The EU-funded IKS Project invites FOSS companies and projects to take part in building a software stack for knowledge management that is Open Source.

IKS is funded with 6.5 million Euros by the European Union and 2 million Euros are being invested by the consortium partners which makes up for an overall budget of 8.5 millions. The project will run for 4 years.

Financial support is available for 50 yet to be selected companies/organizations who agree to evaluate the IKS software stack as early adopters as well as 100 individuals who are members of a related FOSS project and who would like to actively engage in IKS project development. The budget for contributors to IKS is meant to alleviate the entry hurdles, e.g. for travel and accommodation for attending the IKS workshop end of May.

The premier focus of IKS is on FOSS content management systems and how they can make use of the to-be-developed IKS technology to let content objects behave the way they are supposed to across varying applications. Additionally, IKS also aims at cooperating with FOSS projects helping to implement semantics-aware software.

Wernher Behrendt, one of the initiators of IKS, exemplifies the project’s vision as follows:

Think of a task that has been defined in a project management software. Ideally, the project management software allows you to edit the task as you would expect it, for example, you can extend the ending date in case the work will take longer. Now, what happens if you want to transfer your work plan to the Web content management system that powers your Web site to display it to the public?

You will most likely create a screenshot of the work plan in the project management software, upload the screenshot in your WCMS and include it on a Web page. In between, you have lost all information about what a task is and how another application should treat it in case you want to edit it within the imported work plan.

This is where IKS comes to the rescue, because its software stack will not only provide a layer that takes care of metadata information (e.g. Ontologies, RDF, …), but will also be able to deal with information on how to process a content object across different applications.

If you’d like to join, IKS provides further information on its Web site and how to get in contact with them. Contribute to IKS as a…

• CMS vendor
• CMS end user
• Open Source developer
• CMS consultant, regional technology transfer organization, anyone else

InitMarketing has made its calendar of world-wide conferences and trade fairs related to Free and Open Source Software, IT and specific industries available to the public.

It currently includes 122 events in 17 countries taking place in 2009. 43 of them in Germany, 69 in USA. We use this calendar when planing events for our customers, thus we’ll regularly update it. Please let us know of any events which are not on our radar yet by commenting to my blog or commenting at the bottom of the events page.

While at OpenExpo last year, I grabbed the opportunity and asked Bruce Perens and Shane Coughlan to interview each other for InitMarketing.tv. They have done a fine job discussing the terms Open Source and Free Software from a marketing perspective. Hope you’ll enjoy the conversation as much as I did. Here are the highlights:

As with all InitMarketing.tv videos, you can

• download, embed, rate, comment, etc. the highlights
• watch/read the full video interview

Now playing on InitMarketing.tv is a video interview with Bryan, who is Director of Open Source Strategy at Microsoft. I very much respect Bryan as a person and for what he says in the interview. His answers show that he is truly committed and understands the benefits well. Some excerpts:

So it’s really a noticeable trend where open source is clearly a part of the data centre in the IT environment. There are Microsoft technologies that are clearly a part of this.

The trend in the overall market, what we see and hear, all points to pragmatic, case-by-case evaluation of what meets customer needs, how do you combine things in interesting ways, and if you believe that open source has value, that shouldn’t really surprise you, that should just make sense.

Above video only shows the highlights. You can also watch or read the full interview with Bryan.

About a year ago. I thought to myself: Twitter is irrelevant, why should I care about SMSing on the Web? On the other hand, why do power users of social network apps such as Robert Scoble praise Twitter? I was curious, I started to try it out.

Beginning of this year, I realized a tremendous growth of momentum. Suddenly everyone in my business network started using Twitter and I realized that I had actually learned to love Twitter within the past year.

Why do I love Twitter? Let me tell you a story:

I was at a doctor appointment where the doctor told me that a certain medicine does not do any harm. Just the week before, I had an appointment with another doctor where I was told about one adverse effect that could occur with that medicine. Wondering which doctor is right, suddenly a thought came to my mind: If the later doctor twitters, let’s follow him and after one week of reading his tweets, I’ll have a good idea whether I can trust him.

That story sums up what is great about Twitter: If you’d like to assess the expertise of someone, read her/his Tweets. With each single tweet, you show what you read, think and do. You are what you tweet.

Twitter allows to build trust, tweet by tweet. Trust is the basis for a good customer relationship and referals, that’s what makes Twitter so valuable for online marketing.

Twitter is not only Microblogging, it’s also Microbranding. Twitter is perfect for individuals to build a brand on the Web. A company that supports its employees in twittering, will ultimately benefit from a more vivid and trustworthy brand.

I use Twitter mainly to brand myself as a knowledgeable person in the field of marketing Free and Open Source Software. My target audience is very Web-savy and quick to adopt new Internet-based communication tools such as Twitter.

… and doctors should twitter, too

I am excited that my talk for OSBC has been accepted: How U.S.-based FOSS Companies Effectively Market to Europeans. Furthermore, InitMarketing will exhibit as a sponsor at OSBC.

See you at OSBC in San Francisco, March 24-25!

I am very happy to announce that Florian Effenberger of OpenOffice.org fame joined our team of Open Source marketing experts at InitMarketing.

Florian brings in a lot of experience in community building and he already helps our customers with related work.

Welcome Florian, it’s a pleasure to have you on board!

Open Source Business Foundation (OSBF) yesterday announced the winners of the Open Source Business Award. Two InitMarketing customers won prizes: todoyu won the 3rd prize (10k EUR) and OXID eSales shared the 1st prize (receiving 32.5k EUR).

OSBF annually awards innovative ideas, thought through concepts and promising business plans with the Open Source Business Award. It is being granted for innovative business ideas based on Open Source Software, which revolutionize the market and can set new standards.

Heise reports about the award in detail (German only).

Free and Open Source software is often being introduced through the back door in SMBs as well as large corporations. In-house developers can any time download it at no cost and install it to see if it fits the requirements for internal projects. Due to this kind of go-to-market strategy, MySQL’s Marten Mickos once stated: “We don’t believe in converting.”

The question is: How about internal converting? How about the day, when in-house developers need to justify the use of FOSS to their managers when they seek to consolidate the corporate IT infrastructure? Will FOSS speak for itself?

That’s the day, when enthusiastic in-house developers should start to act and regard themselves as internal Open Source evangelists. They will attempt to build support for FOSS within their organization to establish it as part of the IT landscape. What can they do in favor of FOSS and what should FOSS vendors and projects do to support them?

As much as it is important in the public to achieve a critical mass of FOSS supporters, it is critical within organizations to convince the critical minds, i.e. the decision makers. Here are some points how internal evangelists should be supported:

1. Internal Open Source evangelists might face the problem of being “the prophets in their own land”. They need to be supported in any possible way by external “objective” sources. For example, through publicly available marketing and sales material highlighting the business benefits of a certain FOSS product. Furthermore, FOSS vendors could have sales staff visit on site and talk to management directly. In general, it is highly important that there is enough easily accessible marketing material provided by FOSS vendors and projects that allow internal evangelists to pick or develop good arguments. A common mistake, especially by FOSS vendors is to hide valuable information, asuming that it will make potential clients call them, while it actually hurts the back door go-to-market strategy.
2. The still growing momentum and usually positive media coverage helps internal evangelists to advocate FOSS within their organization by refering to success stories.
3. The best argument in favor of FOSS is a working implementation. Given the easy availability and access to FOSS source code, in-house developers can quickly set up a proof-of-concept or even specific simple solutions for internal use.

In general, FOSS might benefit from general organizational changes going on in today’s companies that reward inidividual and bottom-up initiatives. Flat hierarchies are supposed to avoid the problem that the person actually purchasing software is not the person actually using it. Technical staff that enjoys building IT solutions with Free and Open Source software that actually works as advertised will not be frustrated by software purchased due to mesmerizing sales presentations.

FOSS as a movement can actually support companies in becoming more efficient and effective, not only in terms of TCO, but also in terms of reduced staff turnover and more innovation, because it supports a more open and egalitarian corporate culture. Once these two phenomena converge, proprietary vendors will have a hard time matching such a corporate culture and yes, then we won’t have to believe in converting any longer.

I am looking forward to discussing aspects of internal FOSS evangelism at the German OSMB workshop on FOSS as part of an IT strategy taking place Thursday, Jan 29, 11-13:00 together with moderator Heinrich Seeger (Heise) and the other panelists Matthew Langham (Indiginox), Dr. Uwe Schmid (McKinsey), Kristian Raue (Jedox).

Guest post by Peter Froberg, www.freemium.eu.

Most readers of this blog will probably be convinced about the merits of Open Source software, as with the use of open and free principles for other forms of content. This can be seen in the Creative Commons (CC) licence and the like.

A lot of different companies have shown that you can make a profit from developing FOSS. People like Sandro can help them market their products and help create a sustainable business based on FOSS.

Business models based on a CC licenced work are few and far between. Yet it is possible to create a financially sustainable business based on open content. If more companies profit from the huge potential in open content, it would become increasingly pervasive; and would be promoted both by those who believe in the thoughts/ideas behind and those who see it as a means for larger profits. The result would be that far more free and open knowledge and culture would be available to everybody.

One way of making money from openly available knowledge and culture is through a business model called freemium. It consists of giving a product away for free, in order to make money from the sale of complimentary products.

A great example of this business model is www.flatworldknowledge.com that produces CC licenced free college textbooks. Students can download the textbooks for free. The company makes a profit from selling printed books and selling study aids.

So let’s start showing people that open can be a great alternative, both in terms of principles as well as profit.

What do you think? Will this be the future?