The BBC have plans to make their web site more “Web 2.0” over the next few years. The recent Reboot competition was part of this initiative.
Now, they’re trying to pin down exactly what they mean by “Web 2.0”. In order to help with this, they’ve started a discussion on the Backstage mailing list. There doesn’t seem to be an official web archive of the list, so you’ll have to make do with this rather badly formatted one from mail-archive.com.
It’s an interesting discussion that has already covered a lot of viewpoints. Other organisations who are planning to go down a similar route could probably get a lot from this discussion. Kudos to the BBC for talking about this in public.
It’s nice to get such quality feedback from the list denizens, to be honest.The project team have a really strong understanding that web2.0 is a flexible term, with no one definition. Approaching it from the build philosophy seems to be a good a way as any of informing the debate. It gives useful starting points for softer editorial discussions too, where the understanding of web2.0 can be radically different.The list debate has been fantastic, particularly as I’m not a developer or coder myself, so my understanding of the terms is often quite abstracted. I think it can only benefit from public discussion too; I know the BBC is seen as an example of good practice in the wider world, and I think that ‘good practice’ in our brave new world is about behaving in a much more open and networked way.Mind you, I’m just one cog in a fantastically complex machine, so your mileage with that philosophy might vary inside the organisation.My oppinions, not those of my employer, yada yada, you know the score.
My advice to the BBC is not to bother with all that stuff. FogBugz got Ajaxed and it is so buggy it’s not true! They tried to be too clever and ruined a decent product. The BBC should spend its money on content, not whizzy stuff!
I hope they don’t “go Web 2.0”. I hope that instead they carefully determine what their users’ needs are, and how best to serve those needs. Chasing after buzzwords is bad, mmm’kay?