Today was Web Directions Government 2008. A great conference evolved out of the success of the Sydney event with a specific focus on web and government for those in government.
Here’s my take on today’s presentations:
Breakfast — Jason Ryan
Jason showed us what was going on in the NZ government space with social computing. His message was that we need to plan for social computing because, one day soon, our Ministers will probably be asking us for a please explain. He also reminded us that the job market is so tight at the moment we would be crazy to think that we could just block the tools social computing tools that people use as knowledge workers. What sort of message are we sending new, bright, intelligent people when we say “sorry, but we block gmail and the usual sites that enable you to access your networks that you normally bounce ideas off”?
eGovernment services for government and citizens — Jose Manuel Alonso
Jose suggested we remove the ‘e’ from eGovernment and to ensure that web delivery is part of our mainstream services. With some witty extracts from the series Frasier he also reminded us of the importance of context in an online environment.
Opening up government data — Jenny Telford
Jenny showed us the changes to ABS-mindset from selling Census data to making it freely available. She’s indicated the ABS is moving from products to services so that one day we’ll be able to make mashups of Australian population data. While the ABS fears others may misuse their data, she feels that perhaps they will just have to suck it and see.
GovDex — Ralph Douglas
Ralph showed us the latest in collaboration tools for government. GovDex is a secure medium, rated to protected-level, that offers GIRA and Confluence. If you’re looking for a hosted collaborative environment then this could be the tool you need to engage using the wiki-way with a closed or open community.
Usability - more than skin deep — Lisa Herrod
Lisa showed us that there are different roles in usability that are best suited to different members of the development team — tasks for IAs, developers, designers, etc, to ensure the end result is both accessible and usable.
Social computing and knowledge management — Me!
Conference organiser, John Allsop, specifically asked me to present on this subject. So, I gave it my best. After a rather ordinary effort at IA Summit (probably due to catching the flu), it felt good to have my ‘mojo’ back. Even fellow presenter Robert Hoekman made comments afterward reminiscent of Patrick’s review of my presentation at Oz-IA.
The essential elements of great web applications — Robert Hoekman Jr
Robert, a design minimalist, reminded us that great design has a lot to do with user-psychology and actual, rather than inferred, behaviour. With simple changes, adopting real-world metaphors, you can make important improvements to your websites — even if its just putting a big ‘join here’ button.
Less is more was his mantra.
I had a great time. I met some great people. And I will definitely go to it next year.
For many people, knowledge management is an IT system that sits somewhere and gobbles up documents. Some vendors claim that their Records Management System or their Document Management System will do all your knowledge management, and for us KM practitioners this focus away from people and to systems has led to nothing but trouble for a decade.
Knowledge management is, first and foremost, about people. It’s not about software. It’s about storytelling, having a coffee and sharing war stories, about getting together after a difficult project and doing “lessons learned”, and even about watching a video to learn techniques from other sporting teams. If you can get your people together to share the important bits inside their heads then you can ensure you’ve got ways to equip people with the information they need do successfully do their jobs in an information-demanding world.
The people-centric part is why the boom in social computing tools out of the Web 2.0-sphere is so exciting. In the modern world, people just don’t have lots of time to get together and chat, so a system that supports the way people tend to share information, that is, in a social-way, is vital.
Gary Hayes of Personalize Media has written an interesting piece on Web 3.0. He suggests that the web is becoming a more immersive environment in which real-time collaboration and communication is becoming more and more important.
We’re just starting to see that now with Web 2.0 — pushing the boundaries of information sharing from being physical, centralised and controlled by organisations, to decentralised, collaborative and controlled by consumers, and now more often in virtual-spaces.
For the evolution of the web, it means a move from an interactive platform to one that is immersive, semantic and intelligent:
Web 1.0 - unidirectional and “push”. E.g. traditional brochureware-style websites
Web 2.0 - interactive - “push” + “pull”. E.g. Social computing websites like MySpace, Wikipedia, and Facebook
Web 4.0+ - semantic world with intelligent agents and adaptive information
The real benefits to users are just starting to emerge, with online spaces to work and share information, technology that truly supports information anytime and anyplace. Society is also witnessing the emergence of digital natives who are born ‘technology aware’ and expect to be able to use the same technology they take for granted in their social lives in the work environment. The resultant evolution of society and machine may be an online environment for Web 3.0+ not too dissimilar to that imagined by Masamune Shirow’s Ghost in the Shell — immersive, pervasive, virtual and ubiquitous.
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knowledge management, presentations, social computing, social psychology, web 2.0 | 
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Posted by magia3e
