Raring for Web 2.0

What better way to start off the new year than to brew my TOR for the first two quarters of 2006?

Had a little talk with the boss yesterday on my workload and objectives for this year. Our talk led to blogs and wikis, and how we can use it for our project, the Open Academy for Philippine Agriculture, specifically for the Pinoy Farmers Internet. While I was reviewing the outline of my TOR, two items caught my eye:

• Research and deploy new technologies related to Web 2.0.


• Study and implement interactive web services (e.g. blogs, wikis, etc.).

Hmmm... I don't particularly see my manager as a PHB, but somehow I got worried. Web 2.0? Are you kidding? Heck, we've barely managed to get past "Browsing the Web for Dummies". This is not to denigrate our, er, clients, but for the past two years, we've been training them on basic computer operations (for lack of a better term) — as in how to control the mouse, what is the world wide web and how do you use it to look for porn, I mean, research materials, etc. But Web 2.0?

Okay, let's take this one step at a time. Web 2.0, from what I can scrape from various sources — after wading through all the BS, I mean — is a new step towards content creation. Information flow no longer goes one way, but is now a two-way process. Beyond all the eyecandy (Ajax, SOAP, and all those laundry-related thingies), Web 2.0 (for me, at least) is all about "users" (I read somewhere (Negroponte, I think (in Being Digital)) that calling them "users" is a no-no. Forgot the reason.) contributing content and adding to the knowledge base. Think "mash-ups", "syndication" and "service remixing", to borrow some of the buzzwords.

But user-contributed content is a whole different potato from user-"generated" content. Gathering information from other sources is just one step in content generation. Our content developers here are well aware of this. They've been doing fantastic work talking to field experts and condensing the information into chunks that can be delivered as web content. We're barely scraping the surface, though. While we have a content management system in place, it's still a long way off from actually reaching our audience. Our recent website metrics are mediocre at best. And now the PHB, er, project manager wants users to contribute content, use blogs and wikis?

That is not to say that we can learn a lot from farmers. Field practices are always good sources of information, aside from the usual R&D channels. But how will we convince field technicians, extension workers and farmers to blog and edit wikis, among other Web-2.0-ish content-contribution strategies?

I don't mean to sound skeptical — I'm a believer: it'll make my job a whole lot easier if content can be delivered this way — but I have serious doubts on how Web 2.0 "technologies" can be deployed, project-wise. Okay, it's easy to set up a blog and a wiki, but to put content in them coming from users other than our content developers?

One basic speedbump in our travel towards Web 2.0 is access. Majority of our audience do not have internet access, even phone lines and computers. Yes, we have SMS, but you can only squeeze so much in one text message (and language is mangled in the process). (As an aside: one discussion in the PH-MobileApps group explores the possibility of web-to -SMS integration. Interesting read.) While we are working towards providing connectivity to farmers' groups (we have two pilot sites already), we still have a long way to go.

I'm not losing hope, though. We have other grassroots Web 2.0 stories from which to get lessons. Dion Hinchcliffe, for one, is optimistic that "grassroots use of Web 2.0 ideas will be a big story".

The "two-way Web" is the way to go. I just hope we can hitch along for the ride. Now, back to work.