Find, Meet and Share
The lunch restaurant where I eat most of my lunches has a motto that says "Eat, Meet and Share". I often tend to read it as if it says "Eat, Meat and Share", but that is probably just because I'm usually hungry when I go there. Anyway, I think this motto could just as well - with a little tweaking - be the motto of Web 2.0 and social media; "Find, Meet and Share".
I personally like making the analogy with a lunch restaurant when thinking about Web 2.0. At a lunch restaurant, you socialize with other people at the same time as you are serving your own "functional" need (well, eating). It is a place where you are likely to run into other people and make new acquaintances. It is a place where titles do not matter that much and where it is easy to start a conversation with virtually anyone. Suddenly you might be talking with someone from HR, a customer, the CIO, or a colleague working on a project that shows to have some dependencies to your own. All of these things have happened to me at that lunch restaurant, but they seldom happen at the office space where I am usually working, even though it is an open office environment. Isn't that pretty much what web 2.0 and the whole social media thing are about? That is, an environment where you can get things done and socialize with other people to learn new things at the same time.
I personally like making the analogy with a lunch restaurant when thinking about Web 2.0. At a lunch restaurant, you socialize with other people at the same time as you are serving your own "functional" need (well, eating). It is a place where you are likely to run into other people and make new acquaintances. It is a place where titles do not matter that much and where it is easy to start a conversation with virtually anyone. Suddenly you might be talking with someone from HR, a customer, the CIO, or a colleague working on a project that shows to have some dependencies to your own. All of these things have happened to me at that lunch restaurant, but they seldom happen at the office space where I am usually working, even though it is an open office environment. Isn't that pretty much what web 2.0 and the whole social media thing are about? That is, an environment where you can get things done and socialize with other people to learn new things at the same time.