At Sohodojo we have a few 'words to live by'. They include 'Small is Good' and a corollary, 'Simpler is Better'. As developers, most of us have learned this viscerally with regard to our own programming habits.

But simplicity and intimacy (an aspect of smallness, Miller's "Magic Number 7 plus/minus 3") apply at many levels of our lives.

The Advogato community as compared to the SourceXchange marketplace/community is a clear case in point my recent experience.

Frank Castellucci and I have a small OSS contract at SourceXchange, Spec Writing for Web-based Project Planning.

Visit to the SourceXchange site and see what kind of impression you get about what is going on there. Play a little game of 'Find the developers'... the community that is the 'backbone' of sXc's OSS marketplace. Try to find and get juiced about the projects that sXc has been matchmaker on. It's tough.

You are much more likely to find how they are 'moving and shaking' to spend the $35 million in venture money they have raised. You'll see announcements of all the other movers and shakers they are partnering with and how grand and wonderful their plans are for mainstreaming OSS.

It's not that doing this 'big corporate partnering' stuff is bad. It just should not be at the expense of, or at a higher priority than doing a good job of, their core competency which is developing and nurturing the developer/project community which is the basis of their business model.

The stats of our logs this month tell the tale. Here are the unique visitor sessions referred to Sohodojo (we host our sXc project website) from SourceXchange and from Advogato:

• SourceXchange to Sohodojo: 110

• Advogato to Sohodojo: 1165

(These unique visits are through October 1-20th.)

Simpler is better. With one (politically incorrect) GIF image and some clever programming (mod_virgule), Advogato is helping me (and Sohodojo) network and collaborate more effectively than the 'big guns' at SourceXchange. I am meeting exciting new people with similar research and development interests. Folks are finding out about who I am, what juices me up, and vice versa.

This is very exciting and very interesting... and I am glad to be a part of it.

Finally, if you want to delve into a bit more of the 'Simplicity Movement', check out author Bill Jensen's SimplerWork website which complements his 'Simplicity: The New Competitive Advantage' book.