Latest News
Asciidoctor Coder Writes Less Documentation
I've been working as the documentation manager for the Koha project for six and a half years, so when I saw that Sarah White would be talking about documentation at OSCON this year I knew I wanted a chance to interview her. Sarah will be giving a talk entitled Writing Documentation that Satisfies Your Users. Sarah believes in helping users succeed at solving their problems by working on and helping others write documentation for open source software, and I have to agree with her that one of the best parts of working on an open source project (not just writing the documentation) is getting to meet awesome people! Read More »
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Open Source to Make Caring for Your Health Feel Wonderful
Juhan Sonin wants to influence the world from protein, to policy, to pixel. And, he believes the only way to do that is with open source principles guiding the way. Juhan is the Creative Director at Involution Studios, a design firm educating and empowering people to feel wonderful by creating, developing, and licensing their work for the public. "We believe that any taxpayer funded effort should be made available, in its entirety, to be reused, modified, and updated by any citizen or business, hence the open source license. It should be a U.S. standard practice for contracted work." One of their works is hGraph, a visual representation of your health status, designed to help you alter individual factors to improve it... Read More »
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What is Open Knowledge and How Do You Spread It?
Beatrice Martini shared the work she does alongside a talented group working to bring openness to the world for Open Knowledge with me earlier this year. This time she tells me what it's like to bring to fruition an event like OKFestival 2014, organised by Open Knowledge. How does a gathering organized by one organisation (and a small team) reach out to the global ecosystem of open communities? How can participants co-create its message and mission?
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A Case for Open Peer Review for Clinical Trials
A few weeks ago I played the part of an expert witness in the Medical Journalist Association’s mock trial, Trials on Trial. The charge was: “Is the current system of publishing clinical trials fit for purpose?” The jury’s verdict was a resounding ‘no’. You can read more about the event in Jane Feinmann’s write up on the BMJ Group Blogs.
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Girls' Skills Are Needed in Tech
ChickTech is based in Portland but plans to be nationwide by 2016. After interviewing Jennifer Davidson about how ChickTech gets girls involved in tech, I have high hopes it's even sooner. The non-profit targets girls who would never nominate themselves to participate in a tech workshop and who wouldn't dream of a career in tech. Why? Because they've never had someone believe their skills were valuable in that world...
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World Health Organization Goes Open Access-Joins PubMed Central
Back in January, the global health authority, the World Health Organisation (WHO), announced the launch of a new open access policy to ensure the widespread dissemination of scientific research. The policy, which applies to all WHO-authored or WHO-funded research published in external journals and books, kicked into action on 1st July 2014.
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Heliox Project to Assist Indigenous Communities Access Computers
Indigenous communities may benefit from new computer technology that allows them to access educational resources and the internet using their own language, says the software’s developer. The innovation comes from an international, interdisciplinary group that is currently working on using the technology to reduce the digital gap and help protect cultural diversity in Mexico. This effort is part of a wider project called Heliox, which is developing a free, inclusive operating system using a version of the existing fully open-source GNU/Linux system. Read More »
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Pistoia Alliance Driving Open Innovation in Bioresearch
The Pistoia Alliance recently held its 4th Annual Conference at the Marriott Marquis in New York City. As part of the Next Chapter Initiative this was widened to a three-day event to include a special members-only meeting on the second day, kindly hosted by Thomson Reuters at their headquarters in Times Square, and a face-to-face board meeting hosted by Roche at the Alexandria Centre. Read More »
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Crafting a Next Generation IT strategy
During my 16 years as CIO, I’ve witnessed the transition from client server to web, from desktops to mobile, and from locally hosted to cloud. As Beth Israel Deaconess merges and acquires more hospitals, more practices and more care management capabilities, what are its strategic IT choices?...
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Karen Sandler Addresses Open Source's "Identity Crisis"
For Karen Sandler, software freedom isn't simply a technical matter. Nor is it a purely ideological one. It's a matter of life and death. Sandler, Executive Director of the non-profit Software Freedom Conservancy, says software freedom became personal when she realized her pacemaker/defibrillator was running code she couldn't analyze. For nearly a decade—first at the Software Feedom Law Center, then at the GNOME Foundation before Conservancy—she's been an advocate for the right to examine the software on which our lives depend...
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