social media – Page 5 – Just thoughts

Yesterday saw the announcement of Google’s new technology architecture – Google Wave. Already – and this is testimony to the power of socialmedia – there’ve been a deluge of blog posts about Google Wave and what it could mean to the development of online communication and collaboration. As a starting point you should read Tim O’Reilly‘s excellent briefing of what the technology is all about.

What was really interesting was then (courtesy of a link from @r4today) going to watch him talking about “web2oh” on fora.tv. He discussed a wide range of futures and innovations including the legacy of twitter, and what Google was going to need to do to change to its emergence as a technology of real immediacy and online collaboration. That interview took place on 2nd April 2009, and now just over a month later, we have a response.

I’m listing a few early resources below for reference of what did actually emerge within 24 hours of the announcement hitting twitter!

Mashable (the blogging platform of Pete Cashmore) was particularly prolific … Could Google Wave Redefine Email and Web Communication?, Twave: Google Mail + Twitter and then unashamedly Google Wave: A Complete Guide

Tim O’Reilly followed up his first post with Google Wave: the Early Days. There were then blog posts from Ray Valdes (from Gartner) who was also present at the Google I/O event who indicated the possibilities, but also the barriers to adoption within the enetrprise, and other consultants such as Dennis McDonald who commented on the topic and who raised some other interesting ideas about the emergence of soft project management toolsets.

For my part, I’m not a technologist anymore, but I can recognise innovation when I see it. Google Wave will do for communication, what Google Maps and then more importantly Google Earth did for mapping. Phew!

My work life all of a sudden took a different direction yesterday, and I’m really excited about it. With the arrival of a new IT Director the opportunity had already presented itself for me to increase the amount of time I spent on strategy and engagement and reduce the amount of time I spent on front-line services.In my new role I will be charged with …

– Further development and communication internally and externally of our strategy; doing this in ways that continue to facilitate the overall cohesion of the Directorate and the quality of our co-working with Schools and other Directorates.

– Fostering new ways of working in the University that exploit both MW E and the ‘web 2.0’ world more generally.

– Communicating the value of the Directorate and the benefits of the Directorate’s work University-wide.

– Further developing our external contacts with other institutions, benchmarking us against other HEI’s nationally and internationally, spotting good practice for us to draw on and building positive mutually beneficial alliances with other organisations across the world.

… now that’s exciting enough, but yesterday it got even better.

I’ve been asked to become the Senior Advisor to JISC on Access Management, details still to be worked out but it’s likely to be a partial secondment; It’s SO complementary to my new role in the University. What’s so important about Access and Identity Management is the role it should play in the transformational change agenda of Universities and elsewhere in the public sector. Identity Management should be at the heart of an institution’s e-Infrastructure. When coupled with access management and membership of the UK Federation, it forms the virtual glue that enables the physical network infrastructure to deliver services and resources seamlessly and transparently to users through portals and single sign-on. So to be associated with something as important as this, you can see why I’m so excited.