Wednesday Miscellaneous Links & News

Two other items that might be of interest to a variety of readers that I’ve been meaning to discuss:

1. Web 2.0ish Event:
   RedMonk’s been assisting in identifying individuals involved in Web 2.0-type web development for an upcoming event. I’m not at liberty to provide more details at this point – they should be forthcoming soon anyhow – but I wanted to be sure that any of you reading this who are involved in generating Web 2.0ish applications drop me a line with examples of your work and/or writings. I’ve got most of the usual suspects on the list already, as well as a number of Friends of RedMonk, but I can’t be aware of every project out there. So if you’re doing cool work in that area, let me know. It’s not a big deal b/c the event is not going to be Foo Camp style exclusive, but we want to be sure to make sure the right people know about it out of the gate.

2. Open Document Foundation:
   Some of you may recall that one of the topics of discussion at the Open Document Summit back in November was whether or not there was a need for an Open Document Foundation to augment development and evagelism efforts around the OpenDocument Format – too many ODFs, methinks 😉 Earlier this week, Friend of RedMonk Gary Edwards was kind enough to let us know that such a foundation has been incorporated (USA 501c(3) non profit incorporated in California) and registered with OASIS, not to mention the fine folks at the Internal Revenue Service. Here’s a quick blurb from a public email from Gary:

   The OpenDocument Foundation was set up to provide an application independent platform where volunteers from corporate, organizational, and FLOSS communities could freely participate in the promotion and development of ODF. An important aspect of the Foundation is the fact that many current and past members of the ODF TC are also members of the Foundation. Hopefully, having direct access to ODF TC activities and efforts will in many ways enable FLOSS style global participation without the OASIS ODF TC also being buried by new members and requests from divergent interests that might inadvertently encumber or perhaps slow down the serious work of the TC.

   The Foundation is meant to be a resource assisting OASIS in the promotion and development of ODF. Also furthering the publics understanding of ODF, while enabling different means of comparatively casual participation that might eventually evolve into OASIS ODF efforts, or not. Sometimes participation is a value unto itself.

   I’m not entirely clear on the precise logistics of where the foundation’s responsibilities end and the TC’s begin, but I’m hoping to have time to chat with Gary soon for more on that. In the meantime, I’ll look forward to hearing more from the group.

And as long as I’m doing quick links, here are two podcasts that might be worth a listen.

1. News.com’s Martin LaMonica interviews IBM’s Bob Sutor on Big Blue’s decision to abstain from participating in the standardization of Microsoft’s Office formats within Ecma. Thanks to IBM’s Todd Martin for taking the time to let me know about this.
2. Mike Vizard and Steve Gillmor interview Collabnet’s (and Apache’s) Brian Behlendorf on internationalization, collaboration and more. Friend of RedMonk Coté was kind enough to alert me to this with a del.icio.us for:sogrady tag because Gillmor drops in a mention of this space about 5 and a half minutes in, but Behlendorf’s comments on the implications of global development are well worth the 20+ minutes.

Now if you’ll excuse me, I have to go ship off some last minute documents.