SXSWi mixed work, talk, and fun in its usual tornado-like style. I met a fair amount of wiki people, but I agree with Evan Prodromou, I’d like to see more of a wiki invasion at SXSWi next year!
Several people liveblogged Evan’s talk, Commercialization of Wikis. Here’s Adam Darowski’s notes, Mike Linksvayer’s notes, Angela Beesley’s summary, and my notes.
Evan spoke strongly in favor of the ethical commercialization of wikis. He believes that non-exploitative models for wiki commercialization are not only possible, but essential, to a healthy Internet ecosystem. His talk focused around wiki content providers, the open community or open content model, rather than open source software, but I heard some of the same themes come up in Elisa Camahort’s panel on open source evangelism and Ed Cavazos’ panel on Open Source business models. Jon Lebkowsky touched briefly on ethical and economic issues in his article for the Austin Chronicle, You Mean Open Source Hasn’t Saved the World Yet?
At his Commercialization panel, Evan sharply criticized the “crowdsourcing” model which speaks of content creators as “suckers,” with the disrespect a carny gives to his mark. I liked Evan’s basic message, which was a good reminder to all Internet companies to keep it real. My perception at this point is that some sectors of the open source community are suspicious of any commercialization and of capitalism itself, which people like Marc Fleury attribute to sour grapes. But insofar as I believe it’s possible for capitalism to be ethical, it’s heartening to hear so many companies and especially wiki companies thinking hard and talking openly about the ethics of their business models.
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