Open Source Conference: Gartner Open Source Conference
Few months ago IDC Italy, responsible for organizing the local Linux World OpenSolutions Summit, canceled the Italian event, and I commented it with Seth Grimes, who in turn wrote me about Gartner Open Source Summit.
Before reading Seth’s post, I had a look at their agenda, and I found it quite different from the Italian event. Like the North-American IDC conference held in February (program , PDF), also Gartner decided to address vertical issues, but they didn’t choose to address industries neither specific technical tracks like “Linux on the Desktop” or “Virtualization”.
The brochure (PDF) reports two different track: track A sounds designed for enterprises who are working on implementing an Open Source Strategy, while track B looks more to the future.
Despite I am definitely not a Gartner’s fan, and considering that people like Bruce Perens would have been much better than Gartner researchers, I guess that there is a Gartner’s audience, and they will probably go to listen to the Open Source Vendor Scorecard for 2007, may be even the next year, and the next next one.
Game (almost) Over by si3illa
The one-size-fit-all approach is not here to stay, the internet is heavily changing the way companies reach customers, and the way customers look for advices. Seth wrote:
True to form, all summit presenters are Gartner analysts. Outside participation is limited to a couple of keynotes. Gartner is sticking with their usual all-knowing, ex cathedra approach. Absent is the community spirit that lends open source its power and vibrancy.
Does Gartner get open source? While I’m sure that individual Gartner analysts do, I wonder that an open-source event without meaningful practitioner and community participation can adequately suggest real-world implementation strategies.
I am looking forward to see RedMonk’s unconferences, Lugradio, replacing quadrant games, a pretty annoying and biased game played by pretending to be open source analysts.
Roberto Galoppini, 
Savio Rodrigues 4:45 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink
Hey Roberto,
There is a need for the Gartner’s of the world, as there is for the RedMonk’s.
I would say that a large majority of IT customers and decision makers don’t have the time to keep up with the rate & pace of software innovation. This is likely even more true for IT managers! The Gartner magic quadrants & reports help these decision makers get caught up to speed on relevant criteria before making a purchase decision.
We can’t expect folks to learn about & play with technology all day long – someone’s got to do real work! 🙂
Nicholas Butler 6:49 pm on July 13, 2007 Permalink
Thanks for the link and because of It I have discovered your article. I should point out though that I am in no way affiliated with Lugradio, its podcast or the “core lugradio community” . I attended because it was a community event and because of my own involvement with Ubuntu UK. If you would not mind disassociating the link I would be very much happier.
Roberto Galoppini 11:16 pm on July 14, 2007 Permalink
Hi Savio,
you are definitely right, the Gartner magic quadrants & reports help decision makers, I am concerned because of the way Gartner decides who is in and who is out of the quadrant.
I expect IT managers and CIOs getting more and more get acquainted with Internet and the blogosphere, may be using ad hoc tools like Kipcast.
Anyway, I believe that for years the Gartners will still be playing their role, though. CIOs basing their decisions on Gartners’ scorecards won’t take full advantage of the huge amount of OSS available.