Checking out my Planet Case [1] RSS feed, saw two posts by Brian Gray [2] which struck me as interesting in juxtaposition. Well, actually three posts.
Two are from yesterday. One post [3] from yesterday references a story on NPR's Talk of the Nation [4] about Wikipedia [5]. You can listen to the piece here [6]. To excerpt from that page:
A new wave of Internet sites, like Wikipedia, invite their users to interact and contribute facts and opinion and edit each other. It's a more democratic way to present information. But is it more accurate?
The second one [7] discusses usage of RSS. And the final post references a Business Week [8] piece entitled E-Mail Is So Five Minutes Ago [9]. Brian's comment on the business week article is what caught my eye:
It gives some examples of business usage of wikis, blogs, instant messaging, RSS, and groupware.
Of great concern was the statistic that next year only 8% of all emails will be legitimate. I think this will just further drive alternative technologies such as RSS even harder into everyday usage.
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How many of you use an RSS reader to access headline news, or blogs? I certainly do. I use a piece of software called Akregator [10] which is integrated into my PIM software called Kontact [11].
And Wiki's are great too. There was a learning curve that was fairly steep for
editing wiki's but with the new word processor type apps like TinyMCE here on
RealNEO have significantly reduced that learning curve.
In fact, I have used all of the technologies mentioned over the years. I personally
prefer Jabber [12] for my instant messaging and when
I had my own server in Japan I had it gatewaying into Yahoo and MSN(never had much
need for AOL). I never really got much into groupware though. Like I mentioned in
my BloGTK [13] post yesterday,
I prefer not to use web interfaces.
MShafarenko in a comment [14] to his own post, Engaging Youth in NEO [15], asks:
In that regard, how can technology be used to attract the many versus the niche-interested few?
I am not sure that is the appropriate question though. Technology is already
available to the many, and Case is doing a great job of making sure that their
community is using, or at least has access, to collaborative technology. Ever
seen Case's Wiki [16]? Licensed under a
Creative Commons [17] license even.
As the articles pointed out by Bryan suggest, the technology shift is happening
and being used. The real question is can we leverage that usage to effect
constructive and effective development for NEO. That is what RealNEO is about
really.
However, IMHO, its the interested-few are the ones that are going to create
results. Once results are achieved, then the many will come to the realization
that it works. Leaders will lead, sheep will follow, as long as it is safe. So I
would tend to think we want to identify some of those interested-few and make
examples of them, and their impact locally.
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