Month: April 2005

Analysis not required for traditional media

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Having just discovered Michel Dumais, the author of the article comparing open source vs proprietary software costs in Le Devoir, I now find out that he is leaving the newspaper. After working there for six years, Dumais decided to leave when he was told to return to traditional technology reporting and basically “dumb-down” his articles on open source software and the impact of technology on society. He mentions being asked to focus on the hard facts of technology, and to minimize his analysis. This editorial request followed directly on Dumais’ piece about the GRICS learning portal software that I mentioned this week.

However, Dumais (also a blogger), sees all of this in a positive light, and gives his readers these parting words:

Soyez zen et gardez plutot vos énergies – continuer d’encourager l’appropriation du libre dans tous les domaines de la socièté civile, lorsqu’il est le meilleur outil disponible. Et à  surveiller de près le nid de frelons.

my translation: Be Zen-like and keep your energy to continue to support the use of open source in all sectors of civil society, wherever it is the best tool available. And keep a close eye on the hornets nest.

Merci Jacques.

Learning Quote of the Day

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From Will at Weblogg-ed:

And that’s sad, isn’t it, because kids see teachers as the people who deliver content, not as the people who teach them how to learn. That’s what kids need teachers for. To show them what learning looks like, how messy and reflective and individualized it really is. To show them what a wonderful gift failure is.

Seeing What’s Next

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I had previously written about Clayton Christensen, author of The Innovator’s Dilemma and The Innovator’s Solution, and more recently Seeing What’s Next. This last book gives new business entrants (upstarts) and incumbents a theory-based set of tools to understand and use disruptive innovations. One of the strategies for upstarts is to target non-core customers of the incumbents. These come in three categories (overshot, undershot and non-customers) and by targeting these customers entrants can avoid direct confrontation, while developing skills and expertise in areas outside the core business of the incumbents. Once the entrants have grown “under the radar”, they can grow to directly confront the incumbents.

Roger Kaufman has reviewed the book from the perspective of a human performance technologist (HPT) in April’s Performance Quarterly. Kaufman states:

This book, which is not written by HPT professionals, brings powerful illustrative value to our field. I highly recommend it, as it will stimulate your thoughts – and likely your actions. Seeing What’s Next is about one way for organizations and individuals to cope with the future.

I have been stimulated to take some of this book’s ideas and create the following graphical representation of how an upstart company should look at the “Signals of Change”, especially from non-market conditions. Upstarts should use their asymmetrical sword & shield and focus on non-consumers and overshot customers, such as those paying too much for what they really need (think bloated word processing applications where customers use only 20% of the features). By avoiding the cash cows (Undershot Customers) of the incumbents, upstart companies can develop asymmetrical skills in new fields before the incumbents know what hits them (think Voice over IP and traditional telcos).

SignalsChange.png

A real comparison of costs – OS vs Proprietary

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I had recently referred to an article on a cost comparison of portals for education, specifically open source versus proprietary, but could not find the entire report. Yesterday, Jacques Cool told me about this article in Le Devoir (in French only), which summarizes the report. I will point out the highlights in English, but if you understand French then please read the entire article.

The cost comparison was of the free, open source MILLE system and a proprietary system, based on a Microsoft platform, called Edu-Groupe from GRICS. The evaluation was conducted by a reputable university scholar, Michael Wybo, and focused on the specific needs of the Québec public school system. The report evaluated similar costs for similar types of installations. Each system was put on its own server, as well as separate servers for e-mail, databases and user authentification. Consultant and staff costs were deemed to be the same for each installation, and the starting point was from a Microsoft IT infrastructure. This last point meant that the move to the Linux-based MILLE system required a system transition as well.

Prof Wybo concluded that the use of MILLE over Edu-Groupe GRICS resulted in savings of between 59% and 75% over a five year period. According to Wybo, these are the total savings when ALL costs are examined. Michel Dumais, in Le Devoir, goes on to tell us of Microsoft’s strategy to address this issue. Microsoft is presenting at the annual conference for the Quebec association of school superintendents in May, and will be giving its own version of “Microsoft and the MILLE project”. Dumais notes that the people in charge of the MILLE project are not getting equal billing or time to present their version to these public servants.

It seems that even when the case is exceptionally clear, vested corporate interests will win out over best practices, saving tax dollars and just building a better mousetrap. Dumais concludes:


D’un côté, nous avons une solution en libre, financée à  même les fonds publics, et qui répond entièrement aux besoins du monde de l’éducation. De l’autre, nous avons des solutions propriètaires, celles de la GRICS, financées elles aussi avec des fonds publics, mais qui reviennent beaucoup plus cher à   l’état québécois.

Et on repose la question : À  terme, comment la socièté GRICS peut-elle justifier le développement de ses offres de service en logiciel propriètaire, financées à  même les fonds publics, devant les conclusions du rapport Wybo ?

my translation:

On one side we have an open source solution financed with public funds, that responds to all of our educational needs. On the other side, we have proprietary solutions, those of GRICS, also financed by public funds, but these will be much more expensive to Québec.

And we resubmit the question: in the end, how can GRICS justify the development of its proprietary system, financed with public funds, in light of the conclusions of the Wybo Report?

Open source: The sensible learning platform

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In my mind there is little doubt that open source software really makes the most sense for learning. Learning is messy and one size does not fit everyone. Whether you approach it from a socio-constructivist perspective, as a behaviourist or only focus on the anticipated return on investment, there is no one correct way to support learning.

This means that whatever path you take, it will not be the best for everyone at all times. I suggest that you hedge your bets and invest in people instead of technology. Open source software lets you do this. Whether the case be for training or education, your major investment should NOT be in your technology. You would be better served if you cobbled together some free, open source learning applications and then invested in people to deal with the core performance issues. This "how to" support would be worth more than any fancy graphical user interface within a corporate learning portal.

For instance, I recently came across some figures for the cost of portals. Costs for proprietary systems ranged from $10,000 per processor to $125,000 per server. Using free, open source software, you could easily hire two full-time workers people for the cost of the more expensive system. Perhaps one person to handle the technical issues and the other to focus on the learning processes. In this way you would have money to spare as well as a more flexible operating model. There may be cases where you will need to purchase software but this only should be in order to meet a particular requirement that is critical for your organisation. It could be a specific online conferencing utility or perhaps a scheduling system suited to your industry. Just remember to check out the open source options first.

In the learning business, if an application meets 80% of your "wish list" requirements, then it will probably do the job in the long run. In most cases there is a suitable open source application that can address your needs. Therefore, don’t waste the bulk of your budget on your technology platform but invest it in good tools, instructors, processes, peer support groups or anything else that will benefit the learners every day. There is too much shelfware [applications that sit on the shelf and gather dust] out there to really believe that any technology will address all of your learning needs. It’s about the people …

The Cluetrain Translation Engine

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From the Cluetrain Manifesto, we had thesis #3 stating that “Conversations among human beings sound human. They are conducted in a human voice.” So what do we get from the recent Adobe/Macromedia merger?

“Adobe’s mission remains the same “to help people and businesses communicate better. With the acquisition of Macromedia, Adobe strengthens its mission through the combination of leading-edge development, authoring and collaboration tools ?” and the complementary functionality of PDF and Flash.”

Since this doesn’t really make any sense, Daring Fireball puts a human translation of the press release on the web:

Where by “complementary” we mean “the two leading technologies that irritate people when they’re used in lieu of regular web pages.” Note that we’re using PDF to serve this very FAQ – in our synergistic future, perhaps we’ll serve our FAQs in a hybrid PDF/Flash format. One can dream.

Which brings us to Cluetrain thesis #20, “Companies need to realize their markets are often laughing. At them.”

Blogging for dollars

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Joe Dysart has written an article for Sales Promotion Magazine on blogging for the average business. He interviewed me a while back and has compiled an easy-to-read, non-technical overview of blogging for business. An example:

So how do you get a blog up and running? For starters, you may want to check out Blogger.com, a free hosting site where you can set up a pilot blog for your organization in a matter of minutes. The primary advantage of using a system like this is that all the technical details are handled by the site – although you’ll need to put up with Blogger.com’s self-promotional ads if you want the service for free.

After piloting a blog, and if you’ve gotten positive feedback from your experimental site, you may want to buy your own blog publishing software, and bring your blog in-house. Moveable Type is cited by many in-house bloggers as their package of choice, but there are others available on the market. Before you buy, you’ll probably want to check out Blog Software Breakdown, which offers an exhaustive feature-by-feature review of virtually every major blog publishing software package currently on the market.

Even after you think you’ve worked the kinks out of your pilot blog, experienced bloggers advise you to open your doors to the world-at-large without a lot of fanfare. Better to make your mistakes before a few helpfully sympathetic friends, say experts, than fall on your face before the cruel, cruel world.

Three blogs are covered in the article – mine, a real estate blog and one for an executive coach. This is a good reference piece for the uninitiated, and there are lots of those, in spite of Technorati’s tracking of +8 million blogs.

Change comes slowly

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Yesterday we finished a strategic planning exercise at Mancomm and we had to decide what to do next. As the only New Brunswicker with this Montreal-based company, I’m usually far from the head office. I mentioned that we should put the strategic plan on our intranet as a wiki, so that we could continue to refine it. This seemed very natural to our group and the consensus was to publish the plan as a wiki..

On the other hand, I’m involved in a number of other initiatives where I receive dozens of emails per day, most of them prefaced by "Re:Fwd:Re:Fwd" etc. We all complain about email overload, but most of us still revert to the old patterns of ten years ago – just send an email.

I know that we don’t like to change and that many of us like our familiar patterns, but with technology changing like crazy we should all be trying at least one new business productivity technology every year. If not, we’ll look like those dinosaurs in the MS commercials that are popping up all over the place. So if you haven’t tried blogs, wikis, feedreaders, iPods, or whatever else, then get off your comfortable bottoms and try something new. You have nothing to lose but your antediluvian chains.

Open Source Content in Health

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Last week I was discussing the challenges of using open source methods for the development of courses at the community college level. Here is an example of open content made available through Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health:

A Wealth of Knowledge Free to the World: JHSPH OpenCourseWare
The Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s OpenCourseWare (OCW) project, provides access to the School’s most popular courses.
The Bloomberg School’s OCW:

  • does not require that participants register;
  • does not grant degrees or certificates;
  • does not provide access to JHSPH faculty

This can be the end result of open source content, but I’m still wondering if anyone out there has used open source development methods inside an organisation?

Bloglines Problems

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Bloglines has deleted my account, including my public access view. Is anyone else having similar problems?

Update: at 13:15 local time, Bloglines is up and running. This has me thinking that I should get a desktop feed reader – just in case. As with my website, it’s probably best if I own my data. From Bloglines:

This morning, one of our user databases suffered a failure that wasn’t detected by our monitoring systems. This resulted in the inability of people to log into their Bloglines accounts. The database has been reset and no data was lost. We apologize for the issue and we’re looking at ways to ensure this doesn’t happen again.