This morning hundreds of developers, designers and communicators sat in on the opening address and kick off of Open Web Vancouver 2008. Several E-xact developers were present as the core of our business, our Realtime Payment Manager (RPM), is built on open source technology - Ruby on Rails.

Attendees were treated to two keynotes, the first from Zak Greant and the second by Tim Bray.

First Keynote:
Zak Greant - The Age of Literate Machines: A Visionary Look at Open Source

Free Software and Open Source are understood to be reshaping technology. What is less understood is how critical FOSS is to the future of free societies. During this session, we’ll examine the past, present and future of our freedoms, stopping along the way to visit ancient god-kings, hacker heretics, long-dead muftis and our first computers.

Zak took a look at “free” software, that’s “free” as in freedom. He went through a comprehensive history of language technology through the ages how it aided society, science, changed business.

Speech, communications, and technology become fluent for the masses through simple activities - being calculations that need to be solved. Starting as early in our civilizations as rudimentary symbols or stones which were precursors to modern accounting practices.

Zak asserted that “Language is the Great Tool”, in the way that folks use code to create applications and to communicate in all aspects of society. Another point of focus was free speech. Zak reached all the way back to the days of the Stationers Company Monopoly and how it relates and translates to today’s proprietary software companies. Having one group of individuals control production and supply and demand was strangles an industry and progress.

Continuing on through the ages we were given a look at technologies that were expensive to begin with (telegraph, telephone) progressing to revolutionary innovations like the phonograph and the radio. The first era of this history dealt with developing/inventing the language then improving on it. The “vision” is what comes next.

There was a quick show of hands for those that used to use a Commodore 64.

What I got out of Zak’s talk was that everything has a start, an invention and an innovation. It’s what we do with these technologies and how we make them available to the masses that solidifies them in history as another great stepping stone.

Open Web Vancouver is taking place today and tomorrow at the Vancouver Exhibition and Convention Centre, check the upcoming schedule for times and session information.

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