Now that a full week has passed since this year's Open World Forum I've had the time to reflect on the experience and I'll now share my thoughts...

Just before the forum was officially opened I managed to set time aside to attend the Olliance Open Source Think Tank. The format was typical of workshops with attendees arranged around several circular tables in a room. There was a polite request to restrict tweeting attendees' opinions during the 2 day event thus I can't tell all.

The BI panel discussion gave the attendees an opportunity to learn about SAP's nascent relationship with open source and this was catalysed by acquisition and the ensuing cultural challenges i.e. the 'new staff' insisted on using open source.  This is compounded by the fact that 'fresh talent' also wants to use open source - a nice trend to witness right there!  All panelists agreed that brand awareness is a challenge for open source projects which did not surprise me - most sales & marketing staff in open source software work very closely with the community and have been part of the community; they often have less expertise in product marketing than their proprietary counterparts although that is changing as more software product marketeers are becoming attracted to this sector.  The comments from the representative from Pentaho hit home: "commercial open source has two masters" i.e. paying clients and the software project's community.  Another challenge of course is for organisations moving from a closed to an open model and how that transition affects the sales force - consequently they need 'education' to understand how the model works and where they make their money.  In open source there are lots of small deals and it's key that open source projects have a mechanism to filter and distribute the leads to the right people across the sales force. It should also be noted some of those 'small' deals turn into significant revenue streams in later months/years as clients decide to roll out the software to a much larger userbase than previously anticipated during the initial sale.

Listening to the cloud panel was fun, especially as they asked each table to pick their definition of what is "cloud computing" - nothing wrong with a bit of audience participation!  Of course no table had the same definition and our table volunteered "Utility computing, reborn" which was well received by the Rackspace panel member although the man from Google was less inspired. One of the tasks that the think tank attendees were given was to assess case studies and propose actions. This was quite an interesting thing to witness i.e. some of the best in our industry were put to action to offer up valuable insights and guidance regarding the challenges laid out in the case studies. Some of this debate even inspired reference from speakers at the Open World Forum who were in attendence. So, an interesting event in terms of rubbing shoulders with various leaders of the industry though I confess for my part there were not a lot of revealing moments, except of course witnessing Microsoft's PR supremo talking to the room; for which you must forgive me as I'd better reserve comment on that.

Later that evening I attended the OWF pre-conference reception held at the Hotel de Ville, Paris.  Yep, champagne and the most beautiful gourmet snacks you can possibly think of - I allowed myself a modicum of indulgence.  What I was not ready for was meeting Evan Prodromou of StatusNet - that was special and I really enjoyed our conversation on promoting co-opetition in the open source ecosytem (getting open source sales and marketing folk to take a leaf out of the achievements in the open source technical communities and improve cross-project commercial collaboration - something I put on Dries Buytaert's radar last year at DrupalCon 2009) as well as learning more about Evan's vision on where StatusNet is heading.

I think Jean-Pierre Laisne's initial words to me during the first day of the Open World Forum best describe the atmosphere:  "Feel free to sit where you like, we're all family and you're most welcome" - I think many attendees felt welcome and there was a real community spirit during the conference.

One of the tracks that I was very keen to attend was the BRIC workshop for similar reasons to Glyn Moody, sitting next to me, in that we both felt we did not know enough about what the BRIC (and Tunisia!) nations were doing with open source software policy, adoption and effects - also as OW2 has global reach it's important for me to have a better awareness of our community's challenges in order to better support them. These were great sessions that helped both of us better comprehend the achievements of our 'brothers' as well as their challenges.  Tunisia is doing some excellent work and it was great to see this European nearshore zone demonstrating an exceptional vision on successful open source policy and applying it to public/private sector partnerships - UK take note! It was illuminating to understand the legal challenges open source had been facing in Russia with respect to the need to modernize IP legislation.  Thanks to the efforts of the Software Freedom Law Center these challenges are being overcome so that the Russian open source community can thrive driven by local support from the Education and Telecommunication ministeries.

A common theme expressed by all of the speakers in the BRIC track was to ensure that children could participate in the "information society" and for the wider community to have an awareness and interest in public interests and policy.  BRIC(T) participants see open source as a social right that facilitates social (digital) inclusion and a lever of democracy. That's a pretty significant perspective and one that resonates with me greatly - I want to feel that I do something that makes this world better, working in the open source community gives me that opportunity and I feel good about that, feeling good makes me happy.

Another aspect for the BRIC(T) communities was that open source software was an issue of sovereignty as well, quite understandable for example in India they must cater for 22 different languages and thanks to their efforts in open source they are able to tackle this challenge without it costing them literally millions, using a derivative of the Linux operating system developed by themselves that is equipped to manage this diversity across their entire application stack.  It should also be noted that BRIC(T) zones are very serious about the opportunity of open source technology, for example India has allocated the equivalent of €15bn towards the development of national IT infrastructure and a recent study by Rahul De from the Indian Institute Of Management Bangalore has identified savings of $2.1bn moving from proprietary to open source software in 2010 :-)

China's stance is a curious one; I was not able to gather enough information during the BRIC workshop to comment sufficiently on their views/initiatives (albeit I'm versant of plenty going on there thanks to the OW2 China local chapter). What was discussed was the interest in sharing 'data' (scientific/R&D) amongst the BRIC(T) zones, improving the standards processes, adherence to open standard and a keen focus on the benefits to society from the adoption and proliferation of open source technologies.  Their vision is exemplified by the UPS program which is to connect universities to universities, professors to professors and students to students - a vision uniting the global community - I sense great leadership emerging from China in the years to come as they eclipse the USA, I just hope that the other sensitive political issues that China wrestles with can be resolved as well.

Globally across all nations there is significant traction behind the concept of "FLOSS competency centres". Open source has a great future and it's warming to play my humble part in this world changing experience that is shaping history.

Follow this link to get Glyn's views on the sessions.

Later in the day was the OWF panel on communities, a last minute change meant that OW2's CEO, Cédric Thomas, stepped in to moderate.  I enjoyed listening to Simon Phipp's perspective on managing communities and his view of getting things done - the OW2 management office have weekly conference calls and Simon is ardently against such a practice based on his diverse experience.  Fortunately OW2 management office members are in the same timezone however our technical council is dispersed across the globe and presently we are working on ways to improve the function of the council - conference calls have been displaced by IRC however this still makes it difficult for all parties to participate and we continue to endeavour to find an equitable solution to ensure everyone is able (...and willing) to participate.

Now, after quite an exciting day there was still more to come. I've read much of what Eben Moglen has written and hold him in very high regard though this was the first time I got to hear him speak and fortunately I had sneaked a front row seat to do so. Actually I confess that's not entirely true - Eben spoke during the BRIC workshop and it was definitely a taster of what was to come...

Glyn Moody's comment summed up well the style of the speech however as I tweeted sometime later, Eben's words were poignant, controversal and overall challenging. To paraphrase a bit here... the entire IT community, whether it likes it or not, is paying lip-service to the cloud computing movement/trend however we, as a community, need to stop still and think about what exactly we are creating/enabling. Eben referred to the UK's surveillance society and that merely entailed the use of cameras and video. Cloud computing is providing governments across the world with the ability to 'watch' us in a way never before imagined. This is of great concern to Eben and he did his best to remind us of this fact. At OW2 we've already invested and will continue to invest resource in this area of open source computing though you can imagine there was a lump in my throat when I listened to his keynote. I vow not to forget his words and will keep them in mind while I am spending ever more time dealing with issues related to cloud computing and offsite data storage.