open source

content management systems

drupal

cms

open source cms

DrupalCampNYC8

jim wilde — Mon, 26 Jul 2010 12:55:43 +0000

I love Drupal camps!

I know - it sounds crazy talking about technology. But really, it's all about the community of people supporting Drupal - 375 of them this past weekend (DrupalCampNYC -- July 24th - 25th, 2010) at NYU PolyTech in Brooklyn, NY. From professional developers, designers, implementers and CIO's to geek hobbyists and the curious - we had a blast learning cool stuff about Drupal and exchanging how-to's.

The entire weekend was almost all free - $10 to get in. Back in the day, software company's used to charge $1000's of bucks to see and learn about their products and services. Man, have things changed. Open source software and the communities that developed around them have created a new type of software paradigm. One that makes it easy to get engaged, motivated, and where ideas are openly and freely exchanged. This sparks innovation and creativity.

If you never heard of Drupal, well, it is a web application framework with a kick ass content management system attached to it. Go get some!

If you're a Drupalist and missed the camp, some of the cool stuff I attended was about the rules.module and features.module as well as a couple of sessions that helped developers understand business requirements and how-to implement Drupal applications that solve real world business problems.

The way I see it, there are three types of Drupal people - developers or back-end guys (writes code), themers or front-end guys(designs interfaces), and implementers (module selection and theme selection, business logic, configuration, some coding, some design). The implementer helps figure the right modules to use, when to write new ones, how to configure them, what goes in the theme as opposed to a module or a view, figures out roles and permissions, and workflows. An implementers role does not get enough credit, especially since Drupal is geting implemented across a wider section of web apps and industries.

My qualifications: I've been doing Drupal for six years. I've been in IT (development to manager) and business development for many more years so I cover both developer and implementer pretty well and I do a pretty decent job as a themer. Without a decent business understanding, it is hard to build and implement a site or application that serves a purpose. This applies to any organization, including non-profits.

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Upgrading and Maintaining Drupal

jim wilde — Wed, 24 Jun 2009 12:11:17 +0000

Drupal Site - Drupal Help - Drupal Consultant

In addition to Drupal consulting and development services, I also specialize in upgrading, maintaining, and managing existing Drupal web sites and applications. I can help upgrade your custom Drupal theme. I can do upgrades and maintenance without disruption to your existing Drupal site. All Drupal work is guaranteed.

We are conveniently located 20 miles from midtown NYC, we serve clients throughout the tri-state area (NY, NJ, CT) and sometimes PA.

Upgrading from previous versions (from Drupal.org).

"On backward compatibility: the drop is always moving

Everyone considering Drupal should understand that Drupal development is always on the cutting edge and with each major release there will be radical improvements. ...While the upgrade path will reliably preserve your data, there is no backward compatibility with the previous Drupal code."

I also provide Drupal SEO

FYI -- As a Drupal consultant, I can work as a team member, solo, or as a hands-on project manager. I am located in New Jersey. I can work on-site or off-site. Most of my on-site projects are in New Jersey and New York City.

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The Couture Catalog site

jim wilde — Tue, 26 May 2009 15:17:52 +0000

The Couture Catalog site was developed using #Drupal, an open source content management system. It took me about 2.5 weeks to complete the first phase. To fully appreciate the site, click through the "options" page or visit the "home page". Each option, Cover Pages, Vendor Pages, etc, has a different jquery display method which makes the site visually appealing as well as stimulating.

The second phase will start soon and involve a lot of user interaction and possible e-comm.

The site was developed to support the upcoming COUTURE JEWELRY COLLECTION & CONFERENCE 2009 in Las Vegas. This is the main event for jewelry, watch makers, and retailers to meet and make deals.

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The Couture Catalog Site

jim wilde — Tue, 26 May 2009 11:45:46 +0000

Great Drupal site/theme for jewerly catalog industy

The second phase will start soon and involve a lot of user interaction and possible e-comm.

The site was developed to support the upcoming COUTURE JEWELRY COLLECTION & CONFERENCE 2009 in Las Vegas. This is the main event for jewelry, watch makers, and retailers to meet and make deals.

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Government 2.0 and Open Source Software

jim wilde — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:38:44 +0000

Drupal, a web application framework, is popping up all over the place.

The Obama administration is using Drupal (an open source software project) for the government's 2.0 recovery website. Great. recovery.gov

With Drupal being used on such a nationally recognized site, a gigantic government one, it should be proof that it is enterprise ready.

My last gig was for Sony BMG/Music. We used drupal extensively for internal projects (collaboration and innovation projects) and external ones. The external Drupal projects were for Sony artists sites. From www.pinkspage.com to bobdylan.com and www.beyonceonline.com.

From Tech President "Why the White House's Embrace of Drupal Matters". "Drupal developers are abuzz with the realization that the White House's new Recovery.gov site was built using the free and open-source content management platform Drupal. Pre-Recovery.gov, the perhaps highest-profile use of Drupal had been the Onion website. But that's not the only reason that Drupal fans are excited."

On a smaller scale, I also used Drupal to help a Texas political consultancy develop www.bigredtent.com. It is a social network/community site for raising money for republic candidates. We also, used drupal to develope several individual gov 2.0 state sites in Texas.

From The Buzz Bin, "Government 2.0". Social media creates an open means of conversation between different government agencies and provides the government with new ways of reaching the public; it is an evolution in the democratization of government. Through social media, collaborators are able to create, organize, share and edit web content." This article is loaded with good ideas and links on social media in government.

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Important technologies for 2008 - Collaboration Tools - Social Networks

jim wilde — Fri, 14 Mar 2008 10:17:07 +0000

Web applications and tools to help people connect and share ideas and information.

CIO Insight, "Collaboration tools which allow employees to brainstorm, plan, analyze, share work and make decisions together are among the most important technologies of 2008.

"Collaboration: Unlocking the Power of Teams" from CIO Insight, By Allan Alter

Mr. Alter, "...collaboration and work-flow moved up to second place in our Top Trends Survey list of the most strategic technologies late last year, it confirmed what CIOs and other IT executives had been telling us about the field's growing importance to their businesses.

...the line between collaboration and communication is ultra-thin, and we included nearly 30 items under the collaboration umbrella from telephony and e-mail to prediction markets and social networks.

We discovered that about 80 percent of IT executives believe collaboration and workflow technologies deliver on their promise to boost productivity and decision-making, and half say they enable and even inspire strategies that were previously unattainable or unimaginable."

At the end of the day, you need to solve a problem. So, stop reading about social software applications. Unleash your imagination and start experimenting with them. The real value and power of social network software can only be appreciated with hands-on experience. Consider this, a short-term, pilot project to discover and evaluate solutions based on results. We're easy to work with and provide application audit trails as well as productivity metrics.

Productivity gains that impact business - Forward thinkers and project teams will quickly gain experience with online communities, social networking applications, and new information flows as they apply to how people learn, collaborate and innovate. The results are a rich learning environment that supports better decision making and work-flow management.

Leveraging resources to create custom solutions. We take a hybrid approach between open source, closed source, functionality, risk and support to deliver simple or advanced, custom solutions. Ones that are stable with superior performance and maximum uptime.

A small investment for big returns. We listen to your problems and offer solutions. From practical ones to crazy ones, we'll help you unlock the benefits of social software and Web 2.0 ideas. Call us now at 973.433.4007.

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internal social software

orchestrating resources

work-flow

teams

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Keeping up with rapidly changing times.

jim wilde — Sun, 09 Mar 2008 13:07:34 +0000

Applying open source ideas to business.

The open-source software movement developed because people had an "itch to scratch". One that "off-the-shelf" software did not support or was too costly to use. In the open source community people want to contribute, learn and share their knowledge and experience. They want to participate in a rich learning environment. They want to be able to get their work done and make a difference. We know from experience that these ideas work in a business environment.

With many open-source communities having thousands of developers and users - it is a mistake to believe that these ideas would not apply in business.

"Did You Know; Shift Happens - Globalization; Information Age" video by Karl Fisch.

Here are several more ideas that fit any size project. They are centered around using social software and virtual communities to help employees, stakeholders, partners, deal with rapidly changing times.

internal communications, how people work together - collaborate,
amplify talent development through rich learning environments,
social web and rich internet and intranet applications to meet ever changing market demands,
innovation around networks of people,
idea and resource exchanges across the organization,

"Ketchum report: Media Myths and realities and Gary Hamel" by Alan Moore on Communities Dominate Brands.

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rich learning environments

business

internal communications

contributing

filtering ideas

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community software applications

Managing open innovation - tapping external talent

jim wilde — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 18:07:04 +0000

Three great tips for any size organization wanting to tap external ideas.

From McKinsey, "Succeeding at open-source innovation: An interview with Mozilla's Mitchell Baker." This article offers three great tips for any size organization wanting to tap external ideas. Ms. Baker also talks about having a participatory culture.

Ms. Baker, "As companies reach beyond their boundaries to find and develop ideas, they are exploring new models (web 2.0 principles) to manage innovation. In projects that tap external talent, questions quickly arise about process management, intellectual-property rights, and the right to make decisions.

Turning people loose is really valuable. You have to figure out what space and what range, but you get a lot more than you would expect out of them, because they're not you.

Second, figure out where you want input. There are different varieties of input and user-generated content. Figuring out what you really want is very important because you can get benefits out of any of those things. But if you're doing one thing and sending out a message that you're doing another, I think you're dead.

Third, look hard at whether there are areas where you can give up some control, because the returns are great. And if you can't, then stay away from this type of model. If you have a good group of people around you people you trust sometimes just stepping back when you don't like something is really valuable."

We, Advancing Insights, have gained a lot of know-how over the years working in open source software (OSS) communities. Working as both, users and developers, we learned about community, collaboration, and innovation. We know from experience with corporate clients that these ideas and processes can be implemented to benefit any size project. Interestingly, it is from these communities that many of the ideas behind Web 2.0 technologies - Social Software have emerged.

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open innovation

participatory culture

community

strategy

orchestrating resources

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corporate social networks

The math of small contributions

jim wilde — Wed, 10 Oct 2007 11:21:40 +0000

Take a look at any open source software community or social networking site to understand the math of small contributions in action.

This idea has been around for some time. I first read about it in, "small pieces loosely joined", by Dave Weinberger (one of the authors of the cluetrain). Anyway, Micheal Schrage has a good post, "Round-off Error? Hardly!" MIT Technology Review that applies the math. to the idea.

Mr. Schrage, "A brief disquisition as to why--when it comes to innovation--superficial economic analysis is worse than no analysis at all.

Let's start with the math: treating .1 percent of people as a "rounding error" may make economic sense if they don't do anything of substance or significance. But if they actually create and add value to your network and/or your business, you might be wiser to treat that magnificent tenth of a percent as an "outlier" to be nurtured rather than a statistical aberration to be ignored.

Indeed, as Mr. Harford well knows, 10 percent of a thousand is larger than 90 percent of a hundred. If we have--and we do!--Net enterprises with tens of millions of users, then that measly-looking .1 percent can be misleadingly robust. One-tenth of a percent of a million is a thousand, and, of course, .1 percent of 10 million = 10,000. That's quite a workforce. But why grant Tim his self-serving assumptions? I cheerfully argue that as a "culture of contribution" and creative volunteerism facilitates a vibrant innovation marketplace, that tenth of a percent might really be closer to seven-tenths of a percent or even 1 percent. Again, it's not the volume of contributors that matters; it's the value of their contributions. Isn't that what economics is supposed to be about? Hence my dismay with and dismissal of our Undercover Economist's "analysis."

The simple truth is that we can look at any industry--automobiles, semiconductors, telecoms--and find only a tiny fraction of "entrepreneurs" who are making real contributions. Now, I'm not for a moment suggesting that folks who volunteer their videos on Youtube or comments on Amazon or story preferences on Digg are entrepreneurs in the Schumpertarian or Hayekian sense. The (obvious) profit motive is absent. However, the community/audience/marketplace clearly sees some value in these contributions--as do the undeniably entrepreneurial hosts. The spirit--and seduction--of "increasing returns" suggests that literally tens of thousands of people will be making value-added contributions to these arenas and that, yes, noncontributing consumers will also extract some value from them. In other words, Harford's "rounding error" assertion is a bit like saying, "You know those tiny little things that huge trees have called seeds? Well, they're so small and lightweight, they don't really matter. I mean, they're not even one-tenth of one percent the size or weight of the tree...." Just as bad botanical understanding can wipe out forests and biodiversity, poor economic analysis can wipe out value and its creation. The truth is that we're just beginning to grasp the underlying behavioral economics of "open source" and "cooperative" innovation economies. Dismissing what we don't understand as "round-off error" makes poor punditry and worse economics.

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creative volunteerism

culture of contribution

economics

marketplace

behavioral economics

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Facebook mashups and marketing

Facebook widgets, applications, and mashups

jim wilde — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 15:42:04 +0000

"In Facebook, Investing in a Theory", NY Times

"Thousands of software developers are creating features for Facebook, the rapidly growing social network, many hoping to strike it rich alongside Facebook's own employees."

We go even further... Users of our social web applications can use many already developed widgets, applications, and content (vids, images, text) to automagically apply on facebooks. Users/members are authenicated on login. All content is RSS/XML enabled.

On a different note... If MS gets involved with facebook, they would most likely scare off (me) many of the independent developers.

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Open Source Is the Big Disruptor

jim wilde — Tue, 25 Sep 2007 16:10:20 +0000

We use open source technology to solve business problems.

Great news. "Open Source Is the Big Disruptor" - eWeek

"Open-source software is going to erode proprietary sales revenue by offering less-expensive or free alternatives, expanding the total market potential by meeting the demands of SMBs (small medium businesses) for affordable solutions, and creating a new business model for established and emerging service providers to provide selection, customization and management services for open-source solutions,"

We've been offering services, mostly to small and medium size business, around open source software for almost 5 years. Our greatest challanges with bigger businesses and organizations are the MS effect and the idea that we are a small business. Right, some of the open source projects we work on, drupal, wordpress, mambo, joomla, xoops, and others have more developers and supporters than most software businesses.

All of the open source projects we participate in are focused on rich internet applications, interactive portals, social networking, and learning environments.

...some of the market accelerators to open source, which included the low barriers to entry and increased return on investment, the availability of high-quality solutions at low cost, the access to open standards and development processes, vendor independence and flexibilityÃ¢â‚¬resulting in investment protectionÃ¢â‚¬and faster procurement and a shorter development time.

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rich internet applications

management

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corporate social networks

"Enterprise Mashups Hurtle Toward Mainstream"

jim wilde — Mon, 24 Sep 2007 14:43:04 +0000

Enterprise Mashups Hurtle Toward Mainstream, eweek

"Many companies looking to cull data from multiple sources to help their employees do their jobs better are seeking mashups as an answer, said Anthony Bradley, a Gartner analyst, Sept. 21 at the Gartner Web Innovation Summit 2007 here.

...businesses are increasingly using mashups to improve workflow efficiencies at a time when knowledge workers are looking to get information faster. The major benefit of mashups is rapid application development.

Situational awareness, in which a user can grab data from multiple sources and manipulate it on the fly to make better decisions, is the killer mashup app. This type of implementation will pace an adoption cycle in which Gartner anticipates 30 percent of companies will use mashups within the next 12 months."

We believe the ability to communicate and collaborate with people both inside and outside the company is a key business differentiator.

Many mashups are happening in the consumer IT (social networking applications and social media) space which provide all kinds of opportunities for businesses and organizations.

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situational awareness

killer apps

knowledge workers

workflow efficiencies

portals

social media

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knowledge management

IBM On Using Open Source Tools To Create Collaborative Sites

jim wilde — Thu, 20 Jul 2006 20:01:10 +0000

This is a great endorsement from IBM on using open source collaborative tools to implement collaborative sites. We've been using them all, successfully, for the last few years to create social networks within organizations. I love it! For a small, niche consulting firm, Advancing Insights, IBM's endorsement validates what we've known and what we've been telling clients all along. "...the tools are powerful, they scale, and work better than vendor products costing tens of thousands of dollars".

Of course, there is a lot more to developing collaborative sites or community driven ones than slapping together software.

From IBM, "Using open source software to design, develop, and deploy a collaborative Web site.

...for complicated sites that require more than just the standard methods of interaction and update, Web site development is still not turnkey. Many customizations are often necessary for each application within an organization.

This collection of articles from members of the IBM Internet Technology Group shows you how to use open source tools as a basis and provides a methodology and set of enhancements to simplify the process of Web site development.

...the team describes a fictitious organization that requires a customized Web site that includes, among other things, document storage, discussion groups, specialized workgroups, conference scheduling, and schedule session descriptions. They illustrate the creation of this Web site using the following open source tools:

Drupal - An open source content management system
MySQL - An open source database store
PHP - A Web-based language for supporting dynamic content with PHPMyAdmin and SQLBrowse
Apache - An open source Web server
Eclipse - An open source development environment
CVS - A source code management system that tracks changes in your code

They provide step-by-step guidelines to the installation and use of the development tool suite described above.
These guidelines include:

Building your development environment
Getting started with Drupal
Observing the interaction of Drupal with other software tools (such as MySQL, Ajax, and PHP)
Building custom Drupal modules
Deploying and tuning your installation"

Email or call us, 973.433.4007, to find out more about specific collaborative tools and social network implementations, training, and education.

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gated social networks

niche social networks

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idea management

Social Media Tools

The consumer as creator

jim wilde — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 17:37:09 +0000

Business 2.0, 50 people who matter.

"Rank: 1 - You! The consumer as creator

Why You Matter: They've long said the customer is always right. But they never really meant it. Now they have no choice. You -- or rather, the collaborative intelligence of tens of millions of people, the networked you -- continually create and filter new forms of content, anointing the useful, the relevant, and the amusing and rejecting the rest. You do it on websites like Amazon, Flickr, and YouTube, via podcasts and SMS polling, and on millions of self-published blogs. In every case, you've become an integral part of the action as a member of the aggregated, interactive, self-organizing, auto-entertaining audience. But the You Revolution goes well beyond user-generated content. Companies as diverse as Delta Air Lines and T-Mobile are turning to you to create their ad slogans. Procter & Gamble and Lego are incorporating your ideas into new products. You constructed open-source and are its customer and its caretaker. None of this should be a surprise, since it was you -- your crazy passions and hobbies and obsessions -- that built out the Web in the first place. And somewhere out there, you're building Web 3.0. We don't yet know what that is, but one thing's for sure: It will matter."

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