xkcd - Wikipedian Protester (via http://xkcd.com)
Hi.
Long time without a post. But this time I have a reason. And not only that, but the reason that I bring to you this time is quite powerful. I’ve applied bad execution practices.
Guess what. I have a couple of half-done posts that are waiting to “get finished” to be published. The problem is I haven’t had the time to polish them till the point I’m comfortable enough to consider them final. But the truth is that there ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, or a final release. Everything is a work-in-progress, until some day when we stop working on it and becomes an abandoned work-in-progress. If we share our projects with the world maybe they will be useful for someone; but usually we have our egos mediating the road to project starvation before someone ever gets to know we’ve been working on something.
And this is just a blog right? A dead post is no big deal. But the pattern tends to go on to larger endeavours. Software projects, research projects, books, music, films, and a lot more. But then someone came up with a great idea:
Why not make the whole process open?
And open source was born. To open source something (and not only software) means that you accept to make public your mistakes, as well as your successes. To benefit others and be benefited. To criticize and be criticized. To teach and learn.
A gift that came with the Web 2.0 and further with activity streams (like Twitter or –less– Facebook) is the capability to trust other people. That one is also a gift of the open source community. The world is not a zero-sum game and collaboration is our most powerful key to success.
So I propose to you:
Don’t wait to get your project finished, if you can articulate your vision you’re good to go.
Share your visions with the world an let’s build’em together.
Further reading/watching:
– Google I/O 2009 – The Myth of the Genius Programmer
– “given enough eyeballs, all bugs are shallow”
– Is scientific publishing about to be disrupted?
– The world’s first open movie
And an open encyclopedia that just works
3 comments
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April 4, 2010 at 8:23 pm
noheru
a mi no me ha ido bien compartiendo ideas ni proyectos, el problema es que alguien se lo termina robando…
April 5, 2010 at 12:30 am
Shrein
Ese creo es el temor incial a todos al compartir. La solución que yo veo es fácil de enunciar, pero dificil de realizar.
El camino es ver nuestras ideas precisamente como nuestras y no como mías. Ver que hacemos más construyendo las ideas en conjunto que dejándolas morir en secreto. Ver que una idea copiada por otro es un halago. También debemos recordar, sin embargo, dar el crédito a quienes nos han contribuido con sus ideas.
Suena idealista, pero como siempre, el cambio empieza en cada uno.
April 5, 2010 at 8:52 am
Juan C
Great post! I like that vision… keep going!