Community as a Lean Startup

Developing a community entails a cornucopia of risks; even more so if you hope to unite their individual contributions.  No, for you to iterate through the validation of all of your assumptions, you'll need to carefully mitigate all risk.  The best tool to resolve assumptions is testing.  Some type of metric which aims to confirm or deny a single assumption. 1 by 1.

Lean manufacturing; rapid prototyping, agile software development, lean startups, & so on; they're all the same.  Any complex task involving critical unknowns must evolve (learn how) to replace unknowns with data.  Every test must confirm or deny an assumption. 1 by 1.

The victors spoils go to those who can cycle through their tests most efficiently. Fail fast. Evolve even faster.

Time To Knuckle Down

SourceForge Research Data Archive Producing Highly Relevant Results - About a week ago, I received access to the Open Source Software Research project. The project provides a SourceForge Research Data Archive (SRDA): A Repository of FLOSS Research Data. The project is located in Notre Dame, which is in my home state of Indiana. So it was a real pleasure to work with folks back home. ;-)


I've just completed my first set of data analysis queries, and I've already uncovered some incredible results. The monthly snapshot archive provides a basis to do time comparisons. The delta between time x and y, whether the measure is monthly, quarterly, or annually, the analysis provides accurate data. It does so, because it is built on the delta created by comparing two or more snapshots.

Knuckle down - to position
your hand correctly to
play marbles 

For the most part, all of the supporting research on open source participation is complete. I've got to "knuckle down" and get those results documented and complete the first half of the class.  The second half is less research based, and is derived from my work on Mis Tribus and Guagua Publica, so it should come together quickly.

Nonetheless, the next month and a half are going to be busy. It's going to be great.  Time to go into "deadline" mode!

Initial Mind Maps

OSCON 2011Tutorial Mind Maps for "Financing Freedom":

These were my initial mind maps for the tutorial I proposed last year.  The class was not selected, however.  So this year, I revisited my original proposal and reworded it a little.  With a new focus on leadership in OSCON 2012, the proposal was well received. The rest will develop over the next few months.

Measuring FLOSS using Google Trends

I have to give Stephen O'Grady all the credit; using Google Trends to obtain a barometer reading of the state of FLOSS is brilliant. It's not a perfect barometer, but one of the most accessible. In my research this confirms my general feeling that interest in FLOSS and free culture is losing the mindshare.

In this analysis "The State of Open Source: Startup, Growth, Maturity or Decline?"  Steve used Google Trends with a few popular projects and keyword phrases, and shared the results. Frankly, there is nothing surprising.

There were two main conclusions: (a) mature projects are trending downward; (b) while newly created projects and new markets are growing very quickly.

The Google Trend for Apache shows a clear downward trend. This trend is seen in Linux, open source, MySQL, gpl, and PHP. While the trends are similar they are numerous theories for the why they're going down. Like Steve, I'll stay away from the why, there's an infinite reasons why (or why not).

However, when it came to exploding markets, then FLOSS is clearly the dominant technology. For example, Hadoop is nearly unchallenged by any major software maker. This exploding demand trend is also seen in other emerging markets, including: nosql, linux cloud, & notably, android(*). * There is debate raging just "how much" of Android is FLOSS, but at least the kernel is Linux.

Analysis

In general the state of open source is mixed. Some good, some, not so good.  Is this a credible measure?  Only more time will tell.

One thing Steve's research helped me do, was to recall Google's roots; measuring academic references is what lead Google to search. So maybe there was a another way to measure the statue of open source using search. I recently spent sometime with Google Scholar, and I'm happy to report that it does provide a fairly accurate way to produce another measurement. The number of academic papers about open source by year, since 1998. In addition, using the same technique, I was able to generate the number of academic papers about free software by year since 1985.  We'll jump into those findings in the next post; for now they're in the version 0.2 of the Financing Freedom slides.

Rebranding the Project Financing Freedom

On March 21, I had the pleasure to spend some time with OSCON Chair Sarah Novotny. I think Sarah and I almost immediately reached rapport, and discovered that we share many observations concerning free culture and FLOSS.

We also took a look at the slides and Sarah had some wonderful ideas, that I think have made the presentation stronger. I make some pretty bold predictions, and Sarah asked if I had any data to support my theories. So I've added them to the slide deck.

I've also decided to rebrand the presentation.  My good friend Marcos Polanco, suggested that "Financing Freedom" was something that he could get behind, so I've added it as the lead for the title.  It will also become the code name for the project, eventually...:-/ (Note: This is a recent decision, so it'll take a while to get it reflected everywhere ;-)

So here's version 0.2 of Financing Freedom:

Financing freedom section1.02

View more presentations from Kevin Shockey

Section 1.01 Slides released today!

The first slide deck is now available on Slideshare: "Funding Free Culture". Well actually it's about the first third of the first section.

Let the learning begin....

Now what's this all about again?

Got FLOSS?

Thanks to Guagua Pública

I now have a publishing platform for authors.

If it wasn't for the research I've done on GP I would have never been able to piece it together. With Fanz.ly, I can now quickly release a new brand using a well defined business processes that multiplies my efficiency. To think this all started with a curiosity in transmedia.

We're all transmedia producers now. We have to be able to tell a consistent story across a variety of mediums (social network systems).

A Journey, Towards Communion

The path ahead is a long one, that's for sure. But I step upon it with boldness. I know exactly what I need to do. I need help and just as I will demonstrate through this project, help is available. Sometimes, it's just as easy as asking for help, but you have to ask.

To ask consistently and with permission, however, requires a platform. That's what "Funding Free Culture," will provide. It'll take countless loops through the build-measure-learn loop, this is just the first.

How many iterations will it take to build a community?  I'll have to get back to you on that one, but I'm sure that working together, we'll get their faster.

"Time, the ameliorator of all our endeavors. Time is an illusion." Todd Rundgren