Seneca Progress Log: Week I

I plan to publish details of my weekly experiences leading an open source research and analysis project, called Seneca, every Sunday. Here is the first installment of that series.

Background: Some weeks back I was nominated to coordinate Entiva Group's first project under our Open Analyst View program. My first duty was to come up with a name for the project (I finally settled on Seneca, as in the Native American tribe) and to begin to set up a project structure. These two tasks weren't terribly difficult although I did stumble with some crazy names. I was then charged with gathering a list of people who were willing to commit to contributing to the project. This is where the crap hit the fan...

Back in October of last year my colleagues and I began to brainstorm about ways in which we could intensify our presence within the open source community not only as an analyst firm but also as a company who really grasps the dynamics of open source technologies. We bounced quite a few ideas off the wall and each other before we decided that the idea of doing an analysis paper using the open source model was worth a try.

If you listen to people who tend to be the most aware and honest about the analyst business you'll hear a common theme about the need for more transparent analyst activities. As a company we have decided to explore the dynamics involved in the creation of a fully open and transparent research and analysis paper.  The motivation for putting Entiva Group resources behind a project of this nature is to garner valuable experiential knowledge of how our business model might benefit from the open source model.

Instead of simply releasing the product of our internal work as a free offering as we did with a paper on the value of Apache Geronimo as an SOA framework. I envisioned pooling the collective knowledge of the members of the open source software community and directing it towards, bringing together of a research & analysis paper.

Everyone who participated in that brainstorming session felt that Open Analyst View was the best way to go about exploring an alternate model of creating industry analysis (we're a pretty open-minded group at Entiva). We also felt as if it was the way to broaden our horizons in terms of how we looked at our own analyst operations. As analysts, as with any other knowledge based job that requires a lot of expression through words, it is so easy to get caught in an "ivory white tower" of your own making. By that I mean its so easy to think because you are in a position to voice your knowledge about a given subject that you are "an expert". This tends to warp your perspective and it effectively prevents you from picking up new things very quickly. I am hoping that by devoting time and effort towards this project, I will have a better view of the things Entiva Group is doing good and others that we need to improve upon.

Another intended benefit of Seneca is to give all of the analysts at Entiva Group a better look at the dynamics of community development. Even if we aren't developing software like the projects, companies, and individuals who we cover. The more knowledge about open community based development will result in a better understanding of open source software in general, rendering better analysis, services and insight for our clients.

Of course all things are practical in theory with time set as the prover of all things. So only time will tell the story of Seneca and its effect on Entiva and the open source community, in the meantime I'll keep adding to this progress log each week publishing it every Sunday.

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