R2Integrated

Jun 14

Written by: Kevin Schreiner
6/14/2008 2:26 PM

As any home owner who has lived in a house for any period of time, I just wrapped up another session of ant eradication from my property. Now, I have no doubts that this round, just as any other in the past, will be an utter failure. A futile attempt at overcoming the pest and annoyance of these tiny creatures. so, you may wonder - what does this have to do with technology? Nothing, except for a complete understanding of the emphasis behind the new technologies we find ourselves using today in the world of the Internet.

Until recently the real drive for online content was to provide information on the web that users will find and consume in a manner that the advertisers dictated. All as a means to direct consumers towards one specific product or another. This content was never truly there to help educate, or help progress the general public forwards, but just a means to an end. That end being a sale.

Today we have entered into a whole new world. A world of social interaction, networking, communication, sharing and unity. A world which our friends, the ants, seem to have adopted and perfected over 130 million years. Working together to reach a common goal.

The introduction of the Open Web Studio platform, as it is rolled out into this new world is pivotal. It's founded on the concept of sharing - not just sharing the code of itself, and consuming the other highly useful Open Source technologies. But of sharing the ideas with one another, and developing new and useful applications, together, directly online. Uniting developers worldwide into a new social concept - social development.

Here within our organization we have rolled out a brand new Wiki over the last week or so. It is completely breathtaking to see the ability for our team to provide their own understanding and ideas for technology. We have a wide array of personalities here, and the team is broad in both background and interests. Together, just like the ants, we have pushed ever harder forward to reach our goals, and sharing our ideas and knowledge with each other is the best way we can find new concepts. The ideas put forward in a blog are generally similar to a wiki. However, it's not as useful since it is still one individual expressing their idea, and a world of commenters appending to the concept. With the Wiki, many authors are working together to push a concept to its limits. Providing a real foundation for educating our colleagues, as well as expressing and sharing our ideas with our patrons.

Ants figured out long ago that their strength was in numbers, and working together they can overcome even the largest of barriers - even a brick foundation.

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