RainbowPortal Gathering 2005
The event was held at the end of September at the late Alfred Nobel's villa in San Remo, one of the most aesthetically pleasant and charming places to spend a few days with fellow developers.
For most readers portal technology is something we're all rather familiar with and if you're interested in using RainbowPortal it's worth viewing the slides to get a feel for what has been developed. The latest release is due shortly, we anticipate next week after Hongwei and Dan have helped by squashing the last remaining known bugs. Update: download it here.
Keeping things succint I'll just share the takeaways:
- There is nothing quite like an open source community of developers - the atmosphere and attitude is refreshing and rewarding
- It's not the code but what people do with it:
- Marissa M. helped the Palestinian government enable rapid document sharing and policy discussion among various groups with different levels of access to localised (Arabic) content using RainbowPortal. This dramatically increased the productivity of the government that had access to few resources and tremendous problems meeting face to face due to the situation in Palestine with mobility and checkpoints.
- RainbowPortal has been implemented for a software-as-a-service business model providing a web based booking system: www.bokningsplatsen.se
- RainbowPortal has been used to provide a mobile device content portal for the Oil industry vertical targetting users working on/offshore (i.e. on the oil rigs)
- RainbowPortal has been used to provide a virtual clinic facility to a part of the NHS delivering vital information such as best practices for a micro-community of patients, parents, social workers, nurses, doctors and charitable organisations
- No one sold RainbowPortal solutions via the web, every single deal was done face to face - each sale was a solution sale not a product sale and required a combination of evangelism, education, relationship marketing and demonstration of competency - i.e. a proven ability to deliver
I was the last speaker to go on at the event and I dare say it was a difficult talk as I felt I had to share the doom & gloom view, remind the community of the reality of what is occuring in the marketplace with offshore competitors, open source alternatives, the importance of design and businesses looking for more appropriate pricing models which increases complexity.
Having conveyed that message I was then able to inspire the attendees to look to each other to collaborate on projects and support local client acquisition with a variety of solutions and competencies drawn from the entire community. I had the fortune in the Q&A of James Steward (USA) sharing publicly his interest in collaborating with Jeremy Esland (Portugal) as they're both targeting the travel & hospitality industry in seperate locations - this is exactly what I try to encourage in the community as a business development mentor - that is to know who is doing what and how we can support each other through collaborative business practices.
The slides for the event can be found here:
http://events.rainbowportal.net/site/3611/slides.aspx
Pictures here:
http://events.rainbowportal.net/site/3617/pictures.aspx (there's also a short film that conveys the spirit of the event and the people)
http://www.flickr.com/photos/67637444@N00/tags/rainbowportalgathering2005/
Thanks to Due Metri & San Remo for organising and hosting this event and Bill Howard (Former CIO, SUN Microsystems) for permission to share an email from our private discussions on the future of the software industry.