RI State Open Source Pioneer Gains Public Recognition

James Willis, Rhode Island and pioneer in the adoption of open source for his state’s agency’s government web site, recently concluded his tenure with the state. The Providence Business News covered his departure from public service in an extensive article highlighting the work for which Willis gained national recognition. The collaborative model used by this state in which RI agencies opted in to provide and share web content has strengthened its ability to provide greater transparency of information to the citizen it serves, consistent with Willis’ philosophy.  Thanks!

Open Source Presentation Sets

For those of you looking for some content highlights from the recent Government Open Source Conference, here are a few of my favorites which also stand well on their own. Key concepts for 2006: Developing collaborative communites expressly for government-centric applications; general practical knowlege and best practices for public sector IT management on the adoption of open source software in their organizatons.

• Bill Welty, State of California Air Resoures Board; One Agency’s Experience with Open Source
• Tim Vaverchak, Information Technology Division, Commonwealth of Massachusetts; The Road to Open in Massachusetts
• Andy Stein, City of Newport News; Collaboratively Evolving Ecosystems
• Larry M. Augustin; Building Open Source Communities
• Drew Ladner; OSS and Federal Gov’t: Update and Notes on Collaboration
• Brad Wheeler, Indiana University IT Services; 16M Later…A Model to Pool Investments for Directed Open Source Projects
• Bernard Golden, Navica; Making Your Organization Open Source Ready
• Jason McKerr, JanRain; Community Source Development 101
• Corey Shields, Oregon State University, Open Soure Lab; Open Source 101 for Managers
• Ward Cunningham, Eclipse; Keynote: Callisto: Large Scale Collaboration
• Stephen Walli, Descant, Inc.; Open Source Software Economics (and Licensing)

A full list of downloadable 2006 presentations can be found at the conference web site. To come next week; selected pod-cast interviews with some of our presenters.