Be A Revolutionary!
May 18th, 2011 | Published in Google OpenSocial
On May 12, 2011, the OpenSocial community came together for the annual State of the Union event. That day will be remembered as the start of the “Open App Revolution!” (#openapprevolution) A special thank you to Google, who was kind enough to host us at their offices in San Francisco, CA. (Tweet: “Thanks Google & Paul Lindner for hosting the OpenSocial State of the Union #ossotu #OpenSocial #openapprevolution”)
The event featured were a number of prominent speakers at the event discussing what’s coming in OpenSocial 2.0. Monica Wilkenson and Evan Prodromou discussed the value of Activity Streams and the importance of aligning this work with the spec. Several folks from IBM, Ryan Baxter, & Andrew Davis, demonstrated how OpenSocial based applications can be embedded directly in the stream.
Even more exciting was work that is being done to enable apps on mobile devices. Jason Gary, Andy Smith, also from IBM, showed the same OpenSocial application running on seven different mobile devices. Jason & IBM committed to the OpenSocial community to have all the code contributed to Apache Shindig! This is great news for the community and will significantly advance and accelerate apps on mobile! (Tweet: “Can’t wait for Road Trip and Chassis to be in Shindig!!-Thx Jason #openapprevolution”)
Paul Lindner discussed the roadmap for Apache Shindig. Most implementations of OpenSocial are based on Shindig, and his presentation demonstrated how vibrant and active development is on the code base. This was followed by Chris Cole demonstrating the simplicity and power of the advanced features of OpenSocial, including templating and data-pipelining. Matt Null from Survey Gizmo talked about his experience building an application that works on three different containers, Jive, SAP, and iGoogle—with more to come.
We concluded the State of the Union with an engaging panel discussion the focused on the business value of building applications and the economics of app markets. The panel consisted of Chris Kohlhardt from Gliffy, Ryan Nichols from Appirio, Mark Halvorson from Attlasian, Jeff Hotchkiss from Xobni, and was moderated by Robin Bordoli of Jive. You can find many of the slides from the event on the OpenSocial wiki. We'll continue to post the videos as we get them.
2011 – The year of Business Applications
2010 was more than just a growth year for OpenSocial. With the expanded set of consumer targeted social networks, an increase in domain specific social networks, and the adoption of OpenSocial as a platform technology by enterprise vendors, OpenSocial has established itself as the fundamental technology driver of the app based economy. In 2011 we will see application market places from enterprise vendors like Jive, Xobni, and Atlassian—all based on OpenSocial.
Open technology is the foundation of the Web. This is the time for application providers to leverage these platforms and market places to break down the barriers of software acquisition, open up new delivery channels, and change the way business gets done. Innovative companies like Gliffy and Surveygizmo are great examples of the new way to build and deliver powerful business applications.
The time is NOW for an Open App Revolution.
This is YOUR call to arms.
Be A Revolutionary!
Posted by Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundation