At CxCC - "Central by" for the regulars ;) - last month, I started pitching people on the idea of an entrepreneurial coup of sorts...

If you're not aware, the Mid-Atlantic Business Plan Competition is underway. It's not just underway, it's rolling with full steam towards the big day: 26 April 2008. That day is the no-holds-barred deathmatch of entrepreneur vs entrepreneur. There are presentations in the morning, a round of eliminations, and then the culmination of the entire contest... the finalists get to present in front of a public audience affectionately called the STARTUP SMACK DOWN.

And that audience should be the local DCTech community.

This is part of my coverage of ZendCon07. If you'd like to read the entire coverage, it is available here: Day 0 - Tutorials, Day 1 - Part 1, Day 1 - Part 2, Day 2, and Day 3. In addition, my presentation from Day 1 is available here.

I alluded to it earlier, but one of the best things about these conferences is the discussions that happen over drinks, over dinner, or sitting huddled around an electrical outlet. Unfortunately, some of these discussions have to end there... but the really interesting ones spark new questions. This year I leave ZendCon with more questions than ever...

I had a conversation about leadership within the PHP community. The other person works with a company that knows how to direct development communities and coordinate priorities but that's in a formerly relatively-closed environment. Unfortunately, that doesn't work the same in the PHP community. Yes, we have definite thought leaders who are pushing/pulling the community along. Yes, we have projects and project leaders who are doing amazing things. Yes, we have major companies that support and extend the community. But stop and look at all those groups. None of them have exclusive control. None of them can exist without the others. None of them can cut the others out. They effectively need each other and have to get along to some level. So the question becomes:

The term "Open Source Intelligence" comes from the concept of using public (open) sources to gather information instead of clandestine sources. While it's common for governments and large companies to do this, small companies usually don't. It can be a time-consuming process and therefore not a good fit for a small company... unless you find a small set of highly accurate and relatively complete sources.

In the last 12 months, I've been working with a number of customers - and within CaseySoftware itself - on strategy, product planning, and related aspects. Each of these things requires knowing the state of the market, what's going on in a specific segment, and even knowing details about certain companies. Some of this information is publicly available via product roadmaps, press releases, and even the occassional website but all of this information is highly filtered and scrubbed by PR-types, lawyers, etc.