Open-Source Performance Analysis?

Last year I was told by a fellow performance analyst not to reveal too much information on my blog because somebody can use it for their own purposes (e.g. dashboards, operational definitions etc).  In an industry with limited paid opportunities, you need every advantage.  Thankfully, I don’t need to reveal too much due to confidentially (I can’t just publish my team’s data without permission).  Also, the blog is about what I learnt (big picture wise) and not what I actually did (thus I don’t need to reveal my workflows).

In the past couple of months, I have been periodically watching TED talks and I found there is a trend for open-sourcing (see this link for example).  The open-source movement promotes the idea of free distribution of software and ideas to develop an industry to a higher level.  I thought would this work in performance analysis, where you need every advantage over your competitors?  Should I be more open in what I do in my blog?

Recently, Darrell Cobner wrote a post about the importance of an on-line presence and it sparked a discussion about sharing ideas.  That led Josh Bryan to write in a LinkedIn discussion about this very issue:

I am not sure whether open sourcing will be fully adopted in performance analysis because of the need to gain “the edge”.  However, I have benefited from open source software and ideas, namely LongoMatch (see link and link) and numerous dashboards (see link) so I would like to give back to the performance analysis community.

At some point in the next couple of weeks, I will write a blog post about one of my workflows and it will hopefully add to the discussion and community.