Recently, I was lucky enough to be part of a discussion panel organised by City Information Group (CIG). We were debating the future role of research and information professionals in the face of new networking technologies, collectively dubbed Web 2.0.
My hat goes off to the information professionals at the event who put their hands in the air and admitted they didn’t fully understand the technology and the issues it presented to their working lives. It’s a brave move in a busy room full of your peers. But it is OK to admit you don’t understand the full complexity of the Web 2.0 plot. I left the conference feeling that almost everyone, apart from my co-panellist Euan Semple and IWR’s own David Tebbutt, was a little shaky on some areas of Web 2.0. I too feel out of touch with RSS and Facebook .
There are a great many different manifestations of Web 2.0 – blogging, wikis, user-created virtual worlds, social computing networks and image systems for sharing videos and photos. Is it any wonder that info pros are, despite their deep natural understanding for information issues, lost in a virtual Sargasso Sea?
At first I was worried that the attendees didn’t fully understand this technology, but as the evening progressed I was re-invigorated to learn that, on the whole, info pros do want to learn and engage with the technology. And that is good news, because if the information community does not, it will lose out, given that the next generation of information users will interact with information in a way so radically different from the way we do.
The first step along the rocky road is admitting what your level of understanding is. I have nothing but admiration for those info pros who admitted to a packed room that they were not part of this next generation, because by doing so, the information community can step back and take a look at what is required to fully embrace the technology.
