8 January, 2008

Not quite

A few weeks ago, I was asked to advise on the scope of a two-day conference on Web 2.0, primarily aimed at policymakers rather than techies. 

The topic I proposed was whether social networking sites have anything worthwhile to offer organisations, rather than individuals: whether an organisation can credibly use Facebook, YouTube, etc. to engage with (okay, and market to) customers (or in my case, potential students). I don't really know the answer – I was careful to use the word 'credibly' in the foregoing sentence, as I suspect credibility is the biggest risk.

This morning, I received documentation inviting me to attend a conference on 'harnessing social software applications and internal knowledge for effective working practice'. Stripping out the management bollocks ("internal knowledge"?), it's about the use of Web 2.0 apps/sites for collaboration within organisations, 'employee engagement', governance and streamlining working practices. The externally-facing aspect has been reduced to two 40-min sessions.

I'm just glad I declined to provide a session....