by Jef Poskanzer

I’m traveling to the Web 2.0 Expo in San Francisco. Over 8000 people attended the first one last year. I hope to have some interesting things to say about the meeting. I have been to several put on by O’Reilly and they are uniformly excellent.

Technorati Tags: Web 2.0

by twoblueday
These three posts run the gamut from exuberance to wonder to doubt to reconciliation:

A Breakthrough In Taxonomy?:
So Much For Taxonomies:
Taxonomies Again — What Behavior Do We Want?:
[Via A Journey In Social Media]

They describe the process of creating taxonomies for a group of communities, an attempt to create some order. The very rapid path this took, from the excitement of a brand new idea, its implementation and then the very rapid feedback all demonstrate the power of Web 2.0. Life moves faster.

The problem here is probably a very old one. Some people feel better with a described space, using tags that mean specific things. The tags define the space. Others like the space to define the tags. There will always be a conflict here, between those who want an orderly desktop and those who prefer an unorganized one, especially if both types are represented in the community.

Neither view has a monopoly on wisdom. As brought out here, it is operational the difference between a search and a browse. Tags make searches much easier and allows people to find the exact information they want. The path to the information is sharply defined.

Browsers like to take a less defined path to the information. They like little cul-de-sacs and interesting dead ends. The surprise of new spaces is innervating for them.

One group will always find what they are looking for. The other will be surprised at the novel things they happen upon.

The approach described here was not satisfactory to the users, they let people know and the leaders of the taxonomy project quickly tried to reel it back in and find figure out what to do. They pulled back and asked “What question are we trying to answer?”

They understood that the problem was really getting new users on board as quickly as possible. Here a taxonomy would help them get started. But there are other ways to help newbies that would not disrupt the established users. Now they can try to fix the real problem.

Web 2.0 approaches allowed them to reach this conclusion in just a few days, rather than months, something that happened in the Web 1.0 world.

We tried this at Immunex, with defined tags being used for research projects. The Bioinformatic people spent months putting together the applications to allow tags to be attached to research projects. They finally rolled them out and they were a failure.

The problem was that the users could not define the tags. They were created by some unknown person. So what happens when a new project did not have an appropriate tag? Do you try and use something close, even though it might corrupt the system? Do you leave it blank, subverting the entire purpose? How do new tags get added? Who decides that they should be?

The tags never really got fully utilized. Research moved too fast to rely totally on pre-defined tags. Different people would categorize the same project differently. Without flexibility, too many projects would just get tagged with ‘Other’ negating the whole purpose.

A useful system has to be respectful of the users. It has to be malleable enough to have both structure and flexibility. It would also encourage browsing as easily as it does searching. Not easy things to do. But EMC will get to it faster by using a Web 2.0 approach.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Social media, Web 2.0

Well, Science 2.0 must be the next full release after Science 1.5.b13, right? Not quite. It takes its lead from applying Web 2.0 approaches to scientific research. So, what is Web 2.0?

In 2005, Tim O’Reilly described in detail what he meant by Web 2.0. Since then, there has been a lot of discussion on just what this means, if anything. So, I am going to add my own two bits to the mix. There really are not many technical differences between Web 1.0 and 2.0. The differences come from how they are used, and how usable they are.

Web 1.0 is static. Web 2.0 is dynamic.

As mentioned in the Wikipedia article on Web 2.0, Web 1.0 was about displaying information. Web 2.0 is about conversations, about participation in the flow of information.

Web 2.0 uses many new approaches for dealing with information including wikis, weblogs, syndication, aggregators, RSS, podcasts, forums and mashups. These often require the active participation of users. They have been used to create hugely popular social media sites, such as Facebook and YouTube, where the very content seen by all is created totally by the users. User-generated content.
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by Wolfgang Staudt
The science exchange:
[Via Science in the open]

How do we actually create the service that will deliver on the promise of the internet to enable collaborations to form as and where needed, to increase the speed at which we do science by enabling us to make the right contacts at the right times, and critically; how do we create the critical mass needed to actually make it happen? In another example of blog based morphic resonance there has been a discussion a discussion over at Nature Networks on how to enable collaboration occurred almost at the same time as Pawel Szczeny was blogging on freelance science. I then hooked up with Pawel to solve a problem in my research; as far as we know the first example of a scientific collaboration that started on Friendfeed. And Shirley Wu has now wrapped all of this up in a blog post about how a service to enable collaborations to be identified might actually work which has provoked a further discussion.
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Open Science is really in the very early stages. It may very well evolve into an important adjunct for research. Collaborations are the prime driver of much of today’s science.

Collaboration is difficult in some organizations. Without it, they will not be able to effectively solve the difficult questions in science today. The organizations that can harness effective collaborations will survive and flourish.

Currently, collaborations are usually set up using well known social networking skills honed through years of experience. Who you know is important. What Open Science holds the potential for, when it comes to collaborations, deals with who you don’t know.

OS can leverage an online community so that connections can be made that would have been difficult or impossible if face time was required. However, it will take a little work, like porcupines mating, to make this really effective.

Part of the reason for this is trust. Science has some free loaders, people who take short cuts. Not many but they can degrade interactions until trust is established. which takes a little time. Reputation is an important part of this trust.

There are many examples of peer reviewers abusing the process and scooping someone on a paper that they held up in review, giving the reviewer time to replicate the work in his lab and submit a paper.

Grant proposals have been abused in a similar fashion. Researchers have altered data in order to fit a preconceived hypothesis. Collaborating with such people is a possible danger without more information.

So trust and reputation will have to be a part of OS, particularly since the participants may not meet face to face. But reputation and trust are a common problem with many Web 2.0 approaches.

One way Web 2.0 surmounts this is the very openness and transparency that gives it power. Ebay, for example, would not work if people did not trust the seller to have the item and the buyer to have the cash. Being able to see how each rates the other help establish trust.

Research has shown that what is important in human social networks is not that the network prevents cheats or freeloaders from existing. It is that the network has a method for identifying them and expelling them from the network if they fail to change.

Now OS will not be like Ebay, which is a site of commerce. But the power of many eyeballs watching the interactions will help apply social norms to the most egregious behavior. A reputation lost in the open like this will be very difficult to untarnish.

Another important aspect of scientific collaborations is power, a very human trait. Scientists with power (i.e. large, well funded labs) sometimes have a very different view of a collaboration than those with a small lab and a single grant. People often tend to confuse large and well-funded with innovative.

Remember well funded does not always mean cutting edge investigations of important questions. Sometimes it means doing what everyone knows will work, just more of it with greater efficiency. Risk is many times found in the smaller labs, not the larger, something also seen in corporations. The unwillingness to take a risk, found in many large organizations, often make collaboration with smaller, risk-taking groups problematic.

But on the Internet, this sort of power is defused somewhat. There is a leveling effect, allowing many more researchers to have an equal voice. On the Internet, no one knows you are a dog. They also may not know whether you have a lab of 40 researchers and $10 million in grants. What will be important are your ideas and how you treat others in the network.

So, watch as this discussion happens out in the open, as it should. Become part of it if you can.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Science, Social media, Technology, Web 2.0

by aussiegall
Web 2.0: Building the New Library
[Via Ariadne]

Paul Miller wrote this over 2 years ago but it amply describes the effects of new approaches will have on an area that lives by dispersing information. It is not the technology that will make a difference. It is an attitude, one that is almost as old as humankind.

Sharing helps the entire team, tribe or town. The collective intelligence of the group is only strong when the umber of information chokepoints is low.

Paul’s Principles of Web 2.0, as discussed here, still apply in almost any endeavor that must deal with information to succeed. Here they are:

• Web 2.0 presages a freeing of data, allowing it to be exposed, discovered and manipulated in a variety of ways distinct from the purpose of the application originally used to gain access.
• Web 2.0 permits the building of virtual applications, drawing data and functionality from a number of different sources as appropriate.
• Web 2.0 is participative.
• Web 2.0 applications work for the user.
• Web 2.0 applications are modular, with developers and users able to pick and choose from a set of interoperating components in order to build something that meets their needs.
• Web 2.0 is about sharing: code, content, ideas.
• Web 2.0 is about communication and facilitating community.
• Web 2.0 is about remix.
• Web 2.0 is smart.
• Web 2.0 opens up the Long Tail.
• Web 2.0 is built upon Trust.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Technology, Web 2.0

by josef.stuefer
6 Drivers of Change:
[Via HarvardBusiness.org]
There were discussions at the ‘Innovation:Change Happens’ panel during the the Newspaper Association of America and American Society of News Editors Capital Conference 2008. Several elements were were found to be common in the change experience:

• The need for a crisis or some kind of “burning platform” to motivate transformational change
• A clear vision and strategy … that allows room for iteration
• A recognition that transformation is a multi-year journey
• A need to put the customer or consumer in the center of the transformation equation
• The critical importance of demonstrating to skeptics that different actions can lead to different results
• The need to over-communicate to employees, customers, stakeholders, and shareholders

While the first three have been mentioned in many programs involving change, the last three are particularly important for any project utilizing Web 2.0 technologies.

The end user needs to be front and center. They are the ones generating the content and effecting change.

Skeptics need to be approached. In fact, many times they can be the best allies. Their skepticism often comes from a healthy sense of reality, since in many cases, talk of change accomplishes little. But, demonstrating what can be done, and how they can have a direct hand in that change, often converts them.

Things usually do not change simply because they should. It has to be sold. People have to be told many times just what is going on and why. Moving change from Early Adopters to the bulk of the organization is what over-communication accomplishes.

Technorati Tags: General, Web 2.0

Bursty science depends on openness:
[Via Science in the open]
Image via Wikipedia

There have been a number of interesting discussions going on in the blogosphere recently about radically different ways of practising science. Pawel Szczesny has blogged about his plans for freelancing science as a way of moving out of the rigid career structure that drives conventional academic science. Deepak Singh has blogged a number of times about ‘bursty science‘, the idea that projects can be rapidly executed by distributing them amongst a number of people, each with the capacity to undertake a small part of the project.
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There will be many of these little experiments – using online conversations for scientific endeavors. Even inside an organization, having an online area to ask for help can be useful. Trying to use email for this purpose has little effect.

There are several ways to  use Web 2.0 approaches to ask/answer questions. An online forum works well if it is substantially populated and active. A forum with a 3 month old unanswered question will not be very useful.

One approach that works is to have one person, or a small group, act as troubleshooters. They probably already exist in many organizations. They are the ones every one goes to when they have a problem in the lab.

They usually have a wide range of knowledge and often work to help people find a solutions to a research problem.

Have these people move online. A troubleshooting page on a wiki would allow questions to be asked. The troubleshooters have the opportunity to find answers. FAQs could be written to respond to the endless questions many troubleshooters receive.

Then when someone asks for some help, there is already a team with responsibility to find answers. And, because all this is open and transparent, the troubleshooters can finally get the well deserved credit they should.

Helping in the lab is generally invisible to others, particularly when evaluation time comes around. It is hard to document just what the help accomplished.

A troubleshooting wiki, on the other hand, would provide ample documentation on just what help was provided and the effect that help had on the organization. The ability to actually document who helps the organization move forward will be very valuable.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science, Web 2.0

by jeffpearce
Progress toward Public Access to Science:
[Via PLoS Biology: New Articles]

PLoS Chairman of the Board Harold Varmus applauds the newly enacted NIH public access policy as a positive step toward ensuring greater access to and better use of the scientific literature.

This very nicely discusses some of the recent changes that are making Open Access to scientific information a going concern. Anyone receiving money from NIH has to deposit the accepted manuscripts into PubMed Central and allow freely available viewing within 12 months.

He also mentions the continuing problem of copyright. Many journals require the authors to turn over all rights to the journal in order to have the paper published. This is becoming a problem in the Web 2.0 world, since the concerns of the author do not often match those of the publisher.

As Varmus writes:

Finally, unless authors modify their copyright agreements with journals before publication—something they are urged to do—journals will continue to retain inappropriate control over the use of their articles, which is currently confined largely to reading online for most articles in PMC.

Harvard has recently addressed this. Faculty members must grant a non-exclusive license to the University for it to post on a website it maintains, one that is open and free. Faculty can opt out of this on a case by case basis if the journal will not permit this.
Varmus comments:

Moreover, the nuisance of writing to the Provost every time a desired journal refuses to conform to the Harvard policy may cause faculty members to rethink their choice of venue, thereby minimizing use of the “opt-out” option.

The journals make their reputation based on the reputations of its author scientists. If a journal has a restrictive copyright policy, these scientists may go elsewhere, putting pressure on the journal to adopt more open access.

This story is not over yet. But it has the potential to revolutionize scientific publishing. Stay tuned.

Technorati Tags: Education, Science, Web 2.0

by cesstrelle74
Web 2.0: In defense of editors:
[Via Bench Marks]

Ran into a few very interesting (and very different) articles last week, which I wanted to comment on (more posts to follow).
First up is a blog posting on Sciencebase that quotes chemist (and blogger) Joerg Kurt Wegner, with a proposal that the solution for information overload is to do away with editorial oversight and instead rely on social software. Now, obviously, I’m heavily biased here, and I admit that up front. I’m an editor, it’s what I do for a living, and if I didn’t think I made valuable contributions, I would do something else. That said, there are several problems with Wegner’s proposal.
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Web 2.0 encourages people to publish quickly, then work to make it better. This may not be the best route for many scientific endeavors, particularly biological ones.

Editors and peer reviewers perform a vital task – they make sure that the science is done right. It requires special training and a firm understanding of the topic to do this well. Even then there are some important mistakes, as recently happened in Proteomics, where a misleading and plagiarized article was published in February.

The editors/reviewers made a mistake in allowing publication. But the errors and plagiarism were discovered by well-educated people (mostly other scientists and interested individuals) on the web. And this information spread rapidly, forcing the journal to publish a retraction and pull the paper.

Science will need editors and peer reviewers from some time, since good science does require careful scrutiny by experts. But, of necessity, this will be a small group of people, who may not see the forest for the trees.

Perhaps some middle ground will be found between the old approaches and the Wikipedia’s of the world. I am sure that the editors of Proteomics, whose reputation was hurt by this, would have liked to have some way for a larger group to review before publication.

Preprints have been the standard way of sending a draft around to colleagues in order to get comments. Web 2.0 approaches using Open Science may hold similar appeal. Many hard science papers (physics, math, etc.) are online at very early points in the process.

The journal Nature is doing something similar with Precedings. These will be important adjuncts to the old way.

They will enhance but never replace. At least for scientists.

Technorati Tags: Open Access, Science, Technology, Web 2.0

by Clearly Ambiguous
Work-in-Progress Culture:
[Via Transparent Office]
Michael Idinopulos makes a great observation – Web 2.0 is collaboration in public. Fewer closed doors and more open hallways.

The real paradigm shift in Web 2.0, I believe, is the blurring the line between publication and collaboration. In the old days, people collaborated in private. They talked to their friends and colleagues, wrote letters. Later they sent emails. All the real thinking happened in those private conversations. Eventually, once the key insights had been extracted, refined, and clarified, they published: books, articles, speeches, blast memos, etc.To me, the really exciting thing that’s happening in Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 is that more and more of those private “pre-publication” interactions are happening in public (or at least semi-public). I think of this as the dawn of the “Work in Progress” culture. We no longer think that something has to be finished before we let strangers into the conversation.

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It will be a difficult transition for many people, since it may be harder for them to totally ‘own’ a work but the pathway that was taken will be available for others to follow; the nooks and crannies. It will be harder to end up in a dead-end when others are there to help you out. And, because of the Long Tail, there will be someone available to help.

Technorati Tags: Knowledge Creation, Social media, Web 2.0