This is a proposal for a talk that I'd love to give. If you'd love to have me present this at your conference, please get in touch. If you'd like to attend this talk, please +1 it in the comments.
Versions of this talk have been presented at:
Open-Source is a powerful force that when utilized allows for abundant collaboration of shared goals in an unfathomable scale. The good news is, it's easily accessible to everyone - be it a new startup, out-sourcing portions of your existing business, or even using it to revolutionize an industry or overthrow a nation. It's no longer a question of how can I squash others so I can win, but rather how can we all win together? To undergo this transition, some other questions may come up like what are the benefits of out-sourcing portions of my work and how can I do it? or how can I leverage open-collaboration while still maintaining sustainability and profitability? or how far can we take all of this? there's surely many more possibilities and opportunities waiting to be unlocked? They're all great questions to ask, and once it's clicked, there's only looking forward. The time for open-collaboration has come, and now is the time to jump on-board.
Open-Collaboration turns out to be our nature [1]. The world wide web was created under this principle - that all information should be open and accessible to everyone [2] - the only thing is, is that it is becoming ever more relevant and important [3] - even government, research, and medical organisations which are traditionally closed are now making the move to open-source their data [5], a move that empowers leagues of hackers to create solutions that traditional systems just simply weren't able to solve before [6] but most interesting are the innovations happening when the data and solutions aren't made public - where revolutions against the norm happened - where the people worked around the closed-source limitations by crowd-sourcing the data and solutions themselves deprecating the old closed solutions and creating entirely new areas of innovation - like wikipedia, reverse-engineering, protein folding, disaster relief maps [7], new forms of dance, music and art [4] [8], or even providing completely paralyzed people the ability to communicate again for less than $100 [9], or even the entire blueprints to build an entire civilisation yourself [10].
It's no longer about what I can do, but about what we can together [11]. There is much greater power in numbers, than yourself alone, and by open-sourcing your mind, your talent, your ideas, your work - you're able tap into this abundant power rather than fighting and competing with it alone.
This raises worthwhile questions:
- How do you get paid for this?
- How can you leverage this force in your work, your business?
- How do you get started with these principles?
- What tools are available and what steps are required to create sustainable open-source businesses?
- And if you do apply these principles, what changes will you start to see in your life, your thinking?
- What new opportunities will now become available to you?
These are all essential questions to ask and will be covered in the talk. It's time to jump onboard, we'll see you there.
- RSA Animate - Drive: The surprising truth about what motivates us
- Tim Berners-Lee on the next web
- Tim Berners-Lee: The year the open data went worldwide
- Chris Anderson: How web video powers global innovation
- Beth Noveck: Demand a more open-source government
- Jennifer Pahlka: Coding a better government
- Lalitesh Katragadda: Making maps to fight disaster, build economies
- Everything I know about being open-source hacker I learned from indie hip hop - Corey Donohoe
- Mick Ebeling: The invention that unlocked a locked-in artist
- Marcin Jakubowski: Open-sourced blueprints for civilisation
- Joseph Nye on global power shifts