OK, folks - this is my very first blog ever, anywhere...

Here are my raw impressions from the Web2.1 conference some of us attended on Friday afternoon:
My main goal was to listen and soak in the culture of Web2.X (2.0, 2.1, 2.2 etc).  Toward that end, I noted words, phrases and concepts that were repeated often and appear to be defining characteristics of Web 2.X.   Many of these reiterate what we’re hearing from people here inside CM/TS and are in our plans for site redesign.  Hearing them from a new round of voices gives them added weight in my mind and awareness of what we’re aiming for.
Here’s my list:

• Sandbox
• Creative Commons
• Knowledge Conversation / Knowledge Café
• Plant a seed rather than dictate an agenda
• Do what you’re passionate about
• It’s about play
• Software enables people to do things *together* online (emphasis mine)
• There’s a lot of interest in using technology to let people find events that will attract people like themselves (vs letting people find people like themselves on line and then leaving it to them to figure out a physical meeting place)
• “Structured blog”
• Search capabilities: some desire to look for info and have returned a spectrum of related ideas and material  -- not something that simply matches the words you already know to use in your search.  Searching to locate info vs searching to learn
• Open API’s grew from hacker mentality
• The web currently holds *islands of multimedia content that need to be connected*
• Desire to connect to “my data” from anywhere vs desire to have single profile that can be used by multiple applications, with user control over what aspects of profile are available to what apps / vendors – see www. attentiontrust.org
• Tools need to be simple and they need to be “right”
• Overall motivation appeared to be what’s for the common good
• Cultural norms: smart, not aggressive
• “All tagging tools suck”, we need a better one
• Blogs are both to get information out (to whomever’s reading) and to get info *in* (eg post-Katrina efforts)
  

Sites/Products that caught my interest: