In his first post on his new blog at BMC Software by William Hurley (A.K.A. Whurley) wrote of a metaphor for the open source community called “Opensville”, and alluded to how its a place where everybody wants to hang out but nobody wants to live because socially and economically, it’s straining. This discussion has boomed over the last few days, and has been generating some excellent commentary on Open Source communities.

Dave Rappo, a good friend of mine, has a project which has the primary objective of taking some of the strain off open source project managers as well as developers who wish to contribute to open source initiatives. This initiative uses monetary incentives in the form of “bounties”, placed on tasks and feature requests, by the users who request them. Essentially, he’s created a streamlined workflow for the concept of “put your money where your mouth is”.

This project is appropriately named Bounty Source.

Bountysource itself is a Ruby on Rails application, coded by co-founder Warren Konkel (in his free time no less…he’s a full time contractor for the famed Revolution Health Group). Another very interesting part of the model is that Bounty Source, which acts as an integrated project management and source control tool (similar to Trac and SourceForge), is itself driven by the BountySource incentive model, and portions of it are open source (the SVN browser, for example). That is to say, the tools used to make BountySource what it is are available to have bounties and feature requests placed on them. Then, like any of the projects that they host, a developer can come through, choose a task, complete it and submit it for review. Upon approval, the bounty is released to the developer.

Bounties vary in size because they are created by users who want to see a feature included. If they want to see the feature really really bad, and can afford it, they could place a rather sizable bounty on it. Also utilizing the power of strength in numbers, multiple people can contribute to the same bounty. So if someone else wants the same feature you do, they can chip in (less, same, or more than you) towards the total value of the task.

This realistic monetization of tasks takes away a large amount of the dissent in the OS community, where projects stagnate due to a lack of resources, or developers and project managers get frustrated about the number of feature requests with no “contribute back” factor. Many open source USERS forget that OS is a two way street. Bountysource goes out of its way to remind people, and lets them contribute in a real tangible way.

One of the latest bounties posted to BountySource actually stemmed form a conversation Dave and I had in the car yesterday, regarding the lack of Firefox extension support in Camino. Evidently, someone had just posted a ~$200 bounty on creating a fork of the Camino project that had a single customization: enable middle-clicking on tabs to close them. THAT WAS IT.
Someone wanted this feature SO BADLY that they were willing to pony up 200 bucks. Dave and I weren’t ready to drop $200 on a single feature, but we agreed that we’d switch to Camino for speed and stability if it supported XUL/Extensions.

So Dave created a bounty for Firefox extensions and addons for Camino within the same project, dubbed “Alternative Camino“. This bounty calls for Firefox 2.0 Extension support (at a minimum) in Camino. I’ve dropped $10 of my own money (as did Warren) on this feature request, and if you’re a mac user frustrated with the general instability of Firefox (not unusable instability…its just not Camino) but stick with Firefox for plugins…drop a couple of bucks and see if we can’t get this bounty fulfilled.

And while you’re at BountySource, check out some of the many (372) projects that they do host, and see if you want to ask for anything, or take on a challenge to collect a bounty yourself.

Tags: whurley, david rappo, warren konkel, opensville, bounty source, communities, opensource, incentive, camino, camino + firefox

I’ve been spending a lot of time going to and organizing meetups as I gather information, resources, and recruits for Independents Hall. I spend a good amount of time meeting people and DOING pitches (I don’t cognizantly pitch anymore…it’s become a bi-product of conversation). What I HAVEN’T done is been able to spend a ton of time listening to other peoples’ ideas and providing ideas and input on them.

This past week I got to participate in my first “Purple Cow Brainstorming Circle”. The Purple Cow, by Seth Godin, inspired the event. Seth is known as a “change agent”, and it makes sense to me that his type of thinking would inspire this type of event. This local group is organized by Mimi Somsanith and Jen Antonio-Lim, both of whom I met a few weeks back at CreativeCamp.

So what is a Purple Cow Brainstorming Circle? We’ll…it goes like this:
Each participant gets 3 minutes to pitch an idea. At the end of the pitch they cite 3 things that they need in order to reach the goal of the pitch, as well as 3 skills that they have, as an individual, to offer back to the group. Then there is a 3 minute Q&A session. And on to the next pitch-er. Once everyone has gone, the entire group gets to spend time talking with each other, extending conversations from ideas that came to them during the pitch-sessions. The ideas, which have been written down and posted on the wall by the moderators, also provide a venue for comments from people, and even a place to stick your business card if you want to help the person achieve their idea!

This “Idea-Pitch Open Mic night” allows for a rapid-fire version of what I’ve seen go on at the Barcamps I’ve attended. Ideas fly back and forth, but without a structure…one discussion may get stomped by another, and that original idea may get lost into an abyss of good ideas. This lets everyone get their stuff out, really fast, and save the “good stuff” (some may view it as side conversation or cruft…but thats where the real value in these events is) for last.

At any rate, the event was a TON of fun. I met some cool people who were totally into Independents Hall, and got a chance to hear some other peoples’ good ideas. It’s so great to see that other people are cranking out good ideas here in Philly, and a venue like the PC Brainstorming Circle encourages people to follow through on them.

I may suggest that we try some of the rapid-fire Idea Pitch stuff at Junto next week, depending on who shows up and where the conversation goes. I encourage people to check it out and come visit the next one (I’ll post the date as soon as I know about it), and if you’re not in Philly, try out the format in your city!

Technorati Tags: conference, conversations, Independents Hall, purple cow, seth godin

was a whole lot of fun. Thanks to Ken Ehrman and Bart Mroz for inviting me onto their new show, Philly TiP, and grilling me on coworking and independents hall. If you haven’t heard my presentation to date, this is the closest to something recorded that I’ve had. At some point in the future, I hope to have a recorded session of one of my “pitches” that people can listen to/watch, since I don’t believe in slides.

Anyway….if you’ve got 35 minutes to give up to listen to me jabber on with Ken and Bart, by all means…give my PhillyTip interview a listen.

Tags: coworking, independents hall, podcast, philadelphia, Philly TiP, Ken Ehrman, Bart Mroz

I just got back from an afternoon driving an Audi A4 2.0T Quattro, thanks to Philly Car Share adding 2 new A4s to their fleet, one of which is in my neighborhood.

Woah. Wait a second. A car share service let me take out a $35-40,000 sports car? You betcha. Not only that, I was one of the first people to drive the car, since when I got in it the odometer had less than 180 miles on it. Pretty sick. How much did it cost me? About $60 for the day. That included the car for 8 hours, gas for 100 miles worth of driving, and of course, zero deductible insurance.

Sound too good to be true? It’s not. This is the power of shared resources. By splitting up a set of resources among a larger set of users, the cost-per-user comes down…a lot. And since PhillyCar is not-for-profit, all of the money they make beyond paying the payments on the cars goes right back into buying more, nicer cars for the fleet. And since they’ve recently added some 5-speed manual Miatas, these new A4s, and a bunch of others, they must be doing it right.

The success of this model can also be attributed to the community that they’ve generated around their product and their service. By holding regular “bring a friend” meetups and providing referral incentives, they’ve increased their membership by numbers that I can only imagine. By creating a feeling of appreciation for the other car-share members, the drivers feel a real human connection with other car-share drivers on the road. Allow me to illustrate:

Last week I went to Ikea and the laundromat to buy some large furniture and clean my clothes (respectively). So, we took out one of the Tacoma Pickups to ease transport of the Ikea schwag. At the laundromat, as I was leaving, a girl pulled up in a car-share Mini Cooper convertible. Both cars had car-share logos on the side and on the bumper plates, so when we looked at each other, we both smiled, nodded, and knew that we were part of something really cool.

Never mind ecologically sound, which car-sharing is. Never mind financially smart, which car-sharing is. But the way Philly Car Share has structured themselves, it’s so much more.

I’m so in love with the coworking model because it follows so many of the same examples set by Philly Car Share (and other car sharing services, though I can’t speak for what I don’t use. But Chris and Tara do love their zipcar). By sharing resources that we individually couldn’t afford (think professional conference room amenities instead of turbo sports cars), we’re enabling each other to do our jobs better, with lower overhead, and higher levels of appreciation for each other’s participation. It’s win-win-win.

It’s my hope that as we work to build up Independents Hall and open the space that we’re gunning for (well, that I’m gunning for, at least), I can get Philly Car Share folks to share some of their experiences with building the community that, in my humble opinion, is slowly changing the way people get around (and out of) the city of Philadelphia. Ideally, I’d love to work some kind of partnership where we have a mutual exchange of community members. Our markets overlap in a huge way. If we were able to create a way to cross promote our services, that would be an incredible, and most importantly, sustainable, relationship. And thats the stuff that dreams are made of.

If you live in Philly and aren’t a member of Philly Car Share, do it today. If you’re a student, they waive the monthly retainer, which rocks. Drop my name (Alex Hillman) on the referral form if you want, I won’t complain and it will help them know where you found out about them from. Even if you have a car in the city (which is wasteful on all accounts unless you drive it every single day) sign up to have a fleet of backup cars at your beckon call, or the occasional sports car for client meetings/showing off around town. It’s win-win-win.

If you love the sound of these communities, then you should already be signed up on the Independents Hall mailing list and keeping up with our progress. If you’re outside of the Philadelphia area, then check out the coworking wiki to see if there’s already a space near you, or if there’s a chance to start your own community and change the way you look at using resources.

Technorati Tags: Community, coworking, philadelphia, Philly Car Share, Independents Hall