Happy New Year, OpenSocial!!
January 5th, 2011 | Published in Google OpenSocial
I'd like to congratulate the OpenSocial community on an incredible 2010! Even though it seemd to fly by, it's worth taking a quick look back at all the things, that, as a community, we were able to accomplish in 2010.
Not just one release, but two!
In 2010, we published OpenSocial 1.0, which represented a significant step in maturing and stabilizing the specification and programming model. In November, 1.1 was released. This included new capabilities for inter-gadget communication (pub/sub), which is a major requirement for enterprise vendors who are adopting OpenSocial. 1.1 also included the first extension--the OpenSocial WAP Specification.
New Board Members & Officers
During 2010, the Board of Directors appointed a completely new set of officers. One of the telltale signs of a strong and vibrant organization, especially one that consists of volunteers, is it's ability to gracefully handle change. Kudos to the OpenSocial Board and Officers (present company excepted) for handling this with grace and professionalism. During this transition, IBM and Jive Software joined OpenSocial's Board. Because they are Corporate Designators, these companies, along with the three founding members, Yahoo!, Google, and MySpace, have made a financial commitment to OpenSocial. Combined with their excellent technical resources that work on advancing the specification and, in many cases, open source code, OpenSocial is positioned to remain a key Internet technology for years to come.
Your Vote, Your Voice 2010
In 2010, we had privilege of electing two Community representatives, Paul Lindner and Mark Halvorson, to OpenSocial's Board. Both of these gentlemen continue to set the bar very high for their commitment to OpenSocial and involvement in our community. Paul's leadership of Apache Shindig ensures that there is a proven, open source implementation of OpenSocial available to all. Mark Halvorson has worked to get our Web presence organized by working with Atlassian to host OpenSocial's new Wiki. While we are not quite done migrating this over yet, this is a significant step forward for the community as it provides a more secure and stable infrastructure. Thanks to both Paul and Mark for all of their hard work in 2010.
Can you say OpenSocial in three languages?
Thanks to Shindig, OpenSocial has long been available in PHP and Java. In 2010, MySpace announced plans to contribute a significant portion of their .Net infrastructure to open source. This will provide another implementation language for OpenSocial and, hopefully, will open up an avenue for a new set of developers. Way to go MySpace!
The year of the enterprise
In 2008, OpenSocial exploded in popularity and adoption in consumer facing social networks. In 2010, a similar explosion occurred among enterprise vendors. The year started with the publication of the Enterprise OpenSocial Whitepaper. At Google IO, Atlassian, Cisco, IBM, and Jive Software, presented a technical session on how OpenSocial is a key underlying technology in their Enterprise offerings. The year culminated with the first ever Enterprise Interop event. Participants from Appirio, Atlassian, Cisco, IBM, Jive Software, Magento, Oracle, PayPal, SAP and others worked together to get a variety of applications running on multiple containers. While this event illustrated to us that we still have work to do to attain the interoperability that we want, overall, it was a huge success. We were able to demonstrate several applications running in multiple containers unchanged. More importantly, we were able to continue the momentum in collectively proving OpenSocial ready for the Enterprise.
Growing our community
One of the great things about an open community is getting the opportunity to work with a diverse set of people across a broad spectrum of industries. There's literally no limit to the energy and ideas that come from working together. This was no more evident than in two great community events this year, the OpenSocial State of the Union, and the OpenSocial Europe/OpenSocial in Education Summit. Thank you again to MySpace and SURFnet for organizing and hosting these events.
Welcome 2011!
With a year like 2010 behind us, it would be easy to sit back and relax. Hardly! Work is already underway defining and implementing OpenSocial 2.0. We've got an aggressive schedule and are targeting to have an implementor's draft at the end of Q1/2011.
If 2010 was "the year of the Enterprise", we've got to make 2011 "the year of interop". Collectively, we'll need to improve interoperability of OpenSocial applications. Part of this will be continuing to mature the specification, but it will also mean more interoperability events--and opportunities for you to get involved.
Your Vote, Your Voice: 2011
Finally, this is a reminder that we'll start 2011 off with elections for the Community Representative to the OpenSocial Foundation Board of Directors. Nominations are open until January 9th.
Given there's been so much accomplished in 2010, I'm sure I've failed to mention something. I guess that's what comments & replies are for! While I couldn't possibly name everyone that's working hard to make OpenSocial a success, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation, and the Community--Thank you, and congratulations on a great 2010!
Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundation
The Web is better when it's OpenSocial!
Not just one release, but two!
In 2010, we published OpenSocial 1.0, which represented a significant step in maturing and stabilizing the specification and programming model. In November, 1.1 was released. This included new capabilities for inter-gadget communication (pub/sub), which is a major requirement for enterprise vendors who are adopting OpenSocial. 1.1 also included the first extension--the OpenSocial WAP Specification.
New Board Members & Officers
During 2010, the Board of Directors appointed a completely new set of officers. One of the telltale signs of a strong and vibrant organization, especially one that consists of volunteers, is it's ability to gracefully handle change. Kudos to the OpenSocial Board and Officers (present company excepted) for handling this with grace and professionalism. During this transition, IBM and Jive Software joined OpenSocial's Board. Because they are Corporate Designators, these companies, along with the three founding members, Yahoo!, Google, and MySpace, have made a financial commitment to OpenSocial. Combined with their excellent technical resources that work on advancing the specification and, in many cases, open source code, OpenSocial is positioned to remain a key Internet technology for years to come.
Your Vote, Your Voice 2010
In 2010, we had privilege of electing two Community representatives, Paul Lindner and Mark Halvorson, to OpenSocial's Board. Both of these gentlemen continue to set the bar very high for their commitment to OpenSocial and involvement in our community. Paul's leadership of Apache Shindig ensures that there is a proven, open source implementation of OpenSocial available to all. Mark Halvorson has worked to get our Web presence organized by working with Atlassian to host OpenSocial's new Wiki. While we are not quite done migrating this over yet, this is a significant step forward for the community as it provides a more secure and stable infrastructure. Thanks to both Paul and Mark for all of their hard work in 2010.
Can you say OpenSocial in three languages?
Thanks to Shindig, OpenSocial has long been available in PHP and Java. In 2010, MySpace announced plans to contribute a significant portion of their .Net infrastructure to open source. This will provide another implementation language for OpenSocial and, hopefully, will open up an avenue for a new set of developers. Way to go MySpace!
The year of the enterprise
In 2008, OpenSocial exploded in popularity and adoption in consumer facing social networks. In 2010, a similar explosion occurred among enterprise vendors. The year started with the publication of the Enterprise OpenSocial Whitepaper. At Google IO, Atlassian, Cisco, IBM, and Jive Software, presented a technical session on how OpenSocial is a key underlying technology in their Enterprise offerings. The year culminated with the first ever Enterprise Interop event. Participants from Appirio, Atlassian, Cisco, IBM, Jive Software, Magento, Oracle, PayPal, SAP and others worked together to get a variety of applications running on multiple containers. While this event illustrated to us that we still have work to do to attain the interoperability that we want, overall, it was a huge success. We were able to demonstrate several applications running in multiple containers unchanged. More importantly, we were able to continue the momentum in collectively proving OpenSocial ready for the Enterprise.
Growing our community
One of the great things about an open community is getting the opportunity to work with a diverse set of people across a broad spectrum of industries. There's literally no limit to the energy and ideas that come from working together. This was no more evident than in two great community events this year, the OpenSocial State of the Union, and the OpenSocial Europe/OpenSocial in Education Summit. Thank you again to MySpace and SURFnet for organizing and hosting these events.
Welcome 2011!
With a year like 2010 behind us, it would be easy to sit back and relax. Hardly! Work is already underway defining and implementing OpenSocial 2.0. We've got an aggressive schedule and are targeting to have an implementor's draft at the end of Q1/2011.
If 2010 was "the year of the Enterprise", we've got to make 2011 "the year of interop". Collectively, we'll need to improve interoperability of OpenSocial applications. Part of this will be continuing to mature the specification, but it will also mean more interoperability events--and opportunities for you to get involved.
Your Vote, Your Voice: 2011
Finally, this is a reminder that we'll start 2011 off with elections for the Community Representative to the OpenSocial Foundation Board of Directors. Nominations are open until January 9th.
Given there's been so much accomplished in 2010, I'm sure I've failed to mention something. I guess that's what comments & replies are for! While I couldn't possibly name everyone that's working hard to make OpenSocial a success, on behalf of the OpenSocial Foundation, and the Community--Thank you, and congratulations on a great 2010!
Mark Weitzel, President, OpenSocial Foundation
The Web is better when it's OpenSocial!