Tim O'Reilly
Tim O’Reilly is the founder and CEO of O’Reilly Media Inc. Considered by many to be the best computer book publisher in the world. O'Reilly Media also hosts conferences on technology topics, including the O'Reilly Open Source Convention, Strata: The Business of Data, the Velocity Conference on Web Performance and Operations, and many others. Tim's blog, the O'Reilly Radar "watches the alpha geeks" to determine emerging technology trends, and serves as a platform for advocacy about issues of importance to the technical community. Tim is also a partner at O'Reilly AlphaTech Ventures, O'Reilly's early stage venture firm, and is on the board of Safari Books Online, PeerJ, Code for America, and Maker Media, which was recently spun out from O'Reilly Media. Maker Media's Maker Faire has been compared to the West Coast Computer Faire, which launched the personal computer revolution.
Follow Tim O'Reilly's insights on LinkedIn.Open government and "next generation democracy"
The pieces are in place and the time is right for government to reinvent itself.
We need to tell the stories of success and failure, of thinking differently, of connecting communities to strengthen bonds, of sharing and coming together to solve problems, and of working on stuff that matters.
Opening the doors of government to innovation
When I organize a conference, I don’t just reach out to interesting speakers. I try to find people who can help to tell a story about what’s important and where the future is going. We’ve been posting speakers for the second annual Gov 2.0 Summit in Washington DC Sept 7-8, but I realized that I haven’t told the story in one place. I thought I’d try to do that here.
The Louvre of the Industrial Age
The Henry Ford is one of the world's great museums, and the world it chronicles is our own.
I would never in a hundred years have thought of making a visit to Detroit just to visit The Henry Ford museum, but knowing what I know now, I will tell you confidently that it is as worth your while as a visit to Paris just to see the Louvre, to Rome for the Vatican Museum, or to Florence for the Uffizi Gallery. This is truly one of the world's great museums, and the world that it chronicles is our own.
Putting Online Privacy in Perspective
When I wrote last week about the Facebook privacy flap, I was speaking out of the frustration that many technologists with a sense of perspective feel when we see uninformed media hysteria about the impact of new technology. There are real privacy issues to be faced in the data collected by web companies. But they are part of a far bigger picture of how the world is changing. We need thoughtful understanding of what the real risks are, not finger pointing by the media (and even more frighteningly, by members of Congress) at companies that are easy targets because they make good political theater.
My Contrarian Stance on Facebook and Privacy
In a recent Inc Magazine live chat, I found myself, somewhat surprisingly even to me, defending Facebook regarding their ongoing and evolving privacy policy. Here's what I said: The essence of my argument is that there's enormous advantage for users in giving up some privacy online and that we need to be exploring the boundary conditions – asking ourselves when…
How do we measure innovation?
In response to the IEEE’s report on Patent Power, which lists the top companies ranked by number of patents, Ari Shahdadi and Brad Burnham made trenchant comments in email that I thought were worth sharing (with their permission): The main article is sad to read, with choice quotes like this: “Clearly, the global recession seriously hampered innovation in the United States.”
At the Forefront of the Next Industrial Revolution
I chose Limor Fried, founder and chief engineer of Adafruit Industries, as the subject of my post for Ada Lovelace Day for four reasons: Limor is a hardware engineer – one of those bastions of tech in which it's most important for young girls considering future careers to understand that women can excel. Here's Limor, making adjustments to the pick…