously looking to see if the numbers had changed from DEMOfall 2005.

The Future of Security

The good news: software and online service vendors are getting organized around security, and have taken security into consideration as a habit. The bad news: hackers are organized too. John Patrick from Attitude LLC led a panel discussion at DEMO 2006 to explore not only the Future of Security, but also taking on the challenges at the foundation of bringing security to an inherently open system:

Trends in Network Security and Protection

More serious security was discussed in this session on network protection. These solutions launched at DEMO 2006 are focused on improved network protections and tuning:

Blocking Identity Theft and Spy Hacks

Several technologies were introduced at DEMO 2006 around identity protection and fraud prevention. These represented not only new technologies, but new models:

Digital Media Madness

This session was a bottom-up media, user-generated content (pick your semantic) wonderland. Here are some of the technologies shown at DEMO 2006 for the creation, management, publishing, and consumption of digital media:

Looking for More Relevant Data

For this year's conference, DEMO 2006 producer Chris Shipley discovered several vendors that help individuals find relevance in massive amounts of information and media:

Innovations in Digital Media Search

Search technology is indeed big business, but is there room outside of Google and the other megaportals? At DEMO 2006, a number of players were introduced with new search algorithms, for new forms and volumes of content:

Disruptions at DEMO that Drive Community

There were three DEMO 2006 launches identified as disruptive innovations by producer Chris Shipley. These startups all provided new and fascinating approaches to engaging consumers and encouraging them to participate actively in emerging online communities:

iGuitar: New Hope for the DEMO Jam Sessions

Tonight's jam session at DEMO 2006 will renew a wacky and wonderful tradition, the amateur jam. Producer Chris Shipley is clearly seeding future jams with the presentation of iGuitar's innovative guitar products:

Guardian Angels for IT and Support Staff

After a very interesting panel on computational biology (a great seventh-inning brain stretch), the DEMO 2006 stage turned to network health. Some of the products demonstrated sounded like heaven-sent solutions for IT managers and support staff:

Applying Cooperation Technologies to Software Development

The open source community has long enjoyed the benefits of its cooperative community in pushing innovation and rapid development. At DEMO 2006, several companies brought the lessons learned from open source into more structured tools that support development:

Collaborating Around Search

The DEMO 2006 producers note that 'as the library of freely available information grows, purely computational methods will fall short of finding the most reliable sources that are exactly what you want.' Several technologies have been developed in order to harness the hive mind of the community in organizing content:

Next-Gen Meeting Platforms

Chris Shipley is always interested in products that "advance the art of meetings". These vendors demonstrated their virtual meeting platforms at DEMO 2006 in Scottsdale:

DEMO 2006 Kicks Off

The ever-popular Chris Shipley kicked off DEMO 2006 with a "sweet 16" of product launches for the day. (This the 16th year for DEMO.) Here's some sound bites from this morning's six-minute demonstrations:

Grantmaking 101

What makes a good grantmaker? The answers to this and other questions were recently discussed in a brown bag lunch on Grantmaking 101:

Stanford Entrepreneurship Conference XX

Environment: The 2006 Entrepreneurship Conference, hosted by the Stanford Graduate School of Business.