Adventures in home working

Open source has always been difficult at Microsoft, they’ve struggled with how to use its obvious value as a development and delivery model, but the SharePoint podcasting kit seems to be a great example of how to do it right. 

Although SharePoint itself is unlikely to ever be Open Source there’s great value in stimulating an Open Source culture around developing on top of the platform.  Podcasting is a good example because although SharePoint provides some good plumbing in the form of support for taking a document library of media files and surfacing this as an RSS feeds with enclosures, it didn’t have a polished solution.  The same can be said for most of the SharePoint “applications”, great platform - ok solution.  If you’re interested in Podcasting, this is definitely worth checking out, but there’s much more for SharePoint going on at Codeplex.

What Can You Do With Podcasting Kit for SharePoint (PKS)?:

• Listen and watch audio/video podcasts, anywhere on your PC or mobile device (Zune, SmartPhone, or any podcasting device)
• Share content by producing your own audio/video podcasts and publish them on PKS on your own.
• Connect and engage with podcasters via your integrated instant messaging program
• Find the most relevant content using the five star rating system, tag cloud, search engine and provide your feedback via comments.
• Get automatic podcast updates by subscribing to RSS feeds fully compatible with Zune and other podcasting devices
  • Simple RSS feed based on a defined podcast series
  • Simple RSS feed based on a person
  • Dynamic RSS feed based on search results
• Play podcasts in real-time using Microsoft® Silverlight™ and progressive playback
• Retrieve instant ROI and metrics with the ability to track the number of podcasts downloaded and/or viewed, instant feedback via rating system and comments, and subscribers via the RSS feed
• Access the richness of SharePoint to extend the solution: workflows, community sub-sites, access rights, editorial and more
• Customize your own PKS User Experience

This blog represents my own - pretty feeble - attempt to work in the open, sharing my ideas with the broader community and getting feedback and insights along the way.  I don’t worry about who’s reading it - customers, competitors etc because I trust that the benefits are greater than the risks and that what I share I am sharing with the community for the greater good.  However I don’t get to share anywhere near as much as I would like to.

In fact I think that CSC generally does way too much work behind closed doors because of some misguided view that this work somehow provides us with competitive advantage by being private.  In fact I think the opposite is true.

The vast majority of the development activity I am involved in is of commodity tools and processes that would be best developed with a community of like minded individuals, customers, suppliers and even competitors.   Customers don’t contract with CSC to get hold of these carefully guarded documents, rather they are partnering with us to get access to trusted advise, rapid low risk delivery and managed operations.

For example what competitive advantage comes from our standard operating system configurations, our reference architectures or our decision support material and technology positions, none/very little in my view. 

In fact I think we and our customers would benefit from these being developed in a more open way, with full input from customer experts, suppliers and others.  The results would be more authoritative and accurate and we would get more visibility and be seen as providing more thought leadership.

Blogs are a first step in becoming more open and participative within the community, but lets be clear they are tiny steps and I look forward to much bolder steps as we grow, taking my inspiration from enterprises that are taking open source software principles and embedding them into their core values.