Open Tech Ecosystems: Future State or Fruitless Discussion? Randall "Texrat" Arnold discusses open tech ecosystems and whether they represent the future or are just fruitless discussions. He outlines some potential hazards of open ecosystems, including lowest common denominator development, choice overload when many options are available, and the risk that a major player could drop support causing others to follow. However, he concludes by defining a digital ecosystem as a self-organizing digital infrastructure that supports cooperation, knowledge sharing, and open/adaptive technologies and business models.

1. Open Tech Ecosystems: Future State or Fruitless Discussion? Randall “Texrat” Arnold MeeGo Community

2. What is a tech (or digital) Ecosystem?

3. Is this your world?

4. SyncML … or do you live in a Meta-system?

5. Community Level Hacking Encouraged by Rovio* Open Examples: *http://talk.maemo.org/showpost.php?p=474342&postcount=11

6. Hazards of an Open Tech Ecosystem “Lowest Common Denominator” development Basic HTML 5 used for “everything and the kitchen sink” “Netflix Effect” Hot demand for services like streaming video drives up consumer cost and fragmentation (mini monopolies) Choice Overload When faced with high number of choices, people tend to go with the crowd Major player gets cold feet and drops support …and others fall like dominoes

7. In General: “…ecosystem wars are fought on three fronts: mindshare, market share and patents.” -Andreas Constantinou http://www.visionmobile.com/blog/2011/09/a-game-of-ecosystems-crashing-the-android-party/

8. Conclusions? “A digital ecosystem is a self-organising digital infrastructure aimed at creating a digital environment for networked [entities*] that supports the cooperation, the knowledge sharing, the development of open and adaptive technologies and evolutionary business models.” http://www.digital-ecosystems.org/ (*my edit, was ‘organisations’)

9. Thank You! Randall Arnold http://texrat.net