Month: July 2004

Open Source and Small Businesses

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In a recent article in the Small Business Survival Guide, Raymond Keating states that the open source software development model will lead to economic stagnation.

The underlying question that open-source software brings to the fore is: do we want to go back to those dark days before intellectual property rights were clearly defined and protected? If one prefers robust entrepreneurship, invention, innovation, growth and job creation in the economy, then the only choice is to protect intellectual property rights. The open-source theory only opens society to stagnation.

There are better economic minds than mine that could refute his argument, so let me focus on my own case. As a very small business, I use Open Office as my desktop suite. It is free, stable and has features like "export as PDF", that the major vendor will not provide me. I can always purchase "Open Office for Dummies" should I need help, but haven’t required it yet. This zero cost option is money in the bank for me, and good for my business.

This website is built using an open source CMS. It is hosted by another local, small business. Open source gives me a powerful tool, at a low cost, that I could not afford otherwise. It also provides revenue to the hosting company. I am using open source applications for some of my client projects as well. These applications, like Mambo or Tikiwiki, allow me to implement pilot projects at about 25% of the cost of projects using proprietary enterprise software. My clients can test out new methodologies without software license fees; lowering the financial risk of innovation. Using open source software is a competitive advantage, and in some cases is the critical factor in getting a contract.

The bottom line – without open source software, it would be difficult to compete. Open source is very good for my small business.

Via Small Business Trends.

Professional Development – Cheap

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As a free agent, I’m always on the lookout for professional development oppotunities, especially low or no cost ones.

  • Learning Economics Group – Free membership is available to this non-profit focused on the business metrics of learning in larger organisations. The telephone/ppt presentations are quite informative, and you get to link to some smart and innovative people. Sign up for information about monthly meetings, discussion boards and shared resources.
  • Business Process Trends – this website and the accompanying newsletter links many business process methodologies together.
  • Synchronous Web Events on e-learning, by Horizon Live
  • The e-Learning Guild has some free and some fee-based resources and events
  • ISPI‘s Performance Xpress has many good, free articles on performance improvement.
  • The Knowledge@Wharton Newsletter is a free service of the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. It covers knowledge management and business issues.
  • LearningTimes.org is an open community for education and training professionals. There are various learning events offered.
  • Work-Learning Research makes its publications and other research-based information available through its website at.
  • Jay’s Emergent Learning Forum, online or onsite.

Go ahead and add your own recommendations.

Community of Practice Ecosystem

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In The Community of Practice Ecosystem, Miguel Cornejo Castro discusses blogs and their role in CoP’s. He sees blogs as:

  • towers of dissent and independent thought;
  • an outlet for fringe member initiatives;
  • private premises of the independently inclined; and
  • a sandbox for the yet unproven.

The described ecosystem consists of a common core (board, mailing list, groupware), blogs that may come and go, and other catalysts such as repositories and lists that co-exist within the conversational space of the community. The ecosystem lives in a state of creative destruction as knowledge resources compete for attention. This model of a community of practice shows how a decentralized approach in the architecture of the tools & resources may make the community more dynamic, as well as stable, in the long run.

Blogs and the Laws of Media

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According to McLuhan’s Laws of Media, every technology (in the broad sense of the word) that we use has precisely four effects on us – to extend, to retrieve, to obsolesce and to reverse. According to Federman and deKerckhove, the retrieves quadrant can be the most revealling. It can provide us with some insight on possible effect of new technologies. Jon Husband makes this observation about what weblogs retrieve:

Much in the same way that email revived the lost art of letter writing, Blogs are reviving the lost art of civilized civic dialogue – of argument, of well reasoned thought and response.

As Federman and deKerckhove state in their book, “McLuhan for Managers“:

For a manager who is considering how the next innovation will affect his or her staff or target market, studying the precedent can be particularly revealing. The RETRIEVES quadrant directly furnishes the lessons and experiences of history.

McLuhan’s laws of media can be used as a lens that can help us to make business and organisational decisions regarding new technologies.

Small Business Trends

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Here’s a website that focuses on "the forces driving small & midsize business". I like their recent article on small businesses going virtual:

The future is likely to be the age of virtual businesses. The newly opened two-person office will be able to look big, established, and successful. Build a really good website, toss in some color printers, fast computers, and cell phones, and you’re halfway there. After that, it’s a question of leveraging your creativity and ability to partner with other entrepreneurs.

It is a bit of what I envisioned when I started the Sackville SOHO Society, but apathy led to its early demise. Maybe there’s hope for a renewed small business (or Natural Enterprise) network in the region.

Five Balls

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Here is a great metaphor on life;

Each of us is given five balls. One is rubber and four are glass. The rubber ball is work. If you drop it, it will always bounce back. The other four glass balls are family, friends, health and integrity. If you drop them, they are shattered. They won’t bounce back.

From Worthwhile [and thanks to Will for referring this group blog to me].

Blogs are Personal

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I’m currently managing a few blogs. One is for a community of practice focused on elearning for R&D. It doesn’t get much traffic, and so far I’m the only one to post. Another one is a joint effort, but there aren’t many posts. I noticed that my colleague Hal has not made many posts on this one either, but is writing for his own blog.

My experiences confirm (to me anyway) that blogging is personal. You can’t really just dip into it because you won’t be passionate, and your readers will know it – and leave. You also have to feel that you have ownership of the content. This blog gets the most hits of any of my blogs, even more than some of my previous blogs. I don’t think that group blogging will take off; an exception being Many2Many. Each medium has its strengths and weaknesses, and blogs seem best for personal, passionate individual dialogue (is that an oxymoron?). Personally, I blog to connect with others and for the knowledge management aspects of blogging. It keeps a lot of my thoughts and ideas together.