The first topic on the Mashup’s Being Open event was “How open development and open source are changing the way we build digital services and dramatically reducing costs and development time” and included professionals discussing both open source software and open source hardware.

The session started with Jeremy Ruston, Head of Open Source Innovation for BT. Jeremy is the founder of Osmosoft, the open source innovation arm of BT. He joined BT three years ago to lead its open source innovation activities, helping BT take advantage of the unique business opportunities offered by participation in open source communities.

When did the open source software “movement” start to become so popular?

The term “open source” was adopted in 1998 when Netscape Communications Corporation released the source code for Netscape Communicator and started the Mozilla project. But “open source” and “free software” existed long before that, with examples such as IBM source releasing of its operating systems and other programs in the 1950s and 1960s. Since then (with the aid of the ever-evolving Internet) we’ve seen an amazing growth in the numbers of open-source projects we are expecting to see many more in the future.

How is open source software developed?
Creating software can raise many issues and not all of them have existing solutions. There are many instances when developers come across one or more of these problems and decide to come up with a solution for them. Once they’ve come up with this solution and written the code, they upload the source code online to places where other developers can access and use it. This code is usually published under an open source licence so that everybody can access and work on it legally.

Through an informal process of sharing and building on each others’ ideas the initial software gets more and more refined, sometimes being re-purposed to solve new problems as new developers discover it.

The open source model has been embraced by software developers for decades, but only recently by businesses, which believed that it wasn’t highly “professional,” that it is inferior and more prone to fail than closed software.
We’re having a look at some of the widely accepted advantages and disadvantages of using “open-source software”:

Considered disadvantages
-       Projects can come to a stand still – as open source projects are usually something that software developers work on during their “out of office” hours, it sometimes happens that they loose interest in a project and give up working on it. This affects the user of that software as no one will be working on updates or on fixing the issues that arise

-       Support issues – if you are using paid software, the provider has an obligation to assist you in a timely manner. However, with open source, there is no support guaranteed and in some instances the user may have to pay for technical support to fix the problems. There is a lot of information available on the Internet and there are many self-motivated forums that can help you install and run open source software, but there are no help documents and manuals all the time and no qualified support available.

-       Higher costs – due to the fact that there is no support available to install and run the software, users might sometimes find themselves in situations which require, as mentioned above, contracting technical experts to help, which sometimes can prove to be more expensive than the commercial software

Advantages
-       Reliability – this is the most debated topic in the software development world. However, in an independent head-to-head reliability test, open-source Unix systems and utilities were less fragile – crashed or hung less often – than their proprietary counterparts.

-       The most obvious advantage is saving costs, with existing most current open source projects available free of royalties and fees

-       High quality – with the majority of open source projects peer reviewed, this puts a certain amount of pressure on its developers to build it to the highest possible quality.

-       Accessing a pool of talent – Even a small open-source project can muster more brains to improve a piece of software than most development shops can possibly afford.

-       Development Speed – with so many developers working on open source projects, they are taking much less time to develop than paid for software

-       No vendor lock-ins – users are not stuck with any provider and their contracts

Jeremy Ruston spoke at Mashup’s Being Open about the how large companies and especially BT are recognising the power of open source and about how they are trying to integrate open source in the way they do business and what the benefits of doing this are.

Jeremy is the founder of Osmosoft, the open source arm of BT. Acquired by BT in 2007 Osmosoft has two core areas of focus: to build and contribute to word class open source products, and to provide governance around the use of open source within BT. Osmosoft directly supports BT through the applications and components it produces, its involvement in open source policy, and its general involvement in BT’s software community, among others.

In his talk at Mashup, Jeremy Ruston stated that BT believes open source is a powerful way to encourage innovation and access a community of talented developers. He then emphasised the importance of communities and that BT is an active participant in several communities, in various capacities. BT recognises that the communities around open source products are as important as the code itself.

To support the case for using open source within businesses, Jeremy drew upon the cost benefits of using open source and the benefits of not being tied in with a software provider and dependent on their services.

All in all, the picture painted by Jeremy was very positive for using open source within large businesses, stating that open source is helping BT to improve the quality and interoperability of their products and services for the benefit of our customers.

Further promoting the benefits of collaborative creation, next speaker Paul Downey (also from BT) talked about open source hardware. Like Jeremy, Paul is a member of Osmosoft, where he contributes to a number of Open Source projects along with helping to organise OSHUG, a regular Open Source Hardware meet up.

As the name suggests, the notion of open source hardware is part of the same culture movement as open source software, it just relates to tangible artifacts. The first version of a definition for open source hardware has actually been drafted earlier this year and can be accessed here.

The basic principle for hardware to be open source is that its design is made publicly available so that anyone can study, modify, distribute, make, and sell the design or hardware based on that design. Also, the hardware’s design source has to be available in the preferred format for making modifications to it.

Paul mentioned some interesting examples of open source hardware, which he came across while at the OSHUG meetups, one of the being, in the spirit of collaboration for the greater good, the Bristol Braille Technology, “Braille for the many, not the few”.

Bristol Braille Technology are working on open source technology to transform the lives of blind and visually impaired computer users by developing a revolutionary, affordable Braille Cell Display. The technology will provide access to affordable tactile digital reading, which at the moment is far too expensive for visually impaired users to afford. The ultimate goal is a Braille Cell Display that is affordable even in developing countries.

Other examples that Paul mentioned at the Mashup event included self-replicating 3D printers and open source cars, with all of them underlining the fact that at the core of the open source hardware concept is the ability to study and improve existing designs, but also that community, collaboration and ecosystem are central open source hardware.

To sum up, open source hardware gives people the freedom to control their technology while sharing knowledge and encouraging the creation of better products and services and ultimately commerce through the open exchange of designs.

“Being Open” is today’s motto at SLAM. In a few hours we’ll be attending Mashup’s half-day event at the Chartered Institute of IT to discuss the newest trends in open source development, platforms and data.  If you’re very quick, and in today’s world you need to be, you may still be able to grab the last tickets and get ahead of the curve on how the world is being transformed by open source software.

At our recent lecture to the students of the Design and Branding Strategy and Design and Innovation Strategy Masters courses at Brunel University, we shared our thinking on the future of design (blog post to follow), and talked about open source technology and its unique role in developing countries. Since open source impacts are so wide and varied, I’m therefore particularly looking forward to hearing the enthusiastic and inspiring Chris Thorpe speak today, opening our minds to new ideas. I’m also looking forward to see Alasdair Lumsden, CEO of our technology client Evercity, on the development panel.

Open source is being used to create a new generation of services & tools and associated business models. It’s also dramatically reducing costs and development time and challenges concepts of ownership and copyright. We look forward to heated debates and top tips and will be sure to share it all with you tomorrow!

As promised (although a tiny bit later), we are back with highlights from the latest Mashup event hosted at the British Computer Society’s headquarters where a lively offline and online (through the live twitter wall) discussion about the next digital trends took place.

The panelists for the night were venture capitalist Laurence John from Amadeus, Gary Gale from Nokia, Steve Kennedy representing the telecom/internet industry and digital PR expert James Poulter from LexisPR. Social media specialist Andrew Gerrard from Article8 moderated the session beautifully.

Location, location, location

It seems our predictions were right and location is one of the major topics when talking about trends this year. Although location by itself is not the trend, it does influence the evolution of the existing digital landscape. Geo-location expert from Ovi Places at Nokia Gary Gale talked about 5 trends influenced by location. Here are our thoughts on the topics:

1. Privacy will matter – Although some participants did not actually accept privacy as a trend, it did manage to stir a lot of conversation. We are gradually disclosing more and more information through various channels, including through location based services and we do not have sufficient control over it. People will gradually start to voice their discontent over this and the industry will have to adapt. Whether this will happen in 2011 remains to be seen…

2. Technology convergence – we carry so many things around with us all the time, mobile phones, credit/debit cards, oyster cards and various other gadgets. Wouldn’t it be much easier if we had only one device that could incorporate all the functions? Gary was telling us to expect much more technology that will allow combining various functions into one device. This does relate to the trend we mentioned before the event, mobile payment, and we do not even need to wait too long to see it come true, as Barclays and Everything Everywhere announced they are launching the U.K.’s first commercial contactless mobile phone payment this year.

3. Location is a key feature. Not a business – location is not enough and Gary predicts that those start ups that focus solely on location will not last long in this crowded marketplace. Instead, location should be used as a tool to offer consumers an integrated and relevant experience.

4. More contextual relevance (and maybe less apps) – Gary started with a great example to emphasise this trend: two techy guys decide to check-in through all of the location apps they had on their smartphones. It took them 25 minutes to do that. Nowadays 25 minutes are valuable and nobody wishes to spend them checking in. To add to that, ask yourself the question, how many of the apps that you downloaded do you actually use? The opportunity here is for more relevant and useful apps to help us get what we need, when we need it; a quick reference to our data clutter topic.

5. Geofencing – According to Chris Cameron from readwriteweb.com, geofencing, or a geofence, is exactly what its name implies – a virtually fenced-off geographic location. When this concept is applied to mobile phones, it refers to a device’s ability to receive automatic alerts or notifications when entering, leaving or moving within a specific geographic area. With geofencing location apps could allow users to automatically check-in when entering the geofence of a particular location. Gary came prepared to talk about this in more depth but as he woke up on the 2^nd of February – Mashup morning, Google announced the launch of Google Latitude, which allows you to track and be tracked by friends in real-time. You don’t have to do any more check-ins as the app constantly transmits your location and on top of that you are in control of who sees the information.

Other trends, topics and questions that were discussed included: niche social networks, content is king, targeted tailored/data driven advertising and the ability to choose what advertising you consume, on demand TV and the future of digital agencies. As there are many topics worth discussing in more depth, we will cover these in more detail in our next blog posts: stay tuned!

Related blogs:

http://blog.mashupevent.com/

http://technorati.com/blogging/article/turning-privacy-into-opportunity-at-mashup/

http://www.vicchi.org/2011/02/03/risking-location-predictions-at-mashups-digital-trends-2011/

http://storify.com/stewarttownsend/mashupevent-digital-trends-in-2011

Mashup the digital marketing networking event is hosting a mixer tonight based around Augmented Reality.  AR is sure to be a definitive technology tool in the upcoming year what with the growing sophistication of smart phones and handheld technology.

For the uninitiated AR technology merges a real world view with computer generated imagery through a viewing screen. For instance you could use a camera on a smart phone to view an object which is enhanced somehow by some sort of digital special effect or data. AR takes full advantage of smart phone technology using a phone’s camera, compass, GPS system and internet connectivity to create a truly unique experience. But the only real way to truly understand AR is to see it in action.

Here are a few really interesting examples courtesy of  Mashable:

Tonight’s mixer will give attendees the chance to learn more about this emerging technology from some of the experts in the field, speakers include Myles Peyton – Total Immersion and Nick Brown co-founder of Crossplatform. More importantly Slam Global will be attending the event. The full itinerary can be found here.

In a packed hotel conference room in London’s West End, we sat and listened to over 20 speakers share their experience in social media. The event featured case studies, talks and new business models and turned into a four hour whirlwind of information. A few weeks later, the storm has calmed and what remains are enticing ideas and view points on social media.

Robin Wight (President of Engine) opened the show with an insightful talk on cognitive dissonance. He explained the difficulty of bringing behaviour change in customers and demonstrated how this can be more easily achieved through social media. For instance, a simple mouse click can open the mind to attitude change. Engaging your target audience is key.

Next to speak was Katy Lindemann, senior strategist at Naked Communications. She put forward the idea that there is actually no such thing as “Social Media” as all media is social to a certain extent and that one cannot be social outside if one is not social inside. Indeed, one of the main trends of 2010 is the issue of restructuring companies to make them “social”.  Just as e-mail revolutionised business life, social media will find its way into the corporate world. More companies are employing and building up social media departments. Consequently, more budget will be spent on social media than in other media channels over the next year.

One of the best practice examples of the day came from First Direct. During their ongoing Social Media Campaign 2009, they’ve invited users to leave comments on their website, which features them together with live sentiments and streamed words relating to their brand from throughout the internet in real time. A bold step for any bank and a good example of a step in the right direction for the finance sector.

My personal favourite was the very optimistic talk of Chris Thorpe (co-founder of Jaggeree). He focused on sentiment analysis in the most idealistic sense, in which every citizen becomes a data monitoring device through the use of a smart-phone. Sharing information in real time has revolutionized the way we make and receive news and will continue to change our personal and professional lives.

Diagram: The Twitter Wall – Who was the most influential “twitterer”?

What’s to come?

As well as depicting what role Social Media currently plays in the business world, Mashup’s SM 09 also discussed trends and predictions for 2010. More businesses are realizing the SEO benefits of using social media as well as using them to regain control over the conversations that are taking place online. This trend will continue and more people will accept social media as invaluable communication platforms for both internal and external communications.

The level of transparency remains the biggest challenge for businesses. How they tackle this and the returns they’ll make with it will be one of the interesting issues of the next year.

The correlation between mobile and social remains intriguing and will continue to push the parameters of social networking and communications. We are sure to see further development in the technology throughout 2010. The real time nature of Twitter and social media to anticipate and manage breaking news, even on the mainstream media, is telling and paves a clear path for our future.