Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the New Participatory Culture – London – February 2007
Posted on Feb 6, 2007 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Enterprise2.0, General Interest, IBM, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Personal KM, Social Computing | Leave a comment
(As previously shared over in elsua – The Knowledge Management Blog at ITtoolbox)
Tags: Unicom, Social Computing, Social Software, Social Networking, Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Web 3.0, Lee Bryant, Suw Charman, Euan Semple, Phil Bradley, Ian McNairn, Roo Reynolds, Ian Hughes, Virtual Worlds, Second Life, IBM
Phew! I am back ! Last week was one of those weird weeks that I guess I have been having in the last few months. It surely was a very busy at work, trying to figure out where I am with my team as far as activities are concerned for the remaining of the year. Lots of great stuff, indeed, that I am hoping to be able to share with you all as time goes by as some of it has got an external exposure as well.
However, what nearly knocked me down completely was a nasty stomach bug that didn’t leave me with much more energy after work and the usual catchup with everything. So I have been neglecting this weblog a bit since I first needed to get that out of my body, get back in shape and back in full force! Which is what I am actually going to be doing with this new weblog entry.
A big thanks to the few folks who have been contacting me offline asking me what was happening. It is greatly appreciated to find out that there are some folks out there who keep reading off this weblog, who take an interest when I disappear for a few days without no apparent reason. So thanks much, folks! As I said, very appreciated and touching!
Ok, so, back to business. Lots of stuff have been happening all along around the area of Knowledge Management and I am hoping to continue sharing some of that as we move along, but one of the things that I am actually trying to figure out, specially now that we just got started with a new year, is to actually find out which conference events I would want to go this year that would be really worth while attending. And then from there onwards follow up on other events that although I cannot make it to them I am still interested in finding out some more about their outcome and what people thought about.
One of the latter conferences mentioned above that I am surely going to be checking out every so often is one that the folks over at Unicom are organising this very same month in London, February 21st to 22nd. It is titled Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the New Participatory Culture and you would be able to find more information about it over here. As I said, this is one of those conference events that I would have loved to make it, but that, alas, I will not be able to.
Reason why I would be very interested in attending, and if you are in the area during that time, I strongly suggest you try to make it, too, is because the agenda put together for it is rather impressive. There are a few folks whose pitches look very interesting since it is all around the subject of social software and Web 2.0. Like Lee Bryant’s on "Enterprise 2.0 – towards a social infrastructure for collaboration and collective intelligence" or Suw Charman on "Fostering Adoption: A strategy for encouraging use of social software in business" or John Davies on "Combining Wikis and the Semantic Web: moving towards Web3.0".
But then again, there are also some other folks who I have been following up on for a number of years, some of them I have already met in person and some others I am hoping to be able to meet them in real life pretty soon ! Like, for instance, Euan Semple who will be talking on the opening keynote on "What will "businesslike" mean when business isn’t like business anymore?" or Phil Bradley who will be talking about "Practical Uses of Web 2.0 Technologies in a business environment".
At the same time it would have been a great opportunity to be able to meet up with two IBM fellow colleagues: Ian McNairn and Roo Reynolds who will also be presenting at the event. Ian will actually be putting together a case study on "An Inside View On How IBM Uses Social Networking to manage its own precious knowledge." I am sure that this one is going to be really interesting for everyone, but I for sure would love to see that one and catch up with Ian once again ! Last time we saw each other was way back in 2003 ! Too long, I am afraid!
Roo’s session, on the other hand, is about "Web 2.0 and Virtual Worlds" and I am sure that is another must-attend session. Why? Well, not only because Roo is actually quite a fun guy who knows lots of stuff on lots of different subjects, but also because he, along with Ian Hughes (Over at Eightbar), were the first couple of folks who brought the world of the metaverse, yes, indeed, Second Life, into IBM and from there onwards it has been an incredible experience! I would suggest you subscribe to Eightbar if you haven’t done so already to check out what is going on in IBM around this very same area of virtual worlds.
So as you can see from the above text Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the New Participatory Culture would have been an incredible event that I would have loved making it in the end. Plus it would have given me the opportunity to catch up with one of my favourite world cities: London. I guess it cannot get any better than this, so I am looking forward to catching up with it all virtually as I am sure that quite a few of those folks would be telling the whole world what it was all about and how it went, but one thing for sure is that if you are going to be in London during that time I would suggest you try to make an extra effort and try to attend the event, because I know for sure that it would be really worth while all the money!
(Sigh, I guess I will have to wait for the next one…)
Missing the Point on the 2000 Bloggers Affair – Is that What Weblogging Is All About?
Posted on Feb 6, 2007 | Categories: Collaboration, Communities, Knowledge Management, Knowledge Tools, Metablogging, Personal KM, Social Computing | 9 Comments
Tags: 2000 Bloggers, Metablogging, Tino Buntic, Jeremiah Owyang, Zoli Erdos, Megite, Techmeme, Ian Kallen, Link Love, Blog Traffic, Social Networking, Social Computing, Social Software, Weblogs, Web2.0, Knowledge Management, KM, Communities, Collaboration, Community Building
Links? Links ? Links? And worrying about it? Perhaps just a bit too much? Is that what weblogging is all about, folks? I am not sure if you have been following the huge uproar of commentary that has been going on every since Tino Buntic launched the 2000 Bloggers initiative. A lot has been written about the whole effect, not to take into account the good amount of link love that has taken place thus far, but perhaps two of the folks, whose comments have been rather insightful and definitely the kick-off to do something about it, were Jemeriah Owyang’s take in I don’t deserve this Technorati rank (and the other 1,999 of you don’t either) and Zoli Erdos‘ 2000 Bloggers Gaming Technorati and Google.
You can read some more about the whole affair if you check out Megite’s and Techmeme’s take on it. And also worth while visiting and checking out is Technorati’s reaction through Ian Kallen’s weblog post on Breaking the Chains. WOW! Isn’t that enough buzz already about the whole thing? Isn’t that creating many more links and conversation on the topic than the 2000 bloggers initiative on itself? I think I will leave that to you to make the final judgement.
So why am I writing this weblog post you may be wondering, right? Well, I am actually one of those 2000 bloggers who, a couple of weeks back, decided to submit his own weblog as an experiment and see how it would help me increase my discovery of different weblogs that may be of interest to me and which do not necessarily have got to do with the Top 100 or A-List webloggers. After all, a good chunk of the best stuff on the blogosphere is on lesser known weblogs. We all know that. I knew right away as well that people would start linking to it (Come on, we all knew that, didn’t we?! That is what people do in weblogs. They link to each other whenever the opportunity arises) and therefore Technorati would be affected by it at some point.
I was, too! I had several dozens of folks linking to me, perhaps only as an indication of being part of the whole initiative, but not the entire 2000 bloggers. In fact, I am 100% positive that will never happen. People enjoyed the novelty, tried it out for a bit and then moved on. Like we are doing now. However, some folks did comment on it and that is when the uproar came up with plenty of people no longer sure it was actually going to be a good thing after all. Errr, what happened? Why all the fuss now and not right at the very beginning when people started jumping into it? Well, probably because we all thought it was a great idea (Still is!) and even to the point where plenty of us thought about the social networking aspect of gaining more visibility with other lesser known weblogs and perhaps discover the odd one you would want to check out and subscribe to them further. And from there onwards start building up your own relationship(s).
I actually found about 5 of those weblogs that I subscribed to them thanks to this initiative. I am sure I would not have been able to meet up in any other way, so just for that I am glad I am part of such initiative. Even if it has been shut down eventually. To me it has actually succeeded in bringing down to me more visibility on some other weblogs that I may want to visit, or not. And continue building up from there. At least, I am given the choice. Try now to get noticed by the most popular weblogs. That is also another good exercise, I tell you. But is it really worth it? Yes, that is the whole point I am trying to get to with this particular weblog post. Yes, plenty of webloggers get started with their weblogs because they want to be popular, they want to stand out, they want everyone to be noticed and everything. In short, they want links. For them 2000 bloggers has actually been a menace from the very beginning, specially if they were not part of it because they might not have seen it coming.
However, for the rest of us, at least, that is how I see it, it was just a fun exercise to increase our awareness from other weblogs out there that I may want to check out and potentially subscribe to. Yes, that social networking thing kicking in once again. Because after all, I am not too fussed about links. I don’t want to be a popular weblog because everyone is linking to me. On the contrary, I want to be a popular weblog, if ever, because people find that my content is compelling enough to be shared across the blogosphere. They have enjoyed reading whatever article and then decide that it is worth while sharing it with their friends and their own readers. Again, all this not because of the link itself, but because of my content. Myself. That is what weblogging is all about. People engaging in conversations.
And like with any conversation, weblogging is a long time investment. It is something you work your way through during the course of many months, or many years because you know that it will pay off big time for you to keep it going. To enrich the way you view things and, much more importantly, the way others interact with you. Link love is just circumstantial and something that, unfortunately, we all have to live with. And perhaps 2000 Bloggers just managed, and succeeded!, to shake the ground once again and remind us why we all wanted to create our own weblog in the first place. Food for some thought, I guess, as to where you would want to take your weblogging, don’t you think? Would you rather have it as a long-term investment (5 to 10 years) or just go with the link love month by month till you get bored or you move into the next thing? Your choice. You decide.
