And what about 3.0?

I think 2.0 makes a lot of sense.

The basic internet did bring a lot of change. The ability to search and communicate in real-time across the world felt like a momentous change, and I still think it was. So 'basic' is probably the wrong word.

But the new opportunities that web 2.0 provides to collaborate could be even more significant. It can change the way that people work, so enterprise 2.0, knowledge 2.0, HR 2.0 etc all make a lot of sense.

I quite like the analogy to a new release of a software package, because technology is clearly at the heart of the change that we're seeing. And it emphasises that we're looking a very significant change.

But 3.0? I'm starting to see quite a lot of this around, for example in a Melcrum conference next month there's a presentation on Collaboration 3.0: Creating fun and collaborative team experiences to engage employees. I'm not going to go, so I may be being unfair, but there's nothing in the session description to suggest that this is going to refer to a fundamentally different way of operating.

It's all very well to try to show that you're on the leading edge - I do enough of that myself. But I also think it's unhelpful to invent a new name, diluting one that's still emerging, and reducing the likelihood that people will understand either.

OK, if you truly believe in something, fair enough. Most of my readers will live in free countries. I call a lot of what I do human capital management, even though I know most people associate this with measurement or technology, so I risk confusing potential customers of benchmarking firms and software vendors. Tough - the term is important to me and I'm going to continue defining it in my own way.

But web 3.0, collaboration 3.0 etc. I'm not convinced.


See also http://systematichr.com/?p=816.

More on 2.0

I also recommend:

For HR 2.0, see http://mcarthursrant.blogspot.com/.

And for an explanation of everything 2.0, there's a great video on enterprise collaboration software vendor, Jive Software's website (Sam Lawrence on Collaboration 2.0): http://www.jivesoftware.com/products/clearspace/features/videos.jsp

Knowledge 2.0

Sorry I've been a bit quiet here, there will be lots more soon.

Anyway, I've just picked up David Gurteen's Knowledge Newsletter for January and viewed David's latest Knowledge 2.0 presentation, IBM Knowledge Management goes Social presentation on slideshare. It's a great slideset, well, worth a look.

And I absolutely love Sibylle's comments on metrics in Knowledge 2.0:

"Most of us agree KM is about the SOCIAL so if we want a picture of what is happening in our SOCIAL environment we have to use SOCIAL tools, ie/ interviews, stories, theme analysis, anthropoligical observations - all tools researchers in the humanities like history and sociology have been using for years. Let's not take the easy way and give in to the bean counters in organisations with their need for meaningless number but rather educate them on how these techniques will give us understanding of what is really going on. Its only when we have an understanding of things like relationships, human networks, people' own perceptions of what knowledge they need/have etc, as well as the lack or flow of knowledge in their groups that we can create a path of action to improve that which we are trying to improve. Otherwise you'll just have one more KM metric presentation that bores the pants off everyone and contributes nothing to our intended path."

See my HCM blog for much more on this.