Prototyping Social Capital

What is Web 2.0?

I'm in San Francisco at the O'Reilly/Battelle Web 2.0 conference, where the central question is what is it?

In a back-to-back lineup this morning, Stewart Butterfield and Dick Hardt, in less then 10 minutes each, spoke volumes more than all other folks combined yesterday.

Stewart tells us Flickr is seeing the daily world through others' eyes, then adding our own.

Dick tells us Sxip is having the ability to verify yourself, in simple and open ways, through others' eyes.

Simply for me, Web 2.0 is coordinating and experiencing the world through others' eyes, then adding our own.

Creative Friction

The cover article in the New York Times Circuits section today is on collaboration -- lower cost ways to find the right expertise to handle exceptions to process, or quite simply, get work done. Of note, it's not all tech firms. Making use of simple group tools is spreading across organizations of all sizes and specialities.