Harold Jarche

Decentralization

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Both Jon Husband and Rob Paterson have referred to Terry Heaton’s post, “Decentralized Power is THE Issue of the Millenium”. For instance, the success of e-Bay is based on the fact that individuals now have the power to manage their sales on an international level, with minimal hassle and cost. e-Bay has removed the middle-man, charges a nomimal fee per user – and makes a lot of money. This is the real “disintermediation” that was discussed thoughout the 1990’s. The media industries (music, news, movies, etc) are fighting a rearguard action against decentralization (AKA fragmentation), but unless someone shuts down the internet, decentralization will continue.

Decentralization is a real opportunity for small, flexible, creative businesses. Unfortunately there is no sure-fire way to capitalize on this situation. The best advice that I’ve found comes from Dave Pollard’s Natural Enterprise articles. I’m working with clients and partners to take advantage of the situation as Jon Husband describes:

We are beginning to loosen and cast off the shackles of outmoded structures, and more often than not are struggling mightily with the opportunities and responsibilities this new set of conditions offers us.

I am seeing a greater willingness of small companies to network and conduct projects based on individual trust. Several times this year I have done work on only a handshake. Some of my partners have worked in large corporations and are not willing, or able, to go back. We are trying to create more sustainable decentralized business models and stay firmly rooted in our own communities. It is getting easier to do this. Small businesses have the means to compete with multinationals, but we haven’t figured out all of the details – yet.

With this opportunity we have responsibilities as well. Jon, Rob and Dave are using their blogs to inform the rest of us, for free – thank you. Let’s continue the conversation. If you are a small company, interested in a new way of doing business, then join in the conversations. You don’t have to blog, but you could add your comments.

Off-the-Shelf Content

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A few years back, the saying in the elearning world was that "content is king". Now you can purchase access to a suite of 10 elearning courses from ITdatacorp for one year for $(US)109.00, and for an additional $30 you get online mentoring (this adds some context to the learning process).

The low cost of content sure makes the value proposition for off-the-shelf learning content quite difficult for a business or an investor. Even adding mentoring won’t generate much more revenue, unless you have a huge customer base. This means the big players will continue to lower their prices in order to get more market share. I see this as one more reason to stay out of the commoditized learning/training business unless you have deep pockets and great distribution channels. The price keeps dropping.

There are still many ways to make a good living around the proposition of improving learning or work performance. It’s by solving business problems, one situation and one client at a time.

Via Jane Knight.

Innovation

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We have a local company, Genieo, a spin-off from the University of Moncton, that has developed some interesting products over the past decade or so. Their business model has evolved over time, but the organization has had to rely partially on government financial subsidization. One of the services that the company offers is rapid prototyping of machined parts using an expensive 3D modelling tool.

Rapid Prototyping is a multi-faceted 3-D fabrication process that enables the creation of a limited quantity of functional prototypes resembling production units. This show of quality, joined by a quick turnaround provides an effective springboard to kick-start your marketing and sales initiatives long before production ramp.

As I said, the company has had some challenges becoming profitable in the long term, in spite of some satisfied clients and a strong team of scientists and engineers. Now, along comes some innovation south of the border, that extends Genieo’s model just a little bit, and takes advantage of the internet. It’s called eMachine Shop.

eMachineShop is the remarkable new way to get the custom parts you need – the first true online machine shop. Download our free software, draw your part, and click to order – it’s that easy! Your part will be machined and delivered. Even better, your cost is low due to the Internet, software, and automated machines.

Given that Genieo is co-located with the National Research Council’s Institute for Information Technology (IIT), why didn’t a similar idea come from Canada? Some of the IIT’s stated core competencies are in 3D digitizing & visualization and e-business. In hindsight it sure looks logical to combine the access that the internet provides with the capability for 3-D modelling that Genieo has. Maybe it’s not too late.

Try Out OpenSource CMS

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OpenSource CMS has completely revamped its site and now includes easy access to dozens of PHP/MySQL-based Content Management Systems. Now you can try before you install.

The administrator username and password is given for every system and each system is deleted and re-installed every two hours. This allows you to to add and delete content, change the way things look, basically be the admin of any system here without fear of breaking anything.

The list includes Drupal, which this site runs on, and two others that I have used, Tikiwiki and Mambo. There are also some elearning CMS, like ATutor (which I have used) and Moodle (which I will soon be using). This is one big virtual sandbox for you to play in.

Open Source Conference Proceedings

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Last May 2004, the Knowledge Media Design Institute at the University of Toronto webcast their conference on Open Source and Free Software: Concepts, Controversies, and Solutions. It was webcast using the KMDI ePresence system, soon to be released as open source. The archived sessions include my own area of interest, "Open Source Business Models". Here is a summary from a small piece of Matt Asay’s (Novell) presentation:

There are essentially three OSS business models:

  1. Product Proprietary or Commodity Model
  2. Commodity (Brand & Servicing) Model, e.g. Red Hat: make money from your services
  3. Transitional (Pragmatic) Model. The transitional model is focused on solving problems (e.g. MySQL and JBoss) and is open source in the sense that code is open, but may be closed in terms of controlling the development process and the developers.

Asay says that open source is continously commoditizing software, forcing proprietary vendors to enhance and innovate their products, or "drive it up the stack" as he says. Here’s one more item to think about:

Q: What is the main reason that people develop open source software?
A: Because it is intellectually stimulating.

Sessions are available as QuickTime, Windows Media, or Real. Sit back and enjoy these highly interesting sessions. Thanks to William Langley of the NRC for pointing this out.

The End of the Commons?

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Stephen Downes notes that Creative Commons may be
moving too far to the commercial side of things.

In various fora I have warned of the danger that Creative Commons will commercialize. It would be too great a temptation, I argued, to create special ‘business’ Creative Commons licenses for commercial content, possibly charging a fee for managing the license. When the Creative Commons ‘Education’ licenses were proposed a few months ago, I warned that this was first step in the process …. That day has now come. The commercialization of Creative Commons has taken a large step forward with the development of what is being called the ‘Commonwealth’.

I hope that this is not the case, but the future will tell. I agree with Stephen, and feel that CC should have a better medium for input from the great unwashed commons, especially since their success is predicated on the millions who have taken up the CC banner. I will be keeping an eye on the commercialization of CC, and you will know that I have parted ways with their philosophy if the CC License at the bottom of my pages disappears.

Update: 19 August – Creative Commons clarifies its position on the Commonwealth.

OSS Interface Elegance

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Steve Garrity made a post on interface elegance back in April, and a number of people commented. I think that it provides a good view of the design and development process in open source, and not being much of a geek I found it enlightening. Steven discusses the issue of feature creep in open source, and how this has been addressed in Firefox. I am a recent convert to Firefox. The conclusion of the article sums things up nicely:

Rather than adding more and more features for the mythical “power user”, or swing to the other end of the spectrum and dumb-down the interface for the mythical “average user”, smart developers are learning that good defaults and elegant interface design makes software better for everyone to use, regardless of their level of experience.

We are seeing the open source development community becoming much more market-sensitive (in its own way, in accordance with its own values) and I think that this bodes well for the future. With better interface design, open source software will be more acceptable to the average user, thus levelling the playing field for software developers.

If open source ever gets significant market penetration it may also change the dominant business model. In the near future, any software without customer support (proprietary or open source) may have no financial worth, and only the support services will have any market value.

The time is now

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From Seth Godin:

More than a year ago, I wrote this for Fast Company:

Here’s a question that you should clip out and tape to your bathroom mirror. It might save you some angst 15 years from now. The question is, What did you do back when interest rates were at their lowest in 50 years, crime was close to zero, great employees were looking for good jobs, computers made product development and marketing easier than ever, and there was almost no competition for good news about great ideas?

Seth goes on to conclude:

So stop thinking about how crazy the times are, and start thinking about what the crazy times demand. There has never been a worse time for business as usual. Business as usual is sure to fail, sure to disappoint, sure to numb our dreams. That’s why there has never been a better time for the new. Your competitors are too afraid to spend money on new productivity tools. Your bankers have no idea where they can safely invest. Your potential employees are desperately looking for something exciting, something they feel passionate about, something they can genuinely engage in and engage with.

It may be the worst of times, but it can also be the best of times. This is good "get off your butt" advice.

Learning Innovations Forum

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This just in:

The Learning Innovations Forum d’Innovation d’Apprentissage is organizing the first Working Forum on eLearning Quality Assurance and
Return on Investment. If you have expertise and experience in these areas,
or if you know someone who has, and you’re interested in (1) sharing what
you know and (2) collaborating with others in Canada, the Americas and
Europe, please contact me. We are inviting speakers and participants to
this Working Forum, Sept 30 and October 1 in Vancouver, where you will have
the opportunity to participate in the first meeting of the Joint LIfIA –
EIfEL eQuality Committee which has responsibility for the Open eQuality
Learning Standards – the Open Source consumer-oriented eLearning quality
standards. And you may be able to find new clients and partners for your
products and services.

Registration in the Forum includes a half-year membership in LIfIA and
associate membership in EIfEL – the European Institute for eLearning. Among
other membership benefits, LIfIA is becoming the leader in panCanadian
development and implementation of the ePortfolio. (LIFIA news attached as
well).

Plan to be at this Working Forum if you have a story to tell or a need to
know about ROI, QA and the ePortfolio for Quality Assurance in eLearning.
Register early as participation is limited.

Please note that the site only works in Internet Explorer, as the navigation functions are not standards compliant (bad example folks). [now fixed – see comments below]

The Flexible Medium

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Jay Cross, on why the blog medium is so flexible:

A cool thing about blogs, something that can transform a blog into a mold-breaker, is closure. Or rather, lack of closure.

Many bloggers write self-contained articles or recommendations; every entry is whole unto itself…atomic.

Internet Time Blog is evolving into a stream of conversation. Because it’s a blog, not an article, I don’t feel compelled to draw a conclusion when I don’t have one. I’m happy for you to look over my shoulder as I paint on the canvas. With luck, or maybe a miracle, something meaningful will take shape.

I guess I’ll leave it at that for now.