Wikipedia in squatter slum - a way out?

The opening keynote was by
Jimmy Wales, founder of the
Wikipedia, who talked about the Wikipedia of course, but also the
Wikia - the online space for community wikis, and the
Wikia search - the open source search solution about to be launched. The 4 principles: transparency, quality, community, privacy. Read more about the
Wikia search mission statement.
The title of his talk: “Web2.0 in action: free culture & community on the move”. Current efforts on the Wikia as well as spreading the use of Wikipedia globally show that Wales walks the talk:
One of his anecdotes really hit home for me: Jimmy talked about visiting a squatters slum in India, where he and Wikipedia colleagues had gone to see how they Wikipedia would help them share information, their culture, et. in their native language. The slum area has no public services at all, risks being "shut down" at any time. Wales arrived and offered to help set up pages in the people's native language. To his surprise, the parents all refused. They had set up schools for the kids on their own (no public system) and what they really wanted was simply for their kids to use the Wikipedia in English - English was the way out for their kids. We heard one interviewed on a video clip who told about using the Wikipedia and only the Wikipedia to pass all his exams. I found the parents' reaction about English versus their native language interesting. For them, the native language was a "silo" that blocked their kids from getting out of the slum - English was seen as the way out. (How might this apply to our global intranets...?)
Search is big and getting bigger - thank goodness!
The other topic which attracted at times even more people than the 2.0 topics is Search. At one point I left a web 2.0 talk to check out the search session next door, and could not get in. Even the standing room was gone!
One other person at the door was very distressed - he'd slipped out to go to the restroom and the doorkeeper would not let him back in! The lesson learned - if you're in a good session, don't give up your seat.
Search topics covered security, privacy, social search, ethics and legality issues and more.
Stephen Arnold, world-renown search expert (especially on Google) and author of
The Google Legacy and
Google Version 2.0 the Calculating Predator, moderated the session. At one moment he remarked that he had conducted a study on search and found that 60% of the surveyed organisations were not satisfied with search.
(Interestingly, this is the same percentage I published in the
Global Intranet Trends Report, which I then dissected in the
Global Intranet Analysis Report discovering that not all companies treat search equally!)
2 much 2.0....?
One of the stated goals of the 3-day
Online Information conference (London) this year is to discuss whether or not 2.0 is a fad or here to stay. New chairman
Adrian Dale posed the question in his opening speech. It is an understatement to say that 2.0 is a key theme this year. Practically every track has 2.0 somewhere in the titles of the talks. Granted 2.0 is a major concept in the net world, but there are still - in my humble opinion - many other basic issues to deal with. In discussing the possible "overdose" of 2.0 with other conference attendees, I discovered that many feel the 2.0 is the lens through which we see the net world today.
Some links to sites about Online Information:
The official Facebook page for the Online Information group - some photos, a couple posters, 453 members in just a few days.
The blog run by Information Today (organisers of KMWorld & Intranets in San Jose every November). A few too many photos of ITI people and not enough of others, but at least they've made the effort of getting realtime information about the conference on to the internet!
I could not find as many blogs as I had expected, given the number of pc's in the conference hall during the talks! Maybe they were doing email...
I met someone tonight who recorded much of the conference and plans to post podcasts - I'll let you know if he does it.
Final note: the conference is very international. In a round table discussion on search, the moderator opened it to Q&A. The first 5 people asking questions were from: Norway, Russia, Ukraine, France (me!), and Israel.
To be continued tomorrow...
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