Bagel Belly Blog

OSBA

I'm back from the inaugural Open Source Business Academy event, and from my point of view it seemed to be a huge success. There was a great turnout, and the talks were all very well-received. Ugo's OSBA photos are online, and I'm sure more will be added shortly.

I enjoyed hearing Mark Brewer, Simon Phipps and John Powell give their take on Open Source in business. Unfortunately I struggled with my Italian comprehension during Angelo Solari's talk (it was an Italian event, so it's entirely my problem!), though from what I understood from his slides it looks like Telecom Italia are really seeing the benefits.

I particularly enjoyed Simon's take on "connected culture instead of consumer culture" - it's the first time I've heard Simon talk, but he managed to appeal to both the Open Source advocate and the capitalist in me - which is a first. The idea of moving from a hub and spoke model to a mesh model in both society and software is so obviously true, and it's great to see some hard numbers quoted about the relevance of Open Source.

The materials from the event should be online in the next few days, I'll link to them as soon as they are.

All in all, an excellent day, and I look forward to the next OSBA events.