Posts in: Inside OpenSRS

Celebrating Ada Lovelace Day at OpenSRS

We’re celebrating Ada Lovelace at OpenSRS. Women in technology make a difference every day. Ada Lovelace Day is an international day of blogging to celebrate the achievements of women in technology and science. This is a worldwide map of over 1900 pledged blog posts:

At OpenSRS, we have a talented array of women who are developers, programmers, implementation specialists, professional service experts, technical support, reporting specialists, account managers, customer service, sales representatives, video technology consultants, accounting, NOC analysts, technical writers, managers, directors, quality assurance specialists, marketers, communicators, ITIL-certified technologists, web designers, compliance officers, usability experts, human resources, internet savvy and more. Each of these talented folks makes our corner of the Internet run smoothly. We are in awe of their sheer force of knowledge. Here’s a picture of some of our talented folks:

We hope to inspire you to talk about the great work women contribute in your workplaces. And, we hope we can inspire young women to join our profession.

By the way, OpenSRS is looking for Application Developers, NOC Analysts, and QA/Developers . We welcome all skilled talent. And, men too!

Heart and Determination from the Gateshead RFC Rugby Team

I wanted to send a quick shout out to our very own Marco Zuliani and the Gateshead RFC Rugby team from Tyne and Wear, England. As you can see from the jerseys in the photo below, OpenSRS has sponsored the team, but the heart and determination comes from Marco and his teammates.

Marco’s love of Rugby serves a dual purpose: the games and practices are a great way to deal with the pressure of managing our OpenSRS EMEA (Europe, Middle East, Africa) region while simultaneously supporting the local sporting community.

The connection between Rugby and OpenSRS

Another interesting link between Rugby and OpenSRS is the term “Scrum”. As you may have seen us mention a few times on the blog and in the forums, OpenSRS uses a variant of Agile development called “Scrum” as our software development process.

How are they doing?

As of last week, Gateshead RFC had just won a game (28-7), and last weekend there was a semi final cup game for the North-East National Title. That sounds pretty good to us!

We’ll be following up with Marco upon his return from WebhostingDay in Germany to get an update on the standings.

Can you spot Marco?

Some of you are well acquainted with our EMEA team and know Marco well. Just for fun: If you’re the first person to spot Marco in the team photo, we’ll send you one of our spiffy new OpenSRS sports tees. Just leave a comment below with Marco’s position in the team photo.

Please join us in wishing Marco and his team the best of luck this season!

Thanks to Gateshead RFC for the pictures.

Getting Ready for WebhostingDay 2010

Our team has been busy preparing for the upcoming WebhostingDay (WHD) 2010 event held in Germany March 17-19th.

The WHD 2009 event had more than 2,000 visitors in attendance from 63 countries and we understand from the event organizers that WHD 2010 will break the ’09 attendance records. As a result, we’ve pulled out all the stops to make sure everything goes smoothly and we put one of our best people on the job to help us pack: Taylor Biggin.

Word has it that before joining OpenSRS, Taylor was considering starting his own box company called Biggin’s Boxes. He had a catchy slogan “You bring it, I’ll box it!” and a nifty jingle with music he composed on an xylophone his parents gave him on his 4th birthday.

Everything in that last paragraph was a total fib. I’m sorry. But after watching my colleague so artistically box our precious cargo, I can only imagine this gentleman has missed his calling as a professional boxer.

Shortly after he was given this important task, Taylor realized the odd shape of the components would make it difficult to properly pack. No matter… Taylor had a box problem and he didn’t just think outside the box: he BUILT the box!

A couple of the finished boxes are pictured right, with the artist Mr. Biggin. I can’t be sure, but when the courier arrived to take his creatively packed shipment away, I think I watched Taylor shed a tear.

Open Letter from Elliot Noss: Celebrating 10 Years of Domain Registrations

What follows is the text of an open letter from our CEO, Elliot Noss.

Hello,

With great pride I note that January marks the 10th anniversary of the first domain name registered through OpenSRS.

Back in the spring and summer of 1999, we started planning for a different way to sell domain names. We had two businesses at the time, the Tucows.com software libraries and a large Toronto ISP, Internet Direct.

We knew that domain names should be simple and inexpensive to sell, and were made much too difficult and expensive by the monopoly provider. We were confident that we could fix that.

We also knew something more important. With competition coming, the companies planning to launch were simply copying the monopoly and maybe dropping the price a little. Domain names would likely be offered from $35/year!

And we recognized that registrars didn’t sell domain names, service providers did.

We took those beliefs and poured them into a service offering that launched in January of 2000. It was an immediate success.

Now ten years later, and we still have our very first customer still happily and actively selling domains through OpenSRS. The first domain we sold is still managed by OpenSRS. And we’ve grown every single year.

So much is different now than it was then. The meaning of “service provider” has changed. In 2000, what we today know as web hosts were really just evolving out of the loam, forced into existence by telcos and cablecos killing dialup ISPs through regulation. Now the whole concept of the web host is morphing into something different, and, in many ways there may be a re-integration of “ISPs” and “web hosts”.

So much is the same as it was then. People still need a personal relationship to help them get the most out of the Internet. Too many people still don’t have one. There is still a huge gap between what people CAN do on the Internet and what they are ABLE to do.

Most importantly, we still view service providers as the greatest distribution channel in the Internet economy. We care deeply about our relationships with them and embrace the ones that care deeply about their relationships with their customers. So many of you are still around TEN YEARS LATER! You should be proud. I know I am.

Thanks to all our customers, employees and partners. We hope and expect that the next ten years will be even better!

Sincerely,

Elliot Noss
CEO Tucows Inc.

It’s been a great ten years for OpenSRS, and a great ten years for the Internet as a whole. We’d love to hear from you as well! What’s your memories of the early days? How did you come to be an OpenSRS partner, and how did you come to realize success in your business? Comments are open; share your memories.

Techs volunteering with CrisisCamp – Haiti and HostingforHaiti

Developers, crisis communicators, emergency planners, GIS specialists, technology workers, project managers and helpers are uniting around the world to use their skills and Internet savvy to help the Haitian earthquake victims.

People watched the news, donated money and then asked: can I help?

As a Crisis/Technical Incident communicator for Tucows/OpenSRS, I write all the incident reports, maintenance windows and system status updates for Resellers. Using the Internet tools to quickly get messages to customers is important for our business. Every day I work with some of the best techs in the world to make that happen. Tucows is very passionate using the Internet as an agent for positive change. I joined the CrisisCommons movement because this is a chance to use “agile actions” to help others. The CrisisCommons mission is to use this groundwork to help now and for all future emergencies. This is the power of the Internet flexing its community spirit and heart.

CrisisCamp – Haiti

CrisisCommons was started in 2009. It is a grassroots organization that facilitates partnerships and maintains a network of technology volunteers to respond to specific needs in times of crisis. From this, associated CrisisCamps are created to organize people who want to volunteer their skills to help NGOs, Emergency teams and Non-profit Aid organizations. When there’s a crisis or a need for CrisisCommons to respond, they come together for action.

It has been a heady week since our first CrisisCamp Haiti conference call last week. CrisisCamps sprung up in 6 major US cities last Saturday. Since then the momentum has grown and this weekend 12 camps are planned: from Boston to London, the UK to Bogota, Columbia to Washington DC to Seattle. There are three basic types of CrisisCamp activities: development help, social media (wiki, blog, cataloging, mapping) and general helpers. People are donating their time and helping to tackle projects ranging from OpenStreetMap to Mobile Development to a Haiti Hospital Capacity Finder.

I’m organizing Toronto’s CrisisCamp Haiti. Our first kick-off meeting is Sunday, January 24th, 2010. If you live in Toronto and want to help, please join us. Over at Butterscotch, our sister company, Michael E. Callaghan is contributing screencasts for CrisisCamp.

Our friends and hosting company partners joined together to create Hosting For Haiti. They are working with the American Red Cross to provide support, which may include mobilizing relief workers, sending relief supplies, and providing financial resources for recovery. You guys rock!

Do you want to get involved?

If you want to help, you can sign up for your local CrisisCamp (eventbrite sign-up). You can also follow Crisiscamp on Twitter to hear about all the global action happening.

Crisis Commons site
There’s a daily CrisisCommons conference call.
IRC channel (Random Hacks of Kindness)
Simple things that anyone can do. All you need is a computer, Internet access and some passion.

If there is no CrisisCamp event planned in your city or country but you want to get involved, you can contact CrisisCommons. I am also available to get you get rolling: Heather AT opensrs.com. If you know someone who would like to lend a hand, please spread the word.

Other news on CrisisCamp – Haiti:

Noel Dickover’s interview with the BBC (co-founder of CrisisCamp) [audio file]
Radar O’Reilly
IT World Canada
Article about Techs in the Toronto community