Irving Wladawsky-Berger

The Essence of Open Source

This week I am giving a keynote address at the Red Hat Summit in New Orleans.  When giving keynotes or other talks these days, I often make a point of explaining what I feel is, quite simply, the key to open source initiatives and why open source is an integral part of IBM's strategy.  I do this because there is quite a bit of FUD surrounding the issue.

Some say the primary value of open source is to provide access to the source code of previously proprietary software, source code that had been available only in binary form.  Others spend a lot of time talking about open source software licenses to bemused audiences, and in particular railing against the GPL, which is the license used by Linux.  Open source licenses are an important topic for those involved in reading, modifying or re-distributing open source software.  But to the vast majority of programmers, let alone the vast majority of people who simply use computers at work or home, open source licensing is a pretty arcane subject, more of a red-herring brought up by competing IT vendors than anything they really need to obsess over.

The increasing importance of technical talent

This week I am attending IBM's Corporate Technology Recognition Event (CTRE).  The CTRE is our annual event to recognize and reward individuals and teams who made significant technical contributions to IBM and to the world of science and technology.  We also nominate our newest IBM Fellows, the company's most prestigious technical honor.

I love attending these events and generally hanging out with my colleagues in the technical community.  One way or another, I have been involved with science and technology through my 35 years at IBM, and prior to that, as a physics student in the '60s at the University of Chicago. But I can honestly say that, from my own experience and what I hear from others at IBM and everywhere I go around the world,  there has never in our lifetime been a more exciting period to be a scientist or technologist.

John Patrick's Blog

My friend and colleague John Patrick posted a very nice story about my new blog in his own patrickWeb blog.  To me this is about as close to an official welcome to the blogosphere as there can be.  John was one of the first people I knew who had his own website, and he started his blog before anyone called it by that name.  I remember that a few years ago John was talking about blogs as one of the most powerful forces driving the future of the Internet.  I have to admit that at the time I was incredulous.  As I told John, the only reason I took his comments seriously is because of his incredible batting record in calling The Next Big Thing in the IT industry.

Thoughts from the cradle of the Industrial Revolution

On May 17, I gave a talk at the Royal Academy of Engineering in London around the theme of "Enabling a Business Process Revolution."  I was really looking forward to giving this talk.  It was sort of special because, here I was at very the cradle of the Industrial Revolution to discuss with this very smart and accomplished audience the idea that we might be at the onset of a profound revolution in business processes, one with the potential to alter the shape of companies, industries, perhaps even economies, and which could have the kind of impact on us in the 21st century that the Industrial Revolution had on previous generations.  Let me summarize what I said.

Innovation: Why Now?

As part of my job I give quite a number of talks. Some are relatively formal, e.g., keynotes at conferences, such as the one I gave last month at the Open Source Business Conference in San Francisco. Most are less formal, delivered to small audiences in meetings at IBM, universities or client locations.

These talks -- which have recently focused around the theme of innovation -- bring me in front of many different kinds of audiences: not just technology-focused, but people concerned with business, government, education and health care, and a variety of societal issues such as diversity.  I am struck by how the topic of innovation seems to resonate with all of these groups and communities. And I'm intrigued as to why innovation has all of a sudden become such a hot subject, why we've become so self-conscious about it -- with magazine issues, books and TV series devoted to the subject, as well as major innovation initiatives in several countries, such as the NII in the US.

I have come to the conclusion that the reason there is so much activity around innovation out there is because of the major changes taking place across technology, business and society. In fact, I have begun organizing my talks around these three areas, trying to articulate what are some of the key changes in each area that I find particularly compelling. Let me just say a few words about each in this blog, and I will come back to these themes in the future.

My Blog

One of the more enjoyable facets of my job is communication. So, as blogs have become an increasingly important medium of communication in society, I am starting my personal blog.

In my blog, I will write about the topics I deal with in my job -- Information technology areas I am involved in, including the Internet; servers and supercomputing; standards and open source initiatives like Linux; the evolution to Web services; and content management. I am particularly interested in the application of IT to the solution of increasingly sophisticated problems in business, government, health care and education, along with the tools and processes to help in the development of such applications. Public policy issues such as support for R&D; reasonable IP practices; and programs that encourage innovation will be a focus as well. As someone who was born in Cuba, I am concerned and involved with efforts to support diversity in education and the workplace and would expect to comment from time to time on those issues.

I also have interests beyond my job, such as films, Latin jazz and baseball. At this point, I am not sure how much of those interests will be reflected in my personal blog, but time will tell.

I anticipate an exciting journey for me. I hope it will have some value to those of you who read my blog.