Demystifying Cloud Computing at OSCON: Great Insights from Simon Wardley

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The O’Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCON) has emerged as the leading event globally for the open source community to get together and learn from each other, sharing insights and ideas.   There are programming sessions on Linux, MySQL, the LAMP stack, Perl, Python, Ruby on Rails and hands-on programming sessions about how to build your first Google AppsEngine application.  This is a very hands-on conference and as a result, attendees consider it a collaborative learning experience well worth attending.

I did not attend but have watched several of the videos on the OSCON 2010 YouTube Channel including the tutorials about building an AppsEngine application, which shows just how quickly open source programming is progressing.  As there has been much discussion on Twitter and on blogs about the RackSpace announcement last Monday, I also watched Lew Moorman of RackSpace discuss the specifics of the announcement in his talk “Toward an Open Cloud”.  It is an interesting presentation of how this vendor chose their open source strategy.

Of all the talks however, the most fascinating and the one I learned the most from was delivered by Simon Wardley, titled “Situation Normal, Everything Must Change”.  In this 30-minute speech Mr. Wardley demystifies cloud computing and provides insights into the essence of what innovation really is. Thanks to Dennis Howlett for blogging about this presentation, I had not worked my way through the open source platform and programming videos on the OSCON site to find this yet.  Dennis writes about his discussion with Simon Wardley in the post, If you do nothing else, watch Simon Wardley.  I agree completely, and the students in my graduate-level course  on international competitive strategy already have this in their e-mail inboxes.  Take 30 minutes to listen to this, it’s worth the insights gained.