I just read a fascinating post on SiliconValleyWatcher.com where Tom Foremski discusses his idea that Silicon Valley is becoming Media Valley. As he rightly points out, Google, Yahoo, Facebook, etc are all technology-enabled media companies, not pure-play technology companies. He posits that the media center of the US is shifting from NYC to SV.

But what really got my attention was his rather off-hand comment at the end, “Every company is now a media company to a greater degree than ever before. Even if a company makes steel, or napkins. Every company publishes to its customers, staff, partners, neighbors, to itself. It had better master the two-way media technologies that we now have or it will not survive.”

This point particularly hit home as I spend a big part of my day, every day, thinking about communicating with and fostering communication within the Sugar Community. And we use tools that didn’t event exist just a few years ago with forum, blog and Wiki software. Beyond that we are naturally also using the tried and true channels of email and websites to communicate with the community. We even have an advertising medium with SugarExchange where third-party ISV’s pay to list their wares.

The amount of media-like material that we generate as a software company is truly outstanding at times. And it’s not like what we are doing is way out there. Every modern company that wants to be successful has to figure out how to master these new tools and become more like a media company.

Now here is a truly interesting thought. As we look at Sugar 6.0, we are looking at folding in forum, blog and Wiki components into the Sugar application. After all, these are just new communication channels with the customer, right? You want to know what your customers posted in your forums just as much as you want to know what emails they sent you. Clearly sending out email marketing campaigns is a form of media management.

So as the Internet evolves and CRM software evolves with it, is CRM software and media software converging? Interesting thoughts. I’d love to hear yours.

Matt Asay posted that The US Government Bets Big on Open Source. I love what Matt Asay writes and I think he’s poignant. He furthers “the cause” and we’re, as Open Source advocates, fortunate to have him.

So it is rare when I disagree with him - I hardly think of implementing Open Source as “Betting Big”. I frankly feel that all software implementations are a crap-shot if you don’t do due diligence, have an effective roll out plan, and train all the users. But it’s a real big gamble when it’s proprietary software. Who knows what’s in that black box?

One area of improvement I see for our government is in customer service. The Federal Government would really benefit from a Customer Relationship Management System… hmmm, if I only knew of an Open Source CRM system that really scales…. hmmmm….

On a more serious note, I spoke recently with a member of a state government (which will remain nameless) who heard this message loud and clear. They knew their weakness and that the constituents they served deserved better. I’m glad they made a choice to go Sugar. It’s not the first (or second, etc) state to use Sugar either. Which means to me that there’s a lot of opportunity at the local, state, and federal levels.

If you’re a developer in the public-sector, I encourage you to speak up about your use of Open Source and your use of SugarCRM in your organization. I know there are a lot of VARs and System Integrators reading this blog - I encourage you to look for opportunities in the public sector. It’s only going to grow from here, get there now.

Technorati Tags: government, open source

What is the point of Open Source if you don’t contribute?

I just read a post over at TechCrunch about Firefox 3 Beta 3. It wasn’t so much the post, but it was the comments that got me. For example:

Aaron Stannard
February 12th, 2008 at 7:36 pm
I’m about to drop FF like a bad habit and start using IE again.

Webside Ventures
February 12th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
I gave up on FF and switched back to IE7 a while ago. I still use FF when I need to use the plugins, such as Firebug.

Seriously though, this is so obnoxious to me. Firefox is a free browser that’s a project where people dedicate their time to making something freely available. If you don’t like something, get involved! If something doesn’t work the way you want it to, GET INVOLVED!

How many of you want to contribute to the SugarCRM code base? How many of you want to add new features? What are the barriers to entry for you? What would make it easier?

If you’re like me you sometimes find the Module Builder terminology of “Deploy”, “Publish” and “Export” a little fuzzy.

This article summarizes the terminology nicely.

How many of your are tuned in and waiting something good from the blog? Gimme a shout out! If there’s something in particular you want to hear about, let us know. We’ll blog it!

Hey all, I studied long and hard in order to bone up for the “GPLv3 and You” talk I did today. Events like SugarCon are really terrific as “forcing events” to go deep, deep, deep into a topic that may not be top of mind before the event.So, like a lawyer preparing for a jury trial, I made sure I was well-versed, over-prepared, and simply brimming with GPLv3 wisdom. After all, I didn’t have to go this deep since last July when we announced we’ll support GPLv3 beginning with Sugar Community Edition 5.0.

Well, an odd thing happened. Nobody really cared!!! A pall of silence descended over the ballroom when I finished my expertly crafted dissertation and asked, with some trepidation: “Are there any questions?”. Crickets, crickets, and more crickets.

Upon reflection, I guess I shouldn’t be surprised at the response. I think we Sugar types vastly overestimated the importance of GPLv3 to the average developer who, after all, is concerned only with getting their jobs done under tight deadlines back at the shop. Yes, if they ever intend to distribute, er, “convey”, his or her code … well, then they’ll think back to that brilliant dissertation they heard at SugarCon. And even then most really don’t care as GPLv3 makes it easy.

I’ve come to understand that GPLv3 is really “inside baseball” for the vast majority of our community. Lesson learned … on to the next topic.

We’re jamming here today at Sugar HQ, putting the final touches on our presentations and tying up the last of the details for our big gathering next Wednesday.

One of the most useful things we’re doing (besides the plethora of presentations) is an “Ask the Experts” kiosk that will be running throughout the entire convention. We’re staffing the booth with experts from our Engineering, Professional Services, Sales Engineering, and Online teams, so you can talk shop with them about your toughest coding and implementation challenges.

Look for the kiosk in the  vendor showcase area at SugarCon from Wednesday to Friday during the day. Exact hours and schedule will be posted at the start of the show.

SugarCon is really shaping up to be a smash. Take a gander at the keynote addresses we have lined up. Our developer track has some heavy hitters as well. Too many to list here.

SugarCon takes place in San Jose on February the 6th through the 8th. Details here.

We’re very happy to announce that we have passed our 4 millionth download from SugarForge.org! We had announced a contest in a previous blog, and we have combed through the entries to determine a winner. Congratulations go to Xavier Rigal, whose guess came closest to the actual date and time (which was Wednesday, January 9th, 2008 at 10:01 AM if you’re curious).

Now does anyone want to predict when we’ll hit 5 million downloads?

Happy New Year everyone! I hope you had a safe and fun holiday.

Sugar is getting ready to release version 5.0a, a patch release that addresses several issues in the area of emails, Module Builder, and upgrades (among others). The release should be ready in the next day or so, maybe as early as today.

We are also working on a maintenance patch for 4.5.1 for those folks who are running on that release. Look for that a little later in the month.