Good to see new CEOs at the Olliance group meeting. I attended the Olliance Group‘s Open Source Think Tank meeting Monday and Tuesday up in Napa. Although I’m not one for fancy resorts or offsite meetings, it was a worthwhile meeting. It’s not a full-blown conference, but rather an invitation-only event that pulls in top entrepreneurs, execs, lawyers and investors from open source companies in order to explore common problems together. The formal agenda includes several different business case studies that are tackled in groups and there were also panel sessions to get the CIO perspective on open source, discuss exit strategies etc. That said, I think its one of those events where the hallway conversations and networking are ultimately more important than the formal sessions. For new CEOs in the open source world, it’s a quick way to ramp up on hot issues around business models and IP issues while meeting peers. There were several new CEOs at this event including Tom Erickson at Acquia, Greg Schott at Mulesource, and some old hands in new roles like Mark DeVisser at Sonatype and Tim Yeaton at BlackDuck. It’s interesting to see how the the discussions have become much more business oriented over the years. I also think it’s exciting to see the “next gen” CEOs, some of whom have been in open source for a number of years, now guiding rapidly growing companies.I’ll try to post some more about the event later on. Meanwhile, here’s a good posting by Eric Barroca of Nuxeo summarizing some of the topics from Monday. Open Source