come on in, the web 2.0 is just fine

i just stumbled across a relatively new blog by dawn m. foster named trends in web 2.0, i like her perspective on web 2.0.   on comment in particular caught my eye.  dawn says, "you will not truly understand web 2.0 unless you participate in it."  i totally agree.  the participation may be with other people or just with the databases and interfaces of some environments.

this is key to remember when we talk about web 2.0 with newbies.  as web 2.0 goes mainstream, those of us who have become enamored with it are going to have to be the guides as more and more people want to be involved.

my friends are constantly wondering what i'm up to and i used to make the mistake of talking about my latest discoveries.  "oh, i found this great new chat environment.  it let's me access all my accounts - yahoo, hotmail, blah, and blah, blah, blah......"  zzzzzzzzzzzzzz

now i won't talk about web2.0 unless we're at a computer and I can show them.  watson is so much cooler when you see it working than when you read or hear about it.  show them jon udall's heavy metal umlaut movie about wikipedia and just wait for the questions.  don't expect to get them off the computer if you take them to YouTube or 43places.  i've even had one friend vow to start blogging because I showed him how cocomment works.

what drew me to dawn's blog in the first place was a reference by brent schlenker to her "web 2.0 starter kit" this is a simple but thorough set of activities to help get a newbie up and running in web 2.0.

the advice I give newbies to web 2.0?  dive right in.  the water is just the right temperature, it's never so deep that you can't stop and rest, and if you somehow have any problems, there are lifeguards (other web 2.0'ers) all around.  a big part of what makes web 2.0 so web 2.0 is sharing and helping each other.  so if you get confused or lost, find an faq, a forum, a wiki, or a blog comment and ask for help.  you'll be surprised at how fast so many hands will reach out to help.

 

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Comments

[Brent Schlenker]

Hi Dave,
thanks for the link. I love the title to this post. I just spend an hour with a close friend "showing" her web2.0 and what made it truly click for her was understanding RSS and "aggregation" via netvibes. I'm beginning to find that many people understand one piece of the web2.o puzzle, like blogs, but does take some encouragement and "showing" to help people see the possibilities of the big picture.
Good stuff!

[dave lee]

thanks brent. i'm a metaphor man from wayback. it only makes sense that people get a piece of web 2.0 to start with. we did the same, although those of us at the cutting edge didn't have to deal with taking this all in all at once. we had a little bit of time to figure out blogs, before wikis began to emerge. then rss took off then mash-ups and folksonomies and tagging and social networking. i'm kinda glad i got started early!