Web 2.0 Workshop
May. 22, 2007 by ravishan
On May 14th, we had a very successful half day workshop on Web 2.0. Ken Wiggin and Sharon Clapp from the State Library gave the keynote speech where an overview of the various tools and how they are likely to impact how the libraries do their business was discussed. After that we had several “booths” where a show and tell on all the different Web 2.0 tools were set up and the attendees were able to see first hand what we are talking about. This was wrapped up with a lunchtime discussion. Overall, I came out of this very encouraged. There were over 70 attendees and many with whom I spoke were able to make connections with one or more of the tools presented and were eager to get going.I want to thank Mike and the members of the Web 2.0 group for organizing this. Now, the real work starts for us… How best to productionize these services and roll them out. As I mentioned in the welcome speech of this workshop, the Web 2.0 tools are not mandatory. We are not forcing everyone to use them. What we are instead doing is help our users find connections between these tools and their capabilities and what the users do and want to do.
Therein lies both a problem and advantage. The problem is that many of us have an inertia to adapting new technologies and unless there is a reason to change, there won’t be adaptation. This is the so called “I have a job to do” argument – everyone has a job to do and they don’t necessarily have the time to devote to learning new technologies for the sake of keeping up with the world.
The advantage of the approach we are taking is that those who see the connection will adapt it first. These are users who feel that some of these tools are likely to simplify as well as enhance some of what they do in their job. The hope is that these early adapters will then talk about it and show it to others and the use of technology will spread.
Web 2.0, like many new technologies, provides us an opportunity to think about how we want to conduct business going forward. Technologies are coming at us at a pace that none of us can keep up with. Whether these technologies affect the end users or back end services such as programming, what should be our strategy in adapting new technologies? We don’t have a well-defined process about when and how to adopt new technologies.
It just happens!!! We have enough people who bring to our attention the newest and greatest technologies; we discuss the appropriateness of these in meetings and hallways and somehow magically they appear in the list of things to do; in some cases the excitement is so high that we drop everything and go after the implementation of that next big thing…
Should we just let it happen or should we think about a different approach? For example, whereas java programming is one of the most prevalent is many other places, we are way behind. Should we care? On the other hand, we are using some of the brand new AJAX libraries that are fairly new in building new applications.
Frankly, I am not concerned because we seem to be doing fine with our current way of operation. If not, please let me know. But it is worth asking once in a while, is there room for improvement?