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Who says open source is all about code and hackathons have to stick to computer hacking? Code Across America is a different kind of open source community, and it came together on February 25, 2012. This effort was part of civic innovation week (February 24-March 4), where over a dozen cities in the United States have citizens organizing to improve their cities and communities. Simultaneous events included hackathons, unconferences, meet-ups, and Code for America ’brigades’ deploying existing open source applications. This is a story about building community knowledge the open source way, using the open source platform LocalWiki. » Read more

Recently I was in Berlin at OKCon organized by the Open Knowledge Foundation, and I must say it was a great event loaded with presentations and workshops; 10 hours a day, for two straight days, more than 50 sessions on 5 tracks on open data, open education, open economy and much more. Below, I’ve summarized some of the sessions I attended and found worth mentioning. » Read more

Over the past few weeks, the world has been consuming the newest set of revelations via WikiLeaks. The uproar caused by the release of the first set of diplomatic cables from a batch of 251,000 in WikiLeaks' possession is enough to take your breath away.

A disclaimer: in this post it is not my intention to analyze the positive or negative consequences of the actions of the WikiLeaks organization—there is plenty of that coverage, just check your favorite news reader every five minutes or so to see the latest. » Read more

Wikipedia is among the world's most widely recognized examples of mass collaboration. Most people also know Wikipedia is open for anyone to contribute. But what does open mean? What are the rules? Who writes them? And how do they solve inevitable disputes over content?
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Community, collaboration, and meritocracy are a few of the principles of the open source way highlighted in the most recent McKinsey Quarterly report, “Clouds, big data, and smart assets: Ten tech-enabled business trends to watch.” » Read more

Last week, my friend Greg DeKoenigsberg posted an article about Jaron Lanier's negative comments regarding open textbooks. At almost very same time, I happened to stumble upon an article Jaron wrote back in 2006 criticizing Wikipedia. » Read more