The importance of open online courses at OSCON 2014 Open source software is hugely important to us here at edX, since it's what we do all day, every day. Two weeks ago, the O'Reilly company hosted their annual OSCON convention in Portland, Oregon—a convention focused on open source software. Of course, we had to be there. So, my edX colleague James Tauber and I packed our bags and headed to Oregon for a week of learning and teaching to meet wonderful people, and to get excited about open source. We even gave a presentation about edX! I got to talk to a lot of different people, and many of them hadn't yet heard about edX, nor did they know much about MOOCs in general. Most people were interested in the course content available at edx.org. In addition to having conversations in the hallways, we also did more structured networking events. Finally, on the last day of the convention, James and I gave a presentation about Open edX: what it is, how it works, and how the community can get involved.
Four tips on how to sell open source software In the last 15 years of my career I have worked at several open source software companies, each with its own unique approach to software delivery, packaging, branding, and sales. Two things have become clear to me: There is no single best way to build a successful business around an open source software solutionSuccess depends on an organization’s commitment to building real-world solutions and its readiness to deliver genuinely valuable services that help customers to be successful with the solutions. Without genuinely valuable services for your customer, you have no revenue. The following are four specific insights that are tied to selling and marketing open source software. 1) Selling open source software is actually about selling a meaningful solution bundle Ultimately, selling an open source software solution is not about selling the software. In my years in open source, I've seen many different business models emerge. Thus, my task was to sell services. Is this scalable? Coda
5 best practices for community managers The role of community managers continues to evolve. I started to realize this after attending my first Community Leadership Summit earlier this year. My biggest take-away from it? Community management is an investment and its value is increasing. Heads up to employers: buy, buy, buy, and then invest some more. "Every year, the art and science of community management is becoming more predictable," said Jono Bacon, the Community Leadership Summit 2013 lead organizer. This year on Opensource.com, we interviewed several open source experts who have tremendous community management talent and experience: Greg DeKoenigsberg from Eucalyptus, John Mertic from SugarCRM, and Dave Stokes from MySQL. As a community manager myself, I reflected on what I learned this year at Opensource.com, particularly as we launched, evolved, and expanded our Community Moderator program. 5 best practices for community managers Avoid burnout—You've got to learn how to turn it off, unplug, and get offline.