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Live Online Radio: Emerging Technologies for Information Delivery

DMRadio has a live show on Friday, March 28 at noon Pacific, 3:00 PM Eastern, about emerging trends in the information market, including open source, data and web 2.0. It's live, meaning you can ask questions of the panel, unlike regular podcasts, so have at it.

The lineup is excellent, and not just because I'm on it. The other people will be Dan Gisolfi of IBM, Chris Keene of Wavemaker and Doug Moran of Pentaho. What I find most interesting is that we're all talking about emerging technologies, and every one of us has an affiliation with open source.

Here's the description for the broadcast:

Convergence, Emergence – Part III

Mash-ups, composite apps, SOA and open-source – these emerging trends present game-changing possibilities for the information manager. Which companies and technologies should you track? Tune into DM Radio’s next broadcast: An Information Revolution, Part III, to learn from some of today’s brightest stars: Dan Gisolfi from IBM’s Emerging Internet Technologies group; Doug Moran, VP of community and co-founder of Pentaho; Chris Keene, CEO of Wavemaker; and special guest host, Mark Madsen of Third Nature.

In parts I and II, we talked about convergence. In this segment, we’ll talk emergence. Topics covered will include: what constitutes a mash-up, and why it can be so powerful; what “situational apps” are all about; how much traction open-source is really getting; the “other shoe” dropping in the open-source evolution; how AJAX can streamline creation of Web apps, despite its single-threaded Achilles heel; and how the composite app might just unravel the enterprise software licensing ball of yarn.

If you miss it, you'll be able to download an mp3 later. Check it out.

Labels: BI, ibm, mashups, open source, pentaho, podcast, wavemaker, web2.0

Posted by Mark Thursday, March 27, 2008 10:57:00 PM | permalink | (1) comments

Open Source DW Meeting in SF This Week

There's going to be an open source session with some presentations, demos and networking at the Silicon Valley TDWI chapter meeting on Thursday, February 28 from 2:00 - 5:30 in San Francisco. This event is open to the public (and it's free!) but you do need to register first.

The announcement and agenda is listed below:

Attention All Data Warehouse and Business Intelligence Professionals in the Silicon Valley Area

We cordially invite you to attend our upcoming TDWI Silicon Valley Chapter meeting on February 28, 2008. Come meet other local BI/DW professionals, swap business cards, share ideas, and exchange career advice while listening to quality presentations in a vendor-neutral setting, which is the hallmark of TDWI events. TDWI Chapter meetings are open to all BI/DW professionals and are FREE of charge. In addition, when you attend a TDWI Chapter meeting, you are eligible for a 10% discount towards a new, renewed, or extended TDWI Membership. Don't forget the prizes! At each event our sponsors graciously donate fantastic prizes. Past giveaways include Apple iPods, TVs, DVD Players, and more. Please see the agenda below.

When: Thursday, February 28, 2008, 2:00 – 5:30 p.m.
Where:
A.P. Giannini Theater at the Bank of America Building
555 California Street, San Francisco, CA
(Theater is on the ground floor off the California Street Entrance)

Agenda:
2:00 - 2:25 p.m. Mingle with your colleagues over light refreshments
2:30 - 2:45 p.m. Welcome, Chapter Intro, TDWI Goals
2:45 - 3:15 p.m. The State of Open Source BI - Mark Madsen
3:25 - 3:45 p.m. Vendor Demo - JasperSoft
3:45 - 4:05 p.m. Vendor Demo - Talend
4:05 - 4:20 p.m. Networking Break
4:20 - 5:15 Panel Discussion on Open Source Software moderated by Mark Madsen. The panel includese professionals from JasperSoft, Pentaho, and Talend as well as other users of Open Source technology.
5:15 - 5:20 p.m. Close

Labels: BI, business intelligence, etl, open source, oss

Posted by Mark Tuesday, February 26, 2008 2:28:00 PM | permalink | (1) comments

Open Source Channel at B-Eye, Funny Kindle Review

The open source BI channel is up and running at the B-Eye Network. I'll be collecting resources, papers, sites as well as blogging about open source over there, so there won't be many OSS posts in these parts any more. Other BI-related or emerging tech content is landing over at Intelligent Enterprise now. Plus there's this whole new emerging tech site I've been working on that hasn't launched yet. I've been slowly distributing myself across the Interweb. I hope one day to dissolve into the network like that dude in TRON.

That mainly leaves items of interest like this great review of Amazon's Kindle ebook reader , killing all the annoying hype about the latest device that won't take the market by storm because of brain-dead EULAs and DRM. It also leaves this as the place for snarky comments and things that aren't safe for work so would get pulled from the other sites.

Labels: amazon, kindle, open source

Posted by Mark Thursday, December 06, 2007 5:15:00 PM | permalink | (1) comments

Watch a Walkthrough of Our Mashup Camp Contest Winner

Here's a link to coverage of the mashup contest winner (me and Renat Khasanshyn - not often I get to see "me" and "winner" in the same sentence) over at ZDnet: Mashup culture shatters crusty, stodgy old approach to business app dev

They did a nice job with the video of David Berlind interviewing me showing a walkthrough of the mashup and a little about what we had to do to build it. I'd comment on how intelligent that person doing the demo looks, but I'm too modest.

One thing that didn't get mentioned is that Apatar - which Renat used to pull a data feed from Salesforce.com - is open source. It's free as "freedom" and free as in "beer". Hard to beat that.

Sadly, no walkthrough of my answer to the Starbucks finders on Programmable Web, the Starbucks Anti-Finder (on the right). Given how many stores there are, I think the real challenge is showing a map of coffeehouses that aren't Starbucks, so I created a Starbucks locater that can't find Starbucks, even if you were to feed the lat/long position to the map. You're welcome, Brian - now you don't need to see corporate coffeehouses. Version 2 will exclude all public corporations from the list, making cafe hunting even easier for the anti-corporate crowd.

And no, there is no such thing as Jose Cuervo cereal.

Labels: apatar, data integration, mashup, mashup camp, mashupcamp4, open source

Posted by Mark Monday, July 23, 2007 11:08:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Navy OKs Open Source

On June 5 the Navy gave the stamp of approval to open source software as an option for their contracts. This is a big deal since government procurement has all sorts of complicated requirements, and you have to be included in that process to get in the door. This paves the way for other government agencies to follow suit.

"Open-source software is now an official option for all information technology systems in the Navy and Marine Corps, according to a guidance memo issued June 5 by the Department of the Navy’s Office of the Chief Information Officer."

Good news for open source providers, as well as systems integrators. For the SIs, it means they can take a larger portion of the project budget for services, rather than having that money go to software partners. The question is whether they will pick up on that, given that they sometimes resell software and other times the software vendors get them into projects. It's a conflicted world out there.

Labels: government, open source

Posted by Mark Thursday, June 21, 2007 12:59:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Microsoft Patent FUD Appears to be Exactly That

Since I just finished running a day on open source at TDWI, I thought it would be worthwhile to comment on this. It's always hard to tell what's going on when they toss out FUD, but the authors of the study about potential Linux infringements say that Microsoft is misrepresenting their conclusions:

"The point of the study was actually to eliminate the FUD about Linux's alleged legal problems by attaching a quantifiable measure versus the speculation," he said. "And the number we found, to anyone familiar with this issue, is so average as to be boring; almost any piece of software potentially infringes at least that many patents."

This looks like another case of bogus interpretation similar to the Linux TCO study, where they concluded that Linux was ten times more expensive to run than Windows. It's true, when you look at what they compared: an Intel PC running Windows vs. an IBM mainframe running Linux.

Labels: microsoft, open source, patents

Posted by Mark Saturday, May 19, 2007 1:03:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Open Source BI Case Study Slides Are Posted

We had a good open source session at the May TDWI conference. After I spent some time reviewing history, projects and adoption practices we got to the good part: short case studies, demos and a panel session with representatives from BIRT, JasperSoft, Pentaho and SpagoBI. I particularly enjoyed the panel session where we had some great insights from the panel on what's happening in this space and some of the problems people are facing. I also liked Cindi Howson (the most knowledgeable person on the subject of BI products I know) asking some basic but pointed questions that were on the minds of the mostly non-OSS audience.

Special thanks to Paul Clenahan and Jason Weathersby from Actuate/BIRT, Nick Halsey and Beth Mazur of JasperSoft, Lance Walter and Nicholas Goodman of Pentaho, and Grazia Cazzin and Daniela Tura representing SpagoBI. They did a lot of work and came at their own expense to represent their projects at this conference.

All of their overview and case study slides are available at Third Nature.

Labels: BI, business intelligence, open source

Posted by Mark Friday, May 18, 2007 8:06:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Redo: Open Source Talk at Portland DAMA

I'll be back in Portland this week to give a talk on open source in data warehousing. The last one was cancelled due to a snowstorm (scroll to see video). Hopefully this one will fare better.

The talk is an abbreviated version of of the session I'll be running at the Boston TDWI in mid-May. A portion of the talk is basic technology theory, designed to help you convince managers that open source in the BI market is inevitable. The rest is a fast run-through of open source projects at the different architectural layers and then information about adoption and risk. 120 slides in 120 minutes, which means I'll be moving fast to cover everything.

Sadly, no demos in the session. They had to be cut to make the two hour deadline.

Labels: dama, events, open source

Posted by Mark Sunday, April 15, 2007 6:23:00 PM | permalink | (0) comments

Full Day Conference Session on Open Source BI and DW

Open source has little visibility in the mainstream data warehousing community. This is an attempt to change that. We've got four projects involved in the open source business intelligence and data warehouse course at the May TDWI. I'm finalizing the structure and lineup for the afternoon session,. The plan is to do demo-based comparison of the various projects, let them show interesting things they can do, present some short case studies, and do a panel on open source adoption.

The projects who have given me a verbal "yes" are:

• BIRT (Actuate)
• JasperSoft
• Pentaho
• SpagoBI

The morning session will cover OSS possibilities for the entire data warehouse technology stack. The afternoon is dedicated to BI. This should be a great time and will be a lot different from my usual full-day sessions. I'll be writing more about each project as I work on open source tool evaluations for an upcoming report.

Labels: BI, business intelligence, open source

Posted by Mark Wednesday, February 28, 2007 10:46:00 PM | permalink | (2) comments