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PCMA Day 1: Web 2.0 session

I found the session yesterday afternoon on Web 2.0, led by Corbin Ball, a little disappointing. Yeah, it's interesting that we've gone from 133 Web sites in total back in 1993 to 9 million sites being added each hour now (if I heard that right? Sounds like too much, even for today's world). He skimmed through wiki applications like Google Docs, where you can share and update docs via the Web; and talked a little about blogs, podcasts, mashups, and social networking sites like Facebook et al.

He spent a lot of time trying to show us a demo of Second Life, but had all kinds of tech problems, so we only ended up spending a few minutes touring the MeCo mansion and Virtualis.

When asked how to get non-techies in an association on board with virtual reality worlds like Second Life, Corbin had his best quote du jour: "Remind them that Digital Darwinism is alive and well."

He also breezed through a bit on mobile technology, aka using cell phones to take surveys, do group brainstorming, poll audiences, etc., but again ran out of time to do more than a quick skim.

I think he kind of blew it when one guy asked how to deal with leadership that aren't thrilled with the idea of letting the inmates run the prison, aka letting association members say what they want without the organization getting to control the conversation. His answer was pretty much along the lines of, "well, they just have to get used to the idea." I would have said, "they're already talking about you via their own blogs, social networking sites, etc. Don't you want to know what they're saying and be able to take part in the conversation?" It's just silly to even talk about controlling the conversation. That ship has sailed.

All in all, it was a decent overview of what's out there, but I think he tried to cover way too much in too short of a time. Gee, that never happens at conferences, does it? ;>

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