As I said on Twitter a few days ago:
My Team of 2008 award goes to IBM’s Eight Bar at Hursley Labs. RedMonk celebrates makers and doers – these guys exemplify getting on with it.
As regular readers will know I regularly ding IBM about its lack of a really strong grassroots-led innovation story. The company is great at top down, but bottom up, not so much. Which is why I rate the EightBar team so highly. Competition in this category was obviously very strong- I can point to any number of awesome teams in software development. BT’s Osmosoft were a pretty strong second, but what tipped EightBar over the top for me was the contribution the Hursley crew made to Chris Dalby‘s HomeCamp. When about ten people come down from Hampshire on a Saturday to share their knowledge its heart-warming and hopefully planet cooling.
That’s the charm you see – HomeCamp is all about home automation, using home metering to improve the sustainability of our home lives. Andy Stanford Clark, IBM distinguished inventor, is building a community around IBM messaging microbroker technology (MQTT) for home consumption. Hursley is best known for Big Middleware generally and MQSeries specifically. Oh sorry did I say MQSeries? I of course meant WebSphereMQ. Seeing Hursley technology applied to home automation hacking, used by people that had never touched an IBM tool before, is pretty mind-blowing.
EightBar is trying to build A Smarter Planet.
Another reason EightBar won it for me was the emergence of epredator 2.0 – Ian Hughes went through a stage earlier in 2008 when he came across as a negative influence – but towards the end of the year he is seemingly re-energised and ready to help EightBar make even more of a go of it. EightBar – activist evangelists.
So well done Andy, Dale, Ian, Graham, Laura, Nick and anyone else in the cluster. I bet Roo is kicking himself for joining the BBC and missing out on this ever so prestigious award 
Have a great Christmas folks!
Hats off to the team!!! A very innovative team!!!!
Smarter planet is bigger than a company or even a country! This is a larger than life transformation that
this team recognizes!
Sandy Carter
Awesome. Thanks James
The thing I’ve loved about being in the eightbar tribe for the past few years is that we’re just collaborating and sharing ideas – and things really just take on a life of their own.
Good to see you (and so many IBMers!) at HomeCamp the other week.
Kicking myself? No. Not at all. I’m delighted for the Eightbar crew and incredibly proud to have been a part of it.
IBM has always had small groups like these innovating in quiet. You canfind them at all of their labs and plant locations.