November, month of the Web 2.0 Conference, possibly a month that will bring a lot of reading material, successful cases and example and others not so much. Without a doubt, those of us with a slightly clearer picture will be able to enrich what we already know, evangelize and motivate others to meddle in the benefits that these new tools bring.
But on the other hand, so much theory and articles lose sight of the essential, the application. An ordinary mortal citizen, enthusiastic about surnames 2.0, would ask himself, ok but where do I start…
1º Possibly one of the first tools that help to better understand the 2.0 family, is the creation of a personal blog. And the corporate blogs ?? mmm if you don't understand how a blog works, you may not understand the interactions that can be created with other users and other blogs. There are many tips on how to write a blog, but the approach I promote is using tags, feeds, trackbacks and permalinks. These elements encourage collaboration, sharing and content search, very important concepts in Enterprise 2.0. Examples: Blogger, WordPress
2º Use Office 2.0 tools…. which is Office 2.0, in reality it has nothing to do with the Microsoft Office suite, on the contrary, these correspond to office tools, such as word processor, spreadsheets, creation of presentations, etc… but on the Web, online. These applications promote the distribution and collaboration of content in work teams, its publication and export to different types of files, etc… but the fundamental thing is to understand the interaction of online documents, their storage and categorization. Here again the tags, feeds and especially the wiki format are integrated, which allows keeping a history of changes. Examples: Google Docs & Spreadsheets, the Zoho suite, etc.
3º Another recommendation is to use social interaction platforms, or social networking. These allow you to create personal websites with a series of personalized content alternatives, such as blogs, messaging, photos, videos, etc. These applications help to understand the network effects that result from the connections between the users of the system. The possibility of placing such a personal page on Google is higher than a personal site in html that does not allow collaboration between users. Examples: Facebook
4º Use some mashups, or sites whose value comes from the mixture of various data sources and services. A mashup allows users to offer new value and services, since the benefits of one, two or more applications can be enhanced by joining together. Mixing maps with data is the classic example, but there are other alternatives, too. A web portal can create new content using data that implemented in different interfaces achieve a totally new experience. Examples: Housingmaps (mix of Google Maps and Craiglist)
5º At this point there is already some experience in the Web 2.0 theme. There are practical notions of folksonomies (tags), content syndication (feeds), network effects (network effects), participation architectures (blogs, wikis and social interaction sites), collaboration tools (office 2.0). It also understands how new services and new value can be created, through the effective use of data mixed with other applications. If you have already achieved this level, you can consider yourself an above average user. The remaining step towards business applications comes from discovering the benefits that are obtained. One of the most important corresponds to Collaborative Intelligence and Collective Intelligence.This is nothing more than understanding that organizational knowledge management is enhanced when all staff have simple access to information. Collective intelligence, for its part, refers to the fact that several people can generate more than just one. Therefore, the more they have access to information, the more can be accomplished as opposed to what exclusive and small groups previously accomplished.
A thousand apologies if I theorized too much on the last point, but I think it convenient to understand how the learning obtained with the use of points 1,2 and 3 is integrated.
This does not stop here, without a doubt that the different cases that are developed will give new ideas of what is useful and what elements do not really have a place in companies.
