Realized that I never posted this write up in CMSWire of a talk that I gave at OpenWeb Vancouver about Open Source Business.

Click on the image to read, transcript after the jump. Thanks to Dee-Ann Leblanc, the author of the great article. I got to meet her and she's really smart and a super neat lady!

Update 4/8: Had a great two hour chat with the organizers, who are modifying the design to give the woman a real identity. The worst part of this situation was not the design, it was the members of our community who devolved into name calling and harassment. (Kind of proves the point that this is not a community whose every member is welcoming.)

I'll post a more in-depth summary on this after the organizers post their upcoming, and very thoughtful, blog post on the matter.

Update: I'm working out a time to chat with the organizers of the event, who reached out to me and assured me that they meant nothing by it. I'm excited to get to continue this dialogue. While I don't presuppose to be the spokesperson for any person or group, I do feel like the opportunity to talk about sexism honestly is a a rare one.

I do want to note that this is not on *them*. There were just nice enough to reach out to try to fix their small part. This is a community problem, an industry wide problem. As the saying goes:

Sexism is a social disease.

Maybe we can even continue this conversation at the event itself...? I smell a presentation. :-)

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Okay, so the lack of women in tech is pretty well known. The lack of women in open source is even worse. And women in Drupal? Pretty embarrassing. Only about 7% of the accounts on Drupal.org belong to women! So. Being a woman who has worked full time in Drupal for over three years makes me feel like I can call it out when I see something that may be contributing to the problem.

These slides are from a talk I gave at DrupalCon in Washington DC on March 6th, 2009. The basic gist is applying the technical principles of Open Source to business practices. It was really fun to give, and the audience was full of super smart, thoughtful people. The discussion after the talk was cool, and it was great to meet new OS biz buddies as well. Can't wait to expand on this!

So. I have been working on a cool new thing for a year now, and I finally get to talk about it. Whee!!

It's a new company launching an awesome product. (I'll be the President + COO.) We couldn't agree on a Codename for the company, so we... uh... incorporated as "Codename Enterprises". Cheeky, right? ;-)

Here's an overview of what we're doing:

Codename Enterprises is creating an open social publishing platform allowing ordinary people, companies and organizations to create extraordinary websites. The company is led by Ed Sussman, former President of Mansueto Digital (where he ran Inc.com + FastCompany.com among others), and is a partnership between Lullabot (the company I run as Managing Partner) and Bond Art + Science (an awesome usability company with amazing people).

The platform will provide a simple way for average users to create dynamic, feature rich websites that previously required extensive work by developers. The product will offer a user-friendly drag-and-drop interface along with easy-to-use design tools. The product leverages the popular open source Drupal framework, and will be entirely free from lock-down. Users will be able to choose between functionality such as wikis, media sharing, social networking and social publishing. Pretty exciting, right?

This will be built on Drupal. One of my passions is running a business built on open source software, and I am super-excited to get to start up a new company based on the open principles that we've used to run Lullabot.

The platform will be super-empowering, and always have a free version. The product will always be open - users will own their data - unlike, say, Facebook, where your friends are not "owned" by you - or like when you pay a small web design company to make your website but they control the access instead of you. Also, open source is inherently a meritocracy, and it feels good to be in a workplace where things work the same way.

From a personal standpoint, I am looking forward to getting to be a part of a product that is going to empower so many people. From a professional standpoint, I am excited to work to build a platform that will benefit so many other businesses (both development shops, who will use this as a starting point from which to build kick-ass websites, and those small businesses who will now be able to have free or lower-cost dynamic websites).

A lot of what's hit the press so far is about our CEO, as well as some about the general launch. Here are some resources to read more about it:

*The big (rushed) announcement
*My colleage Jeff Eaton's post
(A great technical overview)
*Our new CEO's explanation of why we are doing it now
(In the midst of all this financial turmoil)
*A bit in MediaBistro
*A gossip piece in Valleywag
(not truth - the truth is in the comments, but apparently they care, which must be a good sign)
*Our entry on CrunchBase
(A company tracking site)

I'll post again when we start tracking for Beta invites, which will be shortly. Exciting times are ahead!

An Delicious Analogy for Open Source

At it’s most basic, open source is a set of values that surround software, most importantly that everyone has access, for free, to the source (core) code. Also importantly, open source encourages anyone that uses open source code to contribute back for the greater good of the project.

I run an Open Source bakery. Let’s call it “This is How We Roll”. I sell the most delicious cookies, cakes, pastries and breads. Since it is an Open Source bakery, I attach the recipe to each treat that I sell. I know that I add a little extra love to each item, so I am not afraid to share the recipes. I have excellent service, the cutest little shop, and the smell of sweets wafts out on to the street all day long and tempts people to come in. I consider giving away my recipes to be another value added service that I give to my customers.

Sally, a long time customer of mine, thinks that she can make better breads that I can. She opens up a shop down the street and calls it “BreadHead”. Sally takes all of my best bread recipes, and uses them in her shop. She sells her breads for a bit less than mine, but has less customer service as well. Soon, she’s got a pretty good thing going selling good breads for less, ahem, dough. Sally even comes up with a couple of great new bread recipes on her own, which she shares (along with the original recipes) in the spirit of Open Source. I particularly enjoy her challah bread, so I use her recipe in my store, using premium ingredients and charging a bit more for my level of customer.

Meanwhile, another customer of mine, Angie, comes in and suggests I start using coconut in the chocolate cupcake frosting, and DeWayne suggests that I add almonds to the banana cream puffs. I test out both recipes, and DeWayne’s suggestion is amazing! I start selling it, and I have customers lining up down the block. I call this recipe “Banana Cream Puffs, Version 2.0”.

My bakery selection just got richer and more robust, and DeWayne has gained a reputation as a great recipe writer. Since I used DeWayne’s suggestion to alter the basic recipe, DeWayne is now a “Core Contributor” - a highly respected place to be.

The original recipe I wrote was given away for free, and no one got paid to make it better. However, lots of people benefited - Sally is making good money over at “BreadHead”; my bakery, “This is How We Roll” has become more popular and is now seen as a market leader; and DeWayne is now a respected authority in almonds and is making great money as a freelance recipe writer.

There you have it - Open Source in a, well, nutshell. A simple analogy, but you get the idea.

(Note: This analogy doesn’t tackle many of the licenses that can be tacked onto Open Source code: GPL, MIT, CC, etc. These make this more complex.)