With nearly all global organisations using Open Source software today, the industry faces a challenge of properly understanding the development, contribution, and communities instrumental to creating an enterprise-grade Open Source policy and ensuring its successful adoption.

At the same time with increasing pressure from funding bodies and institutions to show an increased impact from research activities the sector faces a challenge of matching impact with research objectives. Impact is interpreted in so many ways it can be difficult to understand just what is expected of modern research projects.

The use of open source software licensing and development models for sustaining software outputs of research projects is becoming increasingly common. OSS Watch have been funded since 2003 to assist with these activities and open innovation is a term that is commonly heard in discussion about increasing the impact of research projects. However, we were surprised that there are so few events dedicated to connecting open innovation-driven people, processes, and technologies, specifically those that promote solutions that directly impact business.

We created TransferSummit to bring top researchers, academics, business leaders, organizations, and technologists together to discuss core requirements, challenges, and opportunities in the use, development, licensing, funding, and promoting future innovation in Open Source. We’re focused on the comprehensive impact of open innovation across a range of disciplines and applications, participants share, discuss, and discover strategic opportunities that accelerate growth. TransferSummit streamlines the innovation and resource discovery process, cultivating partnerships, and accelerating the process of commercialising products.

Join the conversation at Keble College in Oxford 24-25 June and stay on for the complementary BarCamp on 26 June.

We’re finalising the speaker lineup; our roster includes representatives from organisations such as: Amazon, The Apache Software Foundation, CodePlex Foundation, Day Software, GNOME Foundation, Google, Joint Information Systems Committee, LIMO Foundation, Microsoft, Mozilla Foundation, Nottingham University, OSS Watch, SalesAgility, Seneca College, Sirius Corporation Plc, Sourcesense, Taunton’s College, University of Cambridge, and Wikimedia.

We’re passionate about fostering interactions amongst participants and are working towards ensuring the right environment for both learning about open innovation in practice and for enhancing your own engagement with open innovation. TransferSummit is expected to sell out: register today to take advantage of our Early-Bird rates, and continue to explore concepts addressed during the event at the BarCamp the following day.

For more details and to register see http://www.transfersummit.com

We look forward to seeing you!

- Ross Gardler, Chair, and the TransferSummit team

OSS Watch will be holding two concurrent workshops on the theme of open development on December 7th in Oxford. One workshop will examine open development as a part of open innovation; the other will address building an open development community around a software project. Both workshops are free to UK higher and further education.

Individuals should register for the single workshop that interests them most. However, it should be possible to move between the two workshops on the day, so long as space allows. Links to further information, including registration, are given below.

Both workshops will be covered via live blogs, for those who cannot attend in person.

1. Open Source, Open Development, Open Innovation:

For more information and to register, please see: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/2009-12-07_business/programme.xml

The central concept behind open innovation is that in a world of widely distributed knowledge, organisations cannot afford to rely entirely on their own research. Open innovation is a means by which companies can both collaborate on research and share outputs. Although originally defined by Chesbrough as being dependent on patented technologies made available under licence there is growing recognition that open source software provides an excellent means for sharing outputs in a controlled and managed way in order to facilitate further innovation.

This workshop will introduce open innovation as defined by Chesbrough and look at how it applies to software outputs from academic research institutions. We will look at how open innovation through open source and open development of software can result in more sustainable software outputs and increased opportunities for continued work. Finally, we will look at how these models allow for commercial or social exploitation of outputs whilst allowing the researcher to remain focused on research rather than business planning.

At the end of this workshop you will:

• Understand the basic models of open innovation
• Be able to apply open innovation concepts to open source software development in research environments
• Develop open innovation engagement plans for research software outputs

This workshop will be of interest to anyone conducting research that produces software outputs. Participants will either be engaged with non-academic partners or will be interested in engaging in an unobtrusive way. The primary audience for this workshop is:

• Principal investigators
• Funding bodies’ programme managers
• Technology transfer professionals

2. Open Development: Building an Engaged Community

For more information and to register, please see: http://www.oss-watch.ac.uk/events/2009-12-07_community/programme.xml

Open development thrives on a diverse community of participants who engage in the project and also attract others with new skills and resources. Such a diverse community also increases project sustainability as the project can survive the exit of participants. However an engaged community does not just form itself, rather it requires active and continuous encouragement, particularly from the core project team. This workshop will help you understand how open development works and provide you with a practical appreciation of the skills, practices and mechanisms that encourage an engaged community.

At the end of this workshop you will:

• Understand how open development works and know the common community structures
• Be familiar with the skills and processes that encourage community participation
• Develop ideas for improving the community friendliness of a specific project

This workshop will be of interest to those involved in a development project and who wish to benefit from improved community engagement or wider participation through open development. For example you may wish to become sustainable past the current funding round or expand your user base into new areas. In particular we think the following will be most interested:

• project managers
• software developers
• researchers whose projects produce software outputs