4 posts tagged “education”
We just posted the schedule for Stage 2. Check it out at https://www.yugma.com/stage2/.
If you are at the Web 2.0 Expo, stop by booth #322 during the time posted. You can also attend virtually by clicking on “Join a Session” and using the Session ID noted for the presentation.
It's going to be great... "See you there!"
Yugma is reaching out to Linux community and Microsoft for May 1 “Show Us The Code” deadline
[Note inserted on June 3: View youtube video to see what happened at the 5/1/2007 meeting.]
Yesterday, I issued an invitation to both the Show Us The Code and Microsoft communities regarding a virtual “sit down” for the May 1, 2007 deadline. Yugma’s web collaboration software would enable key players from both groups to join a live session and present their sides.
As many of you know, in a letter to Steven Ballmer, the Linux community has requested that individuals “Publicly pledge your support for Microsoft showing the public the code within Linux that violates their intellectual property by May 1st, 2007. “ Through an open invitation to key players and observers, we intend to provide a forum for each side to address the other.
We’ve been watching this movement and wondering what would materialize on May 1 to complete this debate. Since people all over the world may want to participate, we wanted to offer a solution that would work regardless of geographic location and platform. We’re hoping that we can be one of the catalysts to end this question of code ownership.
The full text of the letter follows:
OPEN LETTER TO: Linux Community & Microsoft
My name is Karel Lukas, and I'm the COO at a web collaboration company called Yugma. I've been following the Show Us The Code movement and Microsoft’s position closely, and understand how important this issue is for the future vitality of the Open Source and Linux communities.
As the May 1st deadline approaches, we at Yugma have been wondering what the ultimate conclusion of this debate will be. Will it quietly fizzle out? Will Microsoft continue to press their case and ignore the challenge? As we are approaching the May 1st deadline, we propose that we all collectively drive this debate to a proper conclusion.
Yugma is about to launch our Linux version, which will make our collaboration service interoperable between Linux, Mac, and PC. We think that makes us the perfect platform for hosting a virtual "sit-down" between the Show Us The Code movement and Microsoft on the day of the deadline.
For this event, we are offering to host a live debate between the Show Us The Code group and Microsoft on May 1st. Microsoft can present the alleged offending code live. Leaders from the Linux community can respond. Yugma will record the session and make it available to both parties afterwards for their own distribution. The date, time, and meeting information follows:
Date/Time: May 1, 2007 at 12:00 Noon Pacific Time
Place: www.yugma.com (click Join Session button)
Teleconference Bridge: +1-218-486-3889
Yugma Session ID: 109-433-046
We think Yugma would be a great venue for educating more people (and the Tech press) about the Show Us The Code movement as well as Microsoft’s position. We are in the process of contacting key contacts within both organizations to identify the key participants for the event. Likewise, key contacts from the Linux community and from Microsoft can contact us at showusthecode@yugma.com . We will be exhibiting at the Web 2.0 Conference in San Francisco April 16-18. If any of you will be there, please stop by the Yugma booth and we can discuss in person (booth #322).
Yugma has joined with other companies like Google and Level 3 to sponsor the upcoming Freedom to Connect Conference (F2C) scheduled for March 5-6, 2007 in Washington, D.C. F2C is a meeting of people engaged with Internet connectivity and all that it enables. This year, the theme of F2C is how universal connectivity and the plunging capital requirements of information production are changing our fundamental economic and social assumptions. David Isenberg produces the event and has pulled together an great roster of industry leaders and policy making.
I spoke with David a couple of weeks ago. He mentioned how "Yochai Benkler help set the theme for this year's event with his powerful hypothesis that lowering the capital requirements of information production
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reduces the value of proprietary strategies and makes public, shared information more important,
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encourages a wider range of motivations to produce, thus demoting supply-and-demand from prime motivator to one-of-many, and
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allows large-scale, cooperative information production efforts that were not possible before, from open-source software, to search engines and encyclopedias, to massively multi-player online games."
Benkler's hypothesis really resonated with me. When more people can connect and collaborate, more cost effectively and with greater ease, very interesting and innovative things happen. For example, I heard from a lawyer last week who was using Yugma to review and review complex contracts in real-time with his global clients. He said "10 emails over 10 days" was reduced to "10 minutes." Amazing.
Since our launch in December, we’ve worked non stop on continuously enhancing and improving Yugma (www.yugma.com). We’ve now officially dropped the Beta tag from our logo. A key focus in all of our development work has been making Yugma the easiest, fastest, and most cost effective way for people around the world to collaborate on line. This past weekend, we rolled out an MS Outlook Toolbar and an advanced proxy handler (for those of you on larger corporate networks) -- all geared at making web collaboration as easy as possible. That way you can focus on sharing your ideas with others regardless of locations, platforms, applications, browsers, and budgets.
But the work continues literally around the clock. In the coming days you will see some very exciting and very powerful new features. And most importantly, they will be really easy to use. I don't want to pre-announce anything... So please stay tuned!
