In the adult world, the default is email. If nine out of ten people adopt the new technology and one keeps using email, everyone has to keep using email. That’s why we built GroupServer and OnlineGroups.Net to use email.

In the youth world, there is no default. It’s a highly dynamic mix of SMS, IM, social networking and MMORGs.

So what do you do if people won’t adopt your technology? I think do as the Halcum folks do and adopt theirs.

OnlineGroups.Net allows you to create your own site and then add online groups. Sites and trial groups are free. Our online groups work equally via email and the web. There are other tools that provide this but we believe that OnlineGroups.Net has the most usable interface. What other tools don’t do is allow you to have your online groups on your own site. With a little help from us, OnlineGroups.Net sites can be completely customised.

We want to have tens of thousands of sites running on this service so that we can make GroupServer better faster, and build our specialised services business. So please, start a site and try out our online groups, tell us what you think of them and, if you like them, spread the good word (web feed).

The course has literally zero content and zero face to face. The first cohort are completing their final requirements at present. Amazingly, only 40% of enrollees dropped out, the staff have not burned out, and Ultraversity hasn’t run out of money.

The “researchers” (students), typically mid-career in jobs like Teaching Assistant, participate in communities of practice along with “learning facilitators” and guest subject matter experts. Their “action inquiry” and “critical reflection” processes typically involve activities relating to their work contexts, and peer review in small groups.

It’s pretty cool that this kind of thing is succeeding. While I am excited about enquiry learning, and how similar it is to the learning taking place in organisations, the questions that jumped out for me were about online participation in general.

Firstly, this course has genuinely created engaging social contexts with no face to face. Of course it doesn’t work for all but those who stayed seem to have had a rich experience. The 100% online approach does not seem to have been an impediment to this. In fact, Gina actually suggested that, in some ways, the online environment creates a more intense social experience than face to face. Everything you “say” is recorded, including if you do not respond. You may have more time to respond but the readers have all the time in the world to evaluate your reply.

Secondly, Gina suggests from her experience that the key to successful online participation is facilitation. Now, I know the value of facilitation. We try to make sure that each online group has a Participation Coach and that that person is trained and supported. We also provide an eCampus where 700 post-graduate learners collaborate actively online with no facilitation whatsoever. And I know that, with all the facilitation in the world, an online group with a bad design will not succeed. Where I wonder are the research and conversations about the relative impact of design and facilitation on the participation that takes place? And, under what conditions is it possible to do without (expensive and difficult-to-scale) facilitation? Is it possible, in fact to embed the social principles that underpin facilitation and design in the very software?

Why do we do this?

We developed GroupServer for our client Advanced Business Education Ltd (ABEL). GroupServer is built from open source tools and components and is, itself open source.

Building GroupServer using open source components enabled us to deliver significant functionality very quickly and with minimal initial cost and development effort. The Zope web application framework, Apache web server and Postfix mail server all provide vital functionality to GroupServer. GroupServer also uses an open source email group component called Mailboxer. This enabled us to integrate email groups into a sophisticated web framework very quickly.

I can’t quantify how much slower or faster the development process might have been had we used proprietary components. It is likely, however that there would have been significant costs associated with obtaining them.

There were also significant benefits to the client in releasing the software we built for them as open source. When this was first negotiated, the client was willing to agree as there was no particular cost to them in releasing the software. The software does not provide any competitive advantage to them that could be compromised by its release.

The advantages, however became clear as soon as other customers of ours began to fund features. Those features appeared on the original client’s site, either for free or for the only the cost of implementing them.

Using open source rather than proprietary software also reduces the risk to our clients of being stuck with software that can not be maintained. Even if we are not available to maintain the source code, the client at least has the source code and can engage another vendor to maintain it. As the development community grows around the software, the risk to our clients of losing the business relationship with us will also reduce. There will be other people and teams around the world who will have experience working with the same software.

For more on what we have done for ABEL, see Chartered Cyber Course.

We are developing open source software for commercial reasons, not out of goodwill. Naturally, we, like any vendor, value goodwill in business relationships. We also enjoy being in the collaboration software business and working collaboratively together and with other companies. These things, however do not themselves put food on the table.

We are building open source software because we believe that, in the long term, this is the most commercially sustainable business model for generic software like ours. As the development community grows, it has the potential to develop a greater capacity than individual company to maintain the software. Even if this does not occur with our software, if it occurs with its competitors, then charging a licence fee would be a significant barrier to market uptake.

Software licensing is a small component of total cost of ownership. Whether software is free or not, organisations still invest in putting it in and then keeping it going. Once software becomes necessary to the business, there is significant value in support and maintenance.

The business opportunities in open source software are for services: consulting, integration, customisation, maintenance and support.

Some of this thinking, and comments from some of my Effusion Group buddies was recently quoted in a Computerworld open source feature that included these articles:

• Who uses open source?
• Back to the future: open source everything
• Slow to arrive, but here to stay
• How secure is open source?
• Fear and loathing: is open source a developer’s dream or business nightmare?

It has categories but why not tags?

Would this work inside an organisation? Will it work here?

A lot of the questions look more like discussion-starters than Q&A candidates, to me. How does this do more than a good conversation medium with rich metadata?

Should I be asking these questions at Yahoo! Answers?

How many times have you beein in something like this:

7 Dec 1400: Simon, Susan & Sharon are OK. Sam & Sally to confirm.

How many times has it been much messier than this?

If everyone’s got an up-to-date digital schedule on the same server, free/busy searches can work well.

Here’s a low tech approach to using email for free/busy searches:

       December
       0                 1                   2                   3
       1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0
       t f S S m t w t f S S m t w t f S S m t w t f S S m t w t f 
Janne  + + - - + + + + + ? ? + + + + - - - ? ? - - - - - - - - - + 
Ville  + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + -
Kalle  - - - - + + + + e e e - - - + - - - - - - - - - - - - - - +
Sanna  - - e e - - - + ? ? ? + + + + + - - + + - - - - - - + + + +
                     * *           *

Someone to write a script to generate these (that isn’t in Finnish?

You can tag your interests and it shows you who else has the same interests. You can create individual and group blogs. Everything is linked by tags. Everything speaks RSS.

Strangely, there is no link to “home”, even on the logo at the top left.

[Added:] Is “eLearning” software becoming generic social software? This makes sense to me because we’ve built GroupServer to be a generic collaboration server. Even thought the original client for it is an eLearning provider, it has met their needs from the start.

Content is content, conversations are conversations. Groups and people are what they are.

Gatheroo is due to open in the (northern) fall. If you are interested, you can register now.

Gatheroo is built on top of open source collaboration platform CivicSpace.

I recently met Chris in Minneapolis. He is evaluating GroupServer for some significant projects in the US.