August 2nd, 2007
Taking the open source message on the road
The Open Solutions Alliance has launched a series of Customer Forums on behalf of open source around the country.
The first one was held last month in Minneapolis, with 30 attendees. The next event is scheduled for San Francisco on August 23, and Philadelphia is on tap for September.
For people who have been in open source for many years the message may be no big deal. For those who haven’t, like Warner Schlais,who attended the Minneapolis event, it can be a revelation.
“Anthony Gold of Unisys described mass collaboration in terms of how Boeing produced the 787 Dreamliner,” he said. “He showed some numbers – it’s a huge marketplace.
“My company, being a consultant, attended the session to learn more about OSA and open source adoption in the marketplace. We provide consulting around Linux and want to offer our services around other products.
“I was there to learn. I picked up some very good information and would endorse this for other attendees as well.”
Inititally our target was CIOs and IT decision makers,” said OSA president Dominic Sartorio Dominick Stitorio. “But many decisions are made from the bottom up. So lead architects and lead developers also signed up. Whoever is driving open source is the target.
“We fill a room up with people who care.” And then they tell more people, and they tell more people, and they tell more people…
Dana Blankenhorn has been a business journalist for 30 years, a tech freelancer since 1983. You can follow Dana on Twitter. See his full profile and disclosure of his industry affiliations.
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