Open Source Software (OSS) - Let's Show The Love

Why community matters for the future of software talent, products and the industry as a whole

We all love those stand up guys who volunteer first, arrive early and are last to leave from meetups, collaborations and indeed anything software related. They are sharing the passion, they are showing the love!! This is the good side of software as defined by the people within the industry who seek a better world through software using their passion to drive progress in an impressive way.

These channels of passion ultimately lead to the open source movement and in recent years have transformed the industry into a collaborative landscape where more and more software professionals are building their own products. They are contributing to more and more engineering led projects that are “pure” software in terms of process and culture. Many in established business are not comfortable with this as the threat of disruption is ever present when you have a collaboration of highly skilled software professionals in a room focused on a single problem. This may in part arise from the need for management ‘control’ (v ‘influence’) in allot of company cultures. This has often caused culture clashes between software professionals and management trying to stamp a traditional leadership style on a team leading to resistance and culture clashes to boot. It’s my view that this lack of understanding coupled with passion for software is one of the elements that has fuelled the transition to the open source model where software professionals freely collaborate over common problems they are passionate about leading to real world solutions that often carry commercial value.

So, with the rise of Web 2.0, the startup industry and the freemium model for tech companies in full swing, there are some highly profitable businesses out there that have their origins in the open source movement and prove the open source paradigm of collaboration does work turning more and more its detractors into supporters as time passes. Since the “OSS” train has left the station, we all should not forget where we are and where we come from when it comes to the open source movement. We should show the love in OSS through the following:

• Enable a better quality of life with a life long commitment to the open source movement and the real world problems it solves
• Widen scope from the selective and often poorly structured curriculum of education, which produces newly minted software developers and engineers. This should be done by providing entry points into software through community education free of charge for those aspiring to be software professionals
• Provide continuous learning and development for established software professionals in upgraded and newly released products via community learning and education
• Provide facilities free of charge to identified open source community groups that engage in community education and learning for new as well as established software professionals
• Understand what actually makes a good software professional and identify these personalities upon entry into a the community education network ergo the community will retain and develop such individuals as part of OSS succession planning.
• Work with industry under a common mission statement on what makes for a successful partnership with the open source software movement

What makes it all happen? I think it's simply passionate software professionals who by nature, not by training or experience care deeply about they do and want their skills to make a difference in the world. The more we actively show the love, the bigger the impact we have as a community. If we draw from our past and not let our past draw from us, we can make a better future that allows the OSS movement to take its rightful and sustainable place in the world today as the premiere software partner to business and society as a whole.

About the author: John Mulhall is a Community Manager and newly Minted Software Developer. John is also a committed blogger and from February 2016 onwards, will be publishing blogs every second week on topics around Technology, Leadership and Sustainable Capitalism.

Sources/Credits:

Pics;

https://stocksnap.io/photo/W8P1FJHOZ8

www.linkedin.com

www.blog.worldlabel.com

Credits;

Getting Started - Creating Value in a Tech Startup

Turning ideas into companies, tips on making it happen…

The startup scene in Dublin is vibrant yet many have poured their hearts and minds into their startups, with little to no success to date. Over 90% of startups fail, which by the numbers alone are turning out newly seasoned and committed entrepreneurs who are more learned, more agile and capable of achieving success with a start up then was probable before. With the climate in Dublin and elsewhere nurturing start ups with grants, tax breaks and mentorship, there is never been a better time to start up a new business. As the world slowly recovers from a horrendous recession, we see the buds of new business in cases such as India’s announcement of a $1.5 billion fund for startups just a few weeks ago.

From my own start up experience and observations, here are some points you may consider as central to increasing a startup's chances of success:

• Start like you mean to finish. Plot out what you want to become in success with a start up. Is it the next multi billion dollar company or a business to support you and your family with no wish to expand the business beyond a “mom and pop store”?
• If successful, will you sell your business? If so, when will this be? Plot a company size in revenue, employees and asset size (value of assets to turnover of business) when you will start considering offers to be bought out.
• Embrace modern Risk Management. Risk mapping, risk registers, risk assessments, 3rd party country risk, financial risk reports are all useful and are a good way to see your mapped future unfold as you build your business. If done from the start, you build into your structure a culture of risk management and thus information awareness.
• Scaling Systems. If you want to be the next billion dollar enterprise, you need to think about how IT infrastructure, systems design and development will fit into this vision. Will it be costly or seamless to scale your IT resources to fit business needs? Bootstrapped startups have great opportunities to develop low cost scalable systems using cloud and hosting providers. How it’s designed and built however will determine its true worth in availability, stability and scalability.
• Your digital brand. Market yourself for credibility, expertise and leadership as a Founder. Build your social media profile and creds with consistent high quality posts, blog articles and actions online that reinforce your digital brand message. If you approach a VC for funding, they will investigate you thoroughly including social media because in a startup, it’s the people, not the products that make the bew business successful.
• Network Network Network. You need to find co-founders, business partners and indeed potential customers in the marketplace. Meetup.com is a great start in your networking efforts that you should approach strategically.
• Community. Make sure you build bridges with your marketplace but also with the startup community. The access to people and shared experience is incredibly useful especially to a newly minted entrepreneur.
• Marketing. Build your marketing efforts based on tested Marketing models such as the 4P (Product, Price, Place, Promotion) and seek inputs on how you can develop a marketing strategy and a marketing mix that fits your startup
• Finance. If you are not funded, be sure to bootstrap everything you do, make sure your efforts are within a projected finance curve (ie. within budget) to where your business will start earning money for itself or you can reasonably expect to get VC capital on board so you can develop your business into a self sustaining entity.
• Create Value, then create Customers. Make sure your market research and everything you see from that point on is consistent with your products and services creating value for the customer. Qualitative approaches to service quality influence pricing and also create repeat customers. If you cannot create value in your customer's eyes, you will not have any customers.
• Stay Flexible. Start ups often start with a great plan and product. When the marketplace interacts with the start up, it often turns into something very different. Be sure your startup is structured flexibly so you “touch base” with your customers in a manner that creates value for them in what you do.
• Disrupting a market? If your product revolutionises a market place by its disrupter effect, then be ready to capitalise upon it. Have base plans for this type of dynamism in place so you don’t waste time wondering about what approach to take to capitalise upon it. Large companies act fast in protecting their market share from disrupters, so be sure to have a plan.

The need for flexibility, dynamism and intelligence is never more relevant than it is today even with a support structure in place. As the information era moves onwards, more and more opportunities will appear for aspiring Entrepreneurs. Taking that opportunity and turning it into something meaningful is often a hard learnt lesson through business failure. Once the budding Entrepreneur does not give up, their time will come and the days, months and years of trying will be rewarded by success.

Sources/Credits

Pics;

www.entrepreneur.com

www.stacksocial.com

www.picjumbo.com

Credits;