It's a fascinating experiment in eating your own dog food but it's not without historical precedent. Many novels throughout time were sold by subscription (Dickens, for example) and Samuel Johnson once took nine years to write the Western world's first authoritative printed dictionary. It was supported by subscription along the way and the end product weighed 20 pounds. That project was initiated by the publishing industry in response to massive disruption caused by the proliferation of printed materials and a need for a reference book defining common words. Perhaps this period of technological disruption will be well suited for another experiment in a similar format.

Another Way to Do It

When lean startup guru Eric Ries went to market this month with his new book The Lean Startup: How Today's Entrepreneurs Use Continuous Innovation to Create Radically Successful Businesses, he decided to use a traditional print publishing strategy (with Crown Business as publisher), in order to gain maximum promotional support and distribution.

Ries used his widely-read blog and social media presence to build a community of supporters before any part of the book was available - then asked that the members of that community pre-order the book as soon as that was possible on Amazon. The book itself won't be available for two more months - but it's hot on the Amazon charts already. It hit #7 in the best-seller ranks just hours after the pre-order call to action was issued on Ries's blog.

Is that a case of straddling the future and the past? Which kind of strategy do you think will work best in the future, Ries's or Sattersten's?
"This project is much more than just a typical ebook," writes O'Reilly's Joe Wikert. "It's actually a collection of publishing experiments packaged as an ebook."

"The primary case I am making is that we need to bring entrepreneurship back to book publishing," Sattersten the author explains. "We need more experiments. We need to learn from the world of startups."

Sattersen was interviewed yesterday by Jenn Webb on O'Reilly Radar. "Your personal definition for a 'book' can limit your opportunities as well," he said. "If you limit that definition to, say, 224 pages of paper in a 6-inch-by-9-inch trim size, you just made your world a pretty small one."

The experiment speaks to the future but clearly to the past as well, in several ways. "This was the dream of every would-be writer/publisher in the 80s and 90s," says Curt Hopkins, ReadWriteWeb's most experienced and diverse writer on staff, "but the tech for it didn't exist."

The 18th century's Samuel Johnson was well-known and patronized by a handful of that time's most powerful media interests. "Now, a would-be publisher could run a Kickstarter campaign and lay funnels out to a dozen social media properties," says Hopkins. "It still probably wouldn't work, but there is a chance it would, and the whole thing would take an afternoon to completely set up."

Said Open Source for America's David Thomas, "Technologies enabled by software freedoms can help make government IT deployment more secure, more cost-effective, faster to deploy, with greater privacy and the ability to help eliminate vendor lock-in."

Nevertheless, lobbying will be no easy feat as smaller open source companies will have to jockey for position against Microsoft during requests for proposals. Furthermore, in the past government officials have expressed security concerns with open source code. Critics argue that exposed source code can be examined by attackers and therefore poses a risk. Nevertheless, another argument for exposed code can be made in ensuring security. By moving away from proprietary software models and giving free access to a system's source code, governments are no longer dependent on a select few contractors for their defense. Instead, an entire programming community can be deployed to defend against attacks.

One of the government's key open source projects is actually with the National Security Agency. The agency already employs open source technologies to address multi-level security on government machines through SELinux. SELinux was first released as a modified version of the Linux operating system and has since taken on a life of its own as the NSA works with open source contractors to continue to tweak security. While Linux users were at first suspicious that the NSA might be using the code base to spy on their machines, no back doors were detected in the software. Today, thousands of government employees and Linux users protect their machines using SELinux.

Another successful open source government project is Sunlight Labs' Apps for America. In its first year, the project proved a resounding success in displaying how open source government efforts increases accountability and collective solutions. Apps for America yielded a number of great user-generated projects including call Congress Firefox plug-in and a site that tracks filibustering. Director of Sunlight Labs Clay Johnson was celebrated amongst other open source innovators at yesterday's Google O'Reilly Open Source Awards.

Tim O'Reilly said, "An invention has to make sense in the world it finishes in, not in the world it started." As new security risks take shape and new data sets become vital, governments need to consider open source solutions in their quest to provide better citizen-facing services.

If you'd like to contribute to government open source projects, check out Apps for America 2 and Open Source for America.

The conversation with Armstrong turned - several times - to that of politics. Was Armstrong in line to be named the "Cancer Czar" for the President-elect? Would he consider running for office after his athletic career was over? Armstrong shrugged off the questions, saying that cycling was most prevalent on his mind, currently.

Ego

Battelle and Armstrong spent a good portion of the conversation discussing ego, mind, and body in terms of Armstrong's success. In his opinion, mind greatly influences body and ego - good and motivational ego - has a great deal to do with that.

Clearly, no one thing helped Armstrong defeat cancer and win seven Tours, but it was more than just mental acuity. Or, as he stated when couching the need for a balance between the mental and physical: "A donkey will never win the Kentucky Derby." No matter how much that donkey wants to win.

Well known for his competitive spirit, Lance shared some insight into the internal forces that drive him and why, ultimately, he feels that "Winning is living. Losing is dying."

Twitter

The conversation took a decidedly techie bent when Battelle mentioned that Armstrong had been twittering from his phone back stage. Armstrong admitted that even with his brief use - less than two weeks - he found the service interesting.

The Twitter talk even revealed some of Armstrong's competitive side as he quipped that the "dude who runs the shoe store" had more followers than he did, referring to @Zappos, the Twitter account for Zappo's CEO Tony Hsieh.

Entrepreneurial Spirit

Armstrong has started livestrong.org, a non-profit designed to "inspire and empower people affected by cancer." And the efforts around that property helped drive him to found a for-profit company, livestrong.com, as well.

The .com organization focuses on any challenge facing health and healthy lifestyles, from smoking to obesity to disease, encouraging users to "Dare to change your life." In Armstrong's view, the ability to help people change their lives has the potential to reduce the number of health problems in the world today.

"If .com is successful enough," he said. ".org will be out of business."

A very charismatic and driven individual, Armstrong makes for an interesting interview. Battelle is clearly a fan and that lends a great chemistry to the conversation. Armstrong is among one of the most inspirational figures in modern sport - and that translates well into inspiring all of us.