Software Freedom Day 2009 - Perugia, Italy

With the patronage of "Regione Umbria", and in collaboration with the "A.Capitini - Vittorio Emanuele II" ITC and OSSpg (http://www.osspg.net), FSUGitalia has organized (as it did last year) the Perugia, Italy, based Software Freedom Day, a worldwide held event related to the Free Software dedicated to schools and students.

The event is organized worldwide by Software Freedom International (SFI), the non-profit organization that promotes the Free Software, in collaboration with Free Software Foundation, Linux Magazine and Zac-Ware, and is sponsored by Google, Red Hat / Fedora, Danish Unix User Group and Linode.

The conference will be held on September the 19th simultaneously in various cities around the globe, and the Perugia date is at the 'Sala Conferenze' of the "A. Capitini" ITC in Viale Centova, 4.

This year there will be myself (Mariano Iumiento: openSUSE Ambassador) and Iacopo Benesperi (Mozilla Italia) as special guests, holding sessions about the openSUSE Project and the new Mozilla Firefox 3.5 functionallities.

One of the news for this year is that students are deeply involved, by helping them to prepare and present some of the talks from the agenda making them to convert from 'listener' to 'spokesman' and Free Software promoter: three teams made by students where one is a development team and 2 others dedicated to GNU/Linux distributions (Ubuntu and Fedora). The agenda, materials, links and information are available (in Italian) on the new Events wiki page of FSUGitalia (http://www.fsugitalia.org/eventi). The international web site for the event is available at http://www.softwarefreedomday.org and the Perugia date specific link is on http://www.softwarefreedomday.org/teams/fsugitalia.

Have a lot of fun!

Open Source Day

In the actual crisis period, the IT market is suffering for costs cutting as well. There have been plenty of migrations to the Open Source solutions during the last few years that have convinced many 'decision makers' that choosing Open Source means to be able to reduce costs by keeping the same (or even better) service level.

Red Hat has helped much in demonstrating this statement with its solutions, and has also helped in promoting these scenarios by organizing, since 3 years, an 'Open Source Day' event with some companies that offer these solutions as their core business. The objective is to provide updates and news on the outcome from this market by highlighting their advantages in terms of costs and functionallities.

If you want to evaluate how Open Source Model can help your company to enhance the efficiency, if you want to be updated on the latest releases related to the Open Source world, or if you want to talk to people that have made the migration and that have accepted to share their experience with others, or if you want to get in touch with people from the Open Source world, coming from both local and International companies, then you should attend to the event.

Registration and more info is available at http://www.redhat.it/promo/opensourceday/index.php.

Open Source and the financial crisis

We all know about the financial crisis that is involving also (or even specifically) the IT market, even if IT is actually providing the intelligence of products and services: Everything Is Digital!

It is easy enough to understand it by looking at the last few months announcements: between September and November 2008 there have been layoffs announced for Google, HP, Nvidia, Yahoo, Motorola, AMD; on December 2008 layoffs announced for Sony (8K); in January 2009 6K layoffs @ Philips, 2800 @ IBM, Microsoft, Asustek and Lenovo are thinking about it, 3K @ Seagate, 100 @ Novell, etc..

It seems a bulletin of war, but it's the real situation people around the world are facing, and these are only the most clamant.

But not everything is dark, and somebody is able to find something good.
In this situation, Open Source software, that has risen to great prominence in the last 10 years, could start becoming 'the' alternative for the crisis of the proprietary software. It is known that Open Source is more cost effective and productive than proprietary software.

Obama US President has his stuff to say about it too. The government ought to mandate open source products based on referenced implementations to improve security, get higher quality software and higher reliability, lower costs. The idea that government institutions could reduce costs by collaborating and building on reference implementations is a more convincing argument.

Gartner says: “In the RDBMS market, open source software is being adopted in 2 areas: open source RDBMSs and the open source OS Linux as a platform on which to run an RDBMS... Linux as an RDBMS platform is expected to see growth of approximately 20% in 2009, which is in dramatic contrast to Unix and Windows, which are expected to see growth of negative 4% and 14%”.

The web development, especially in its 2.0 version, made possible the increase and spread of innovation models based on the sharing resources among communities, institutions and enterprises participating in the realization of a project and of a common good at the same time. Starting on this statement of fact, we can explore the recent evolution of the property assets in relation to the governance of knowledge and business.

Many companies are evaluating Open Source solutions, and this is giving more evidence to them. Even companies that had never used Open Source before, are now demonstrating curiosity. Budget cutting will help CIO/ItManagers to start investigating more accurately to this world.

Open source is a philosophy of innovation since its birth.

Rome Camp - Thank You

Even if it's more than 1 month now, I just wanted to thank all of the people that joined my session at the Rome Camp 2008 event, where more than 350 people came to this 'barcamp' event to attend up to 50 sessions with three main objects: Environment, Technology and Society/Sociology.

All the sessions are on the web: http://romecamp.ilcannocchiale.tv. My talk about the Web Based Computing (I know, it's my frustration about the Web 2.0! :-)), can be seen, with all the others, in the 'Aula Studio' room.

It was really a pleasure to chair a session in this type of event where the type of attendees was heterogeneous, coming with different curiosities, and it was really interesting to attend other sessions too: there was really a lot to learn from all the discussions.

I wish to meet you all again in other events like this.

Rome Linux Day - Thank you

As stated in my previous post, on October the 25th, 124 cities in Italy have hosted the 8th annual Linux Day event.

I've had the opportunity and the pleasure to present a session at the Rome based date, within the La Sapienza University Faculty of Engineering.

The purpose of my session was to share my positive opinion about one of the trends that we are seing in this period: the migration to the Web.

I brought examples of how we can migrate our data and customizations on the web to make them always accessible using simple solutions, up to the possibility to have a desktop published and accessible online, either by using a real desktop or a webtop. All this stuff, by using ONLY OpenSource technologies!

My feeling is that the talk succeeded in making people interested. I hope to be right and to have the opportunity to exchange additional opinions with you all since I believe that Web 2.0 items are always stimulant and source of technology innovation in the era of Internet.

For those of you that are interested in looking at my presentation, the Italian version is available here, and the English version here.

You can also enjoy some pictures on Picasa, or Facebook, pictures and video on my Google Site.

You can also visit some other blogs talking about the event (in Italian) at:
- Linuxday 2008, riflessi e riflessioni di Antonio Doldo.
- Il meglio del LinuxDay Roma 2008 di Stefano Fedele.

I hope everybody liked the talk and look forward to share other similar experiences.
Any comments and feedbacks are welcome.

Firefox 3 World Guinness: me too.

Web 2.0 Generation Employee

Young employees will only want to work in Web 2.0 'compliant' companies.

People born in the late 80's do not even know how was the world without Internet. They are approaching today the business world by entering their first job experiences.

They grew by using tech gadgets to communicate with others, sometimes more than one at the same time (i.e. smartphone while using an instant messaging app while listening to the music coming out from the speakers of their iPod).

Some sociologists call them 'Generation Y'.

When they enter the work experience they expect to find the same tech tools they use everyday, but how many companies are ready to satisfy them? Not that much!

Generation Y people want to try every new tech gadget as they get to the market.

One of the problems is that the habit in using social networking is to 'classify' others, and when their manager is not even able to send an e-mail or access a search engine, well, there could be problems in keeping the value of the management. Some of the internal processes will become instable: it's not a valuable answer if you say "...this is how it works here!".

Another problem is the fact that Web 2.0 makes you to put less attention to privacy and security issues. This introduces a new responsibility for the IT Manager that has to educate these people to find the right balance between sharing and preserving data.

However, all of the new methodologies to communicate and share info that Web 2.0 can bring into the enterprise is surely a high value. So, it is worthwhile to approach the problems to solve them somehow to be able to benefit from the Web 2.0 value.

Real Web Based Computing

If you have any doubts about the Web Based Computing scenario I've talked about in My Post, well, give a look at this video and see what eyeOS can do for you. This is (I believe) the best Open Source example of how this technology can be brought to the world and how we could start accessing our data and preferred applications anywhere anytime.

I'll be chairing a session at the Rome based Linux Day 2008 on October the 25th where I will be talking just about this.

Linux Day 2008

October the 25th. This is the date for the 2008 Rome based Linux Day. This year it is held at La Sapienza, Rome University, starting from 08:00 a.m.

More info at:
- http://www.linuxday.it
- http://www.ls-lug.org/wordpress/?p=51
- http://www.ls-lug.org/wordpress/?p=53
- http://groups.google.com/group/linuxdayroma
- http://www.new.facebook.com/event.php?eid=28379368014

Register at http://www.linuxdayroma.org.

Address: Facoltà di Ingegneria di San Pietro in Vincoli dell’Università la Sapienza.

There is a possibility that I will be chairing a session related to the Web Based Computing.

Welcome to the Web Based Computing

There are important changes that we are going to see in the way the computing is accessed by users. Plenty of applications and operations that people do daily with the PC is on the Web (WebMail, Chat, videoconferencing, photo, social networks, books, trips, buy stuff, check for events, join forums and blogs, access information on wikis, check for maps, bank account, etc. etc.

Most of these activities are performed by using a web browser and a mail client that is installed onto the PC that we normally use and that is often customized on ourself (bookmarks, fonts, themes, old mails, folders, etc.). This requires the use of our PC for most of the activities because we have data and configuration stored in there. If we have more than 1 PC, we replicate everything on all of them.

There are many information that can now be brought on the Web allowing people to access them from anywhere by using all PCs that you have. Think at the centralized bookmarks, IMAP Mail storage, web based calendar and contacts, online feeds, photo album, documents, pictures, etc. etc.. Are you thinking at Google, Firefox and Thunderbird? You're right. The combination of these three solutions with their plugins/add-ons allow you to make all of your needed info available on the web: bookmarks, mail for all of your accounts (who has only one e-mail account today???), your photos, documents, calendar information, contacts, feeds, etc. etc. etc. You can then use the functionalities on all of your PCs and you're fine.

What if you are somewhere without your precious PC!!! You don't need to bring your PC, you need to bring your applications with you. So, imagine if you have a USB Pen Drive that you paid about 20€ with ALL of your preferred applications and their settings: you can plug it in a PC and be ready to access the web and the info you need.

What if you need your precious application because you need to download something from a torrent or you want to modify your picture!!! You don't need to bring your PC, you need to bring your 'desktop' with you. So, imagine if your USB Pen Drive has the image of your 'desktop' installed on it: you plug it in a PC and start your machine.

In both situations you do not have to install anything on the pc that you're using, so you do not have to bother anybody but just borrow minutes of their hardware.

All these things can be done today, but not everybody does them. We can configure all our desktops with our settings to be able to access our data on the web, therefore we can move our data on the web rather then leave them on the pc at home. More, we can configure lowcost devices (USB pen drives, external drives, CD-ROMs, DVD-ROMs, or whatever) with our standalone applications to be plugged everywhere and used to set our environment.

What if you are somewhere and you need your powerful PC to be able to run some heavy applications, or because you need to launch some applications to be accessed lately from somewhere else... Here it is! We can bring our desktop on line as well, and access it through the Web with incredible performances. You access the web and choose to either launch your desktop (Windows, Linux, Solaris) or your particular application from any device. You do what you need and just close the browser: your system will continue to work, and you've done this far hundreds of kilometers from your workstation.

Think at these capabilities with a powerful device that you can bring in your pocket, you plug it into an ethernet port or you access a wifi/umts network, and you're set!!!

I do not mention the overall cost savings that these could bring within the enterprises (there should be a dedicated post with all items), but believe me, it's huge!

There are activities going on to achieve the needed results... stay tuned!!!

Google Chrome: Web 2.0 Browser

After all, Google (I said Google, not the last company born yesterday!!!) has released a brand new Web Browser that wants to enhance MS IE and Mozilla FF: it contains many performance evoluted functionalities!

Available starting from tomorrow. As per the usual Google methodology, the announcement has been done with a comic books!!!

Here a couple of links with the details:

- http://googleblog.blogspot.com/2008/09/fresh-take-on-browser.html

- http://www.google.com/googlebooks/chrome/

Why 'Enterprise' Social Software?

After all, there is a question that probably comes in your minds: 'Why are we thinking to Enterprise Social Software? Is it worthwhile?'Well, the answer is simple: 'Because it's natural!'

To explain this, we have to think at how things have changed in just 10/15 years.

About 10/15 years ago e-mails seemed to have introduced the highest level of communication technology because of the fact that a message is sent real-time compared to post-mail (not necessarily received real-time though).

Today, [audio,video]chat seems to have outdated this type of communication since it is real-time from a receiving/answering point of view: you can send a message to a user that you can even see if he/she's online, and you know that he/she has received your message instantly.

Digital communication was a way that people used to get in touch with other person that they know already. Web 'social rooms' like wiki, forum and blogs allow people to get in touch with people sharing the same interests, ideas, knowledges, hobbies, friends, business needs, etc.

Yesterday communication was web centric, while social networks are putting people in the centre.

Let's think about young graduates: 10/15 years ago, new graduates were entering into their first jobs and finding PC's as to be their most important tool for the day by day activities, and therefore were learning using it from that time because very few people had a PC at home. This was making them to learn the technology at work.

Today's graduates are growth with a PC at home. They are already able to use it, to configure printers, to surf the web, configure a mail client, access mail via web, chat with others, access information through forums and wikis, see blog contents, and even create and share info on these tools for free!

They 'bring' their technology knowledge into the enterprises but they usually finds that companies are backward in technology evolution: many companies still use Windows NT/2000 while Mac OS-X, Linux and Vista are in out there; not always there are intranet with tools to interact with collegues and share processes and knowledge with them; wifi is still not present everywhere; mail tools are basic, there is no shared calendar and contact tools; there is no social networking functionallity.

Today young people is growing with mobile phones with which they can access the web (youtube, skype, messenger, facebook, picasa, etc.) and exchange e-mail, pictures, video, etc. They come into the work environment and find old mobile phones, bought at about 50/100€, that can only be used for making phone calls while they can stay continuously connected with their friends and tech-mates with their 'tech-toys'.

This makes the new hired graduate to think about the obsolescence of the company technology.

Now, think to a work environment where every employee that needs to know who is the expert within the company (or even within the 'certified' partners) for a specific argument for which he/she has to make activities on, can find him/her through a couple of web-clicks on the company intranet, that is a tool that can pull out the 'knowledge' in seconds.

Think to a people centric solution where users can access information instantly through web searches and start sharing info with others easly.

You can join to groups of people that work on a specific problem or item, you can find people that have handled your problems before, or have developed the same documentation that you have to generate in the past, in short, that can help you in your job!

The answer is surely not exhaustive but... Feel free to ask more.

If you want, check this out: http://blog.softwareabstractions.com/the_software_abstractions/2007/02/web_25_the_soci.html

Business Technology Ideas

Companies must foster an environment where new ideas are encouraged and rewarded. Middle management must be agents of positive change and transformation by learning to listen to their staff for new ideas. General Patton used to say that the morale of your troops comes directly from the morale of their leaders. Therefore, the attitudes of the top will filter down throughout the organization. You must ensure that the "clay of middle management" is not hindering your innovative efforts.

To jump start your organization's innovation revolution, hold a simple contest. Let everyone suggest ways to make the company more efficient. Limiting the exercise to "efficiency" will reduce the ridiculous suggestions of free massages and such. Make it clear that the winning idea will receive a prize (cash, vacation time, whatever). Now, here's the trick, make sure the winner is from the lowest rungs of the corporate ladder. If you pick an idea submitted by a manager then your next contest will have fewer entries.

Your second contest can focus on another aspect of your business. The idea is to keep a narrow scope for each competition to minimize the silly suggestions that simply waste time. Remember to select the majority of your winners from the line worker level so that they maintain ownership of the process. Make sure to host one contest every month, at minimum, to make this a new aspect of your corporate culture.

After you have run these contests for a few months, your employees will come to work looking for ways to improve the company. Your staff will find better ways to do their jobs and will recommend their new methods in the hopes of winning a cash prize. You can hold a separate contest for managers, if you like, but you should raise the bar for them. While your staff are focusing on making their own jobs better or easier, your managers can focus on departmental level issues and so on up the ladder.

Once you have established a corporate culture that rewards new ideas you are on the road to a innovative business.

Taken from http://ezinearticles.com/?Innovation-in-the-Organization&id=963940

Business Technology People

There are countless computer consultants out there. You have the geeks, the gurus, the evangelists, the computer guys, techs, nerds, network consultants, computer consultants and technologists, just to name a few. Each provides a different level of service and technical know-how. Many solve problems by asking you to throw money at it. New computers, new servers, new monitors, new softwares, but every time you spend money, you are cutting into profitability. The key is for you to identify the right person for your needs. If you run a company, what you really need is a "Business Technology Expert" to help you make the right decisions about technology.

A computer consultant is usually interested in fixing your computers and not in business functions and is therefore incapable of assisting you with many additional services that will maximize your information technology investments. The computer guy is great when the computer goes haywire, but a business technology expert can offer you significantly more value. Large corporations hire a Chief Information Officer to fulfill this role, but a small to mid-sized business may not need that degree of full time support. In these cases, a business technology expert will serve you well.

Business Technology is any technology that serves the needs of business, including accounting, networking, and other systems.
Business Technology must add value to your company or else it is a waste of money. More often than not, you simply accept what came with the computer when you bought it. The next fact you need to accept is that not all business technology is valuable to your business!

The key to modern business success is to be sure to align your business goals with your technology plans. Business and Technology alignment has become a Holy Grail for large multinational corporations.
Most small and medium-sized businesses are agile and fast to respond. However, just because you do not suffer from the problems of these huge dinosaur businesses does not mean you cannot benefit from Business/Technology alignment. A Business Technology Expert will assist you in aligning your business goals with your technology investments.

The second benefit you can derive from a Business Technology Expert is an understanding of your business processes. Organic growth has a tendency to develop substantial inefficiencies that can impact profits. A Business Technology Expert will analyze how you work to pinpoint and correct the inefficiencies.

A Business Technology Expert will use his knowledge and understanding of your IT systems and business processes to assist you in building competitive advantage. According to a 2007 IBM study, a Business Technology Expert should be "...engaged as a strategic partner for process and culture change." This means that the lonely computer expert typing away for hours without human contact is not the right choice if you want to succeed. A Business Technology Expert will be capable of working with others and must possess advanced communication and social skills to act as an agent of positive change.

A Business Technology Expert understands that his job is to make recommendations. Remember, you are the ultimate decision maker, so your expert needs to present you with options, instead of ultimatums, and will present you with multiple options to achieve your goals. However, if so instructed, your business technology expert will make decisions on your behalf based on solid experience and understanding of your objectives.

Technology is a fact of life. From cell phones to computers, technology has become a part of our everyday lives. Companies all over the world are harnessing technology to improve the way they do business. Don't trust your technology to someone that doesn't understand business and how you work. A business technology expert can make the difference to your success.

Taken from http://ezinearticles.com/?What-Is-A-Business-Technology-Expert?&id=1037285