When we started our Connect experiment in August, one goal we had for the project was to engage the tens of thousands of technical folks at Oracle in something new. We call it OpenLab, and it’s run like an Open Source project within Oracle. The only thing we ask participants to do is use free time for Connect to avoid any impact on product deliverables.
Rich made the source code for Connect available to anyone who wants to learn a new language (Ruby), show off mad skills and be part of something new that’s used by 30% of the company, not bad for an application that’s spread virally. Plus, we have only two guys writing code for Connect as work, Rich and Anthony, our new guy, so scaling across all the features we want to build and all the enhancements people ask for is impossible.
OpenLab has a few hundred members, working sporadically on Connect bugs and new features. To date, we’ve had a couple features built for Connect, one, a tag cloud for IdeaFactory, that’s made it into the “production” version. The other features will soon be rolled into production too; they are: a Yahoo! widget for Connect, a bookmarking feature and a relation browser for navigating the organization in a new visual way (we’re bored with org charts).
We’ve also had non-technical volunteers. A generous person on one of the documentation teams used free time to write some help documentation for us because UI is never as obvious as you think it is.
Thanks to these people for helping us with the Connect experiment. I hope to publicize more about these efforts as we move forward with Connect and other AppsLab experiments.
You guys might be interested in my recent eBriefing called Ideablogs – Social Idea Management that can be found at my ideahub.biz blog.
You guys might be interested in my recent eBriefing called Ideablogs – Social Idea Management that can be found at my ideahub.biz blog.
I had lunch today with the Jet Propulsion Lab’s CIO. Over lunch, I told him about the work you’re doing with Connect via the OpenLab project concept. He asked why we couldn’t start those types of things here and eventually spread our work throughout NASA…music to my ears.
Just thought you’d like to know that your ideas are getting some traction outside of Oracle. In fact, I may need to pick your brain a bit when I see you next week. – Floyd
I had lunch today with the Jet Propulsion Lab’s CIO. Over lunch, I told him about the work you’re doing with Connect via the OpenLab project concept. He asked why we couldn’t start those types of things here and eventually spread our work throughout NASA…music to my ears.
Just thought you’d like to know that your ideas are getting some traction outside of Oracle. In fact, I may need to pick your brain a bit when I see you next week. – Floyd
Wow, this is great news, especially the part about taking credit for this idea 🙂 We will be around all week for brain-picking and other 1.0 and 2.0 activities.
Wow, this is great news, especially the part about taking credit for this idea 🙂 We will be around all week for brain-picking and other 1.0 and 2.0 activities.