Brian Kelly on Web 2.0 at the AUKML Conference in Edinburgh
One of the talks I was particularly looking forward to at the AUKML conference was Brian Kelly's talk on "What can Web 2.0 Offer?". Brian holds the position of "UK Web Focus" which is based at the University of Bath, and he has been a self-confessed 'web enthusiast' since 1993. His role seem primarily to be an evangelist for web technologies, travelling around the UK presenting to different audiences how new technologies can help them.
The thrust of his presentation to the AUKML crowd was to introduce a fly-by whizz-through of all the web 2.0 buzz applications and formats, and also to suggest practical ways in which small professional organisations could use them to their advantage. For example, he illustrated how instead of using flip-charts where one person can control the pen during workshops, he now runs workshops using the "interoperable" wiki, so that not only does everyone have an equal opportunity to edit and contribute, but the data captured is not stuck on paper and filed, but subsequently available online.
He also pointed out how these new applications can be used by a small body like AUKML to access services they couldn't provide for themselve - like using Gabbly.com to set up a conference based chatroom for free. The so-called "Web 2.0" applications also provide a lot of oppotunity to promote events inexpensively, through blogging about an event and using RSS to distribute the content, to using something like Upcoming. He pointed out where AUKML were missing a trick - despite their unique namespace, a technorati search for the organisation before the conference produced only stale results, and they were yet to put their imprint on Wikipedia.
None of these things required the time consuming and expensive process of procuring a whole new content management system, nor the buy-in of a disinterested and over-worked IT team.
Brian and I had spoken before the event, and so we were able to demonstrate a couple of the ways these tools can be used to collaborate - which was also a theme of my presentation at the conference. I tagged all my photographs from the conference 'AUKML2006' and Brian has tagged his slides that way. We also bookmarked all of the resources used in both our presentations on del.icio.us with the tag AUKML-2006 so that the delegates could find them all online again in one go. Sadly as the venue didn't have ubiquitous wifi we couldn't quite demonstrate all that in real time.
Brian also alluded to the fact that already there is a bit of a backlash against the "Web 2.0" term, citing how often with technology early adopters predict it will cause a social revolution, sceptics point out that actually nothing has changed, and the truth evens out to be somewhere in the middle. He stressed though that these kinds of web services are not going away, and that it was important for information professionals to understand and experience them - and to take advantage of them.
Brian's original presentation can be found online at http://www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/conferences/aukml-2006/