Enterprise 2.0 Technologies: they're not going anywhere anytime soon

Thanks to Bill Ives and his Portal and KM blog, I've been able to get the gist of the Forrester TechRadar For Vendor Strategists: Enterprise Web 2.0 without paying the $379 it costs to read the whole thing (hurrah!)

Bill reviewed the report and his highlights mention that usage of Enterprise 2.0 software has produced significant success with social networks and wikis, moderate success with blogs, forums, mashups, prediction markets, RSS and widgets (don't they make your beer bubbly?) and minimal success with microblogs, podcasts and social bookmarks.

I'd agree that people appear to connect with social networks and wikis more than, say, podcasts and RSS (vastly underutilised if you ask me), but I would have to read the report to know why the distinction between social networks and forums. Any road up, the top and bottom of it is that in terms of these collaborative software applications "Some were just starting on their journey (microblogs), others had reached their high point (podcasts and forums) but none were on their way down". So the fact that the public sector is only just opening its doors to these tools is not necessarily bad - looks like enterprise 2.0 is no fad.

Apple know their onions: shameless promotion for Podcast Producer

I recently had the pleasure of attending a presentation by a couple of guys from Apple on their Podcast Producer. It's a very nifty tool which takes full advantage of all the great products that come with a Mac (and I love Macs) like GarageBand and enables you to produce and publish a podcast in minutes.

It's easy enough to create a low-tech podcast, but publishing is a bit more difficult, and Podcast Producer has a simple interface for getting around all the fiddly bits. The only down side is that you need a Mac OS X Leopard server to use it.

Apple are really hot on the educational possibilities of podcasting, and work closely with US Universities including MIT and Stanford, to examine the learning possibilities of podcasts. They've developed the iTunes U, accessible from the iTunes store, where you can access 30,000 video and audio files. Easy access learning from top institutions? Go Apple!! (whoops, lapsed into American there :-)

For me, podcasts have been a godsend, and I've now developed quite a vocabularly in Spanish, having been listening to the fantastic Coffee Break Spanish podcast on my commute.

The guy who produces it, Mark Pendleton, was described as a podcast guru by the Apple guys. He started small, but has a phenomenal number of downloads from around the world. It just shows what a powerful medium for learning podcasts can be.

I'm also learning more about photography techniques with the Tips from the Top Floor podcasts - a combination of audio and video casting, which has improved my pictures no end.

From a personal perspective, I think podcasts are the learning tools of the future - another fantastic addition to the e-learning possibilties already available, making anytime anywhere learning a reality and catering from those of us who have an auditory learning style.

All we need now is to persuade those pesky purse string holders to fork out for a Mac and a Leopard server and we're off...

Learning Podcasts

Having received a lovely object of gorgeousness in the form of an iPod nano for Christmas from hubby, I've been trawling the internet for podcasts of interest. I've found some really great ones with a focus on learning, but not so many knowledge type ones.

In the spirit of sharing, here's a list of the podcasts I've found particularly interesting on my no longer dull commute to work and back.

Kineo audio interviews - great interviews from the likes of Jay Cross, George Siemans, Clive Shepherd, Donald Clark. (for any fellow Sheffieldians suffering from the dearth of learning related jobs, Kineo have just opened offices in Sheffield with Wendy Weller-Davies who previously worked with the excellent ex-tata interactive systems as project lead).

The Education Podcast Sampler has some great links...like the George Siemans at the Ohio Digital Commons for Education (ODCE) Conference in 2007

John Husband and Dave Snowden on Wirearchy

That should keep you going for a bit...and it'd be great if anyone has any other suggestions, please do let me know what they are.

All I need to do now is work out how to stop iTunes from putting none iTunes subscription podcasts in the music folder. It's very disconcerting to be biddling along, happily ensconsed in my own personal musical bubble and to suddenly have it burst by something like...

"So Jay, what would you suggest people do to embed informal learning in their own organisations..."

Any solutions to this problem very gratefully received...

Web 2.0 driving forward a different kind of customer relationship

As a Wiggly Wigglers wormery owner myself (I love my worms) I was interested to see this video of Wiggly Wigglers frontwoman Heather Gorridge, long term blogger and podcaster, on her creation and use of podcasts.

It's interesting that she emphasises the point that she only podcasts what she's interested in, that if people are interested in going with her, that's great, but if they're not, they should "listen to something else".

That's a brave attitude, and one that goes against marketing theory - the mantra "listen to your customers" is not one she's considering here. She's driving her own agenda, and people are following and not visa versa. That's what you can do with the internet - talk about what interests YOU and find that others share that interest. But a very different standpoint from a business I think...



Thanks to Rafa for commenting on my last post so that when I followed his link I found this video on his blog (dontcha just love networks).