Hat tip to the NYTimes and writer Ashlee Vance for this article on a new group called Open Source for America. I’m looking for some interesting things to come out of this group and will be supporting them however I am able.

Open Source for America (http://www.opensourceforamerica.org/) is a advocacy group for the use of Open Source standards and software in US Federal Government and includes an impressive list of board advisors including:

• Roger Burkhard
• Rishab Aiyer Ghosh
• Marv Langston
• Chris Lundberg
• Dawn Meyerriecks
• Eben Moglen
• Arthur L. Money
• Tim O’Reilly
• Stormy Peters
• Simon Phipps
• Mark Shuttleworth
• Paul Smith
• Dr. Doug Stone
• Michael Tiemann
• Andrew Updegrove
• William Vass
• Anthony I. Wasserman
• Jim Zemlin

From their website the groups Mission Statement is:

The mission of OSA is to educate decision makers in the U.S. Federal government about the advantages of using free and open source software; to encourage the Federal agencies to give equal priority to procuring free and open source software in all of their procurement decisions; and generally provide an effective voice to the U.S. Federal government on behalf of the open source software community, private industry, academia, and other non-profits.

The mission incorporates three goals:

• to effectuate changes in U.S. Federal government policies and practices so that all the government may more fully benefit from and utilize free and open source software;
• to help coordinate these communities to collaborate with the Federal government on technology requirements;
• to raise awareness and create understanding among federal government leaders in the executive and legislative branches about the values and implications of open source software. OSA may also participate in standards development and other activities that may support its open source mission.

This is the time of the year that the Michigan farm boy in me kicks into high gear. The vegetable garden is taking hold and the fruit trees in the yard are producing. Yesterday saw me up the tree, picking cherries for my family and our friends. Like my quest to follow my passions as a way to feed my family (and my soul) both literally and figuratively; this act of growing and sharing food is a very literal example of what makes me happy in life. I believe we should all attempt to live our lives in as happy a way as possible; in as fullfilling a way as possible.

That may be a loaded statement, we all have a different perspective on such things, but it is an important idea. Without it what is life worth?

So, in this case I climb the cherry tree which gives me both the joy of eating fresh, organic, local cherries but more than that it also gives me an excuse to climb a tree and get a new perspective on the neighborhood. A birds eye view can be good for the soul and the mind. Beyond that I get the joy of sharing with my neighbors, making new friends through the act of kindness and reconnected with old friends.

In return, in this case, my neighbors baked us a cherry pie that has been delicious.

Thinking of this example, in your life’s work, are you giving away cherries and getting cherry pie in return? If not, how might you get to that point?

The latest attempt to break the Google stranglehold on the search market is Microsoft’s new product: Bing (Bing Is Not Google). If you’d like to check it out for yourself then I suggest you head over to http://bing.com but don’t worry about breaking a sweat to get there. Bing is pretty uninspired visually and the back-end functionality feels more like Microsoft is catching up with Google, not surpassing it or even changing the game.

The issue is that Microsoft continues to look at projects with an engineer’s eyes; in very black and white terms. “If we can build a better search engine than Google we win.” This constant focus on competition instead of community keeps Microsoft falling short. Microsoft should look for ways to create new community instead of just “better tools” as a way to grow sustainable innovation (and thus fan base).

Of course this past week there was a new product that has shown innovation and community centered philosophy. And of course it is Google’s new product (protocol?) called Wave.

Before you sink your teeth into the Google Wave Developer Preview video which is 1.5 hours long and worth every minute (the very last demo will blow your mind) I want to relate to you where I see this application being a game changer for organizations and individuals.

Google Wave is based on the idea of conversations as opposed to messages (along with about 100 other innovations) and the engineers have done a fantastic job of accomplishing that. There is a lot of speculation about whether or not people will adopt to this product, to “catch the wave” or whatever. The advantages that Google are hoping pay off are:

• That the product lets you integrate so much work-flow that it would be difficult not to use it,
• The work-flow is all about collaboration and building community through sharing of control and content,
• They are making it open source so anyone can implement it and develop off of it, and;
• Everything happens inside the browser using HTML5 so you don’t have to deal with device dependencies.

The technological advances that allow the level of control sharing are unbelievable and the closest comparison I could make to this in our physical world would be the types of decentralized leadership being practiced by groups such as The Art of Hosting.

When you consider the social changes that are currently underway around the world you see that this product is directly in line with those changes. Google let the community dictate the direction of their solution instead of the engineers. What I mean this; current trends show the digital leaders (and their networks) are using online tools to share and create things without the hierarchy and centralized control of the past.

This digitalocracy of people are ignoring the protocols of society to create their own solutions to business, organization, community and even individual problems by collaborating online, sharing transparently and crowdsourcing.

Breaking big problems down into smaller chunks and allowing the group to solve them and then fit the pieces back together has become second nature to many of us and this is exactly how Google Wave approaches collaboration, conversation and problem solving. Taking it one step further is that Google Wave allows for a report out and harvest of every collaboration making it not just a fantastic tool for building collaboration and community but also for knowledge management and growth.

One of the biggest walls stifling the digitalocracy is the bureaucracy built into our current systems. If a new application like Google Wave can find its way into our current systems then by the nature of how it empowers everyone to be equals and to work communally we will in fact see a change in how organizations function.

So, without further ado I present the Google Wave Developer Demo: