On Free Culture

I love free.  I blog about it; I tweet about it; I consume it; I produce it.

Free Culture is a difficult concept for some to understand, primarily because we have been born and raised in a capitalist society where few things in life are truly free, both in terms of their monetary cost and our ability to influence or control them. When you’re born and raised into this kind of environment — one of disempowerment — powerlessness becomes normal, to the point where we are not even cognisant of the limitations that are placed on our freedom.

Capitalism is merely a familiar frame of reference, but through indoctrination our consumerist personality becomes forged — along with an accompanying perception of reality that people are often unable to let go of in order to see things differently.

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Posted in: collaboration,free culture,On...,open source,social transformation,software

Should the Canadian Government Pull the Plug on WebEx?

Last month I attended the O'Reilly Gov 2.0 Conference from the comfort of my desk. It brought together attendees from around the world using WebEx, a web conferencing technology that includes audio and video conferencing, desktop sharing, and other valuable communication and collaboration features.

Later this week, I'll be attending a meeting with colleagues in another province.  It won't involve the discussion or exchange of any protected, classified, or otherwise sensitive information.  But what if it did?

All of the major web conferencing services including those offered by WebEx, Citrix, eBLVD, and GoToMeeting are hosted in the United States. All data exchange over these platforms utilizes American Internet infrastructure, and therefore any information residing on those servers or passing through those networks is subject to monitoring, interception and collection under the terms of the Patriot Act.

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Posted in: Government of Canada,Patriot Act,privacy

Company Relationship Management (cRM) using Social Media

Customer relationship management (CRM) is strategy whereby companies use technology

"...to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales related activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support. The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new customers, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former customers back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and customer service."¹

It begs the question: why can't consumers use technology to maintain ties and improve their experiences with the companies they buy from?  Why can't you use social media to nurture your relationship with a company, improve the quality of service and support you receive, and entice them to do what they can to keep you as a customer?  Wouldn't it be nice to get the services and products you really want, just the way you want them?

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Posted in: Company Relationship Management,Koodo,mobile

Cloud Computing in Simple Terms

Have you heard this term being bandied around in your office or in the media, but don't have a good grasp of what it really means? This article might make the truly hardcore übergeeks wince, but then it's not being written for them.  I'd like to help you get a grasp of the concept: a foundation to build a better understanding on.

The term "cloud computing" is an abstraction — a term that describes a complex combination of technologies using a readily understandable mental image — but as comparisons go, I think it's a good one.

When I think of the nature of clouds, a number of defining characteristics come to mind — their mobility, variability in size and variety of shape.  These can be also easily applied to computing.

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Posted in: cloud computing,In Simple Terms,privacy,technology

Open Formats and Open Source for Better Government

The Government of Canada is currently reliant on proprietary file formats and proprietary software applications, which lock it into a licensing bind with a single software manufacturer — Microsoft.  There is not only a question of cost — as we pay a monopoly corporation for per-seat licenses to run software that already dominates the market — but more importantly, there is the question of future access to our own data.  In this post, I'd like to share my thoughts on both issues.

Before you dismiss the idea of a major institution losing access to its stored data as ludicrous, consider this quote from Natalie Ceeney, chief executive of the UK National Archives:

"If you put paper on shelves, it's pretty certain it is going to be there in a hundred years. If you stored something on a floppy disc just three or four years ago [2003-04], you'd have a hard time finding a modern computer capable of opening it. Digital information is in fact inherently far more ephemeral than paper. The pace of software and hardware developments means we are living in the world of a ticking time bomb when it comes to digital preservation."

The UK National Archives includes a collection of 900 years of written material. As of 2007 they estimated that 580 terabytes of their data (the equivalent of 580,000 encyclopedias) was stored in file formats which have since become extinct.

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Posted in: government,Government of Canada,open formats,open source