In social networks like FaceBook, applications are embedded in the service itself and are not usable outside the service to keep users in the environment. With iGoogle social gadgets, it’s the future possibility of taking the gadgets in any other environment, because Google gadgets are made to be reusable thanks, in particular, to the OpenSocial standard launched two years ago.

So, it’s the opposite of the strategy of FaceBook that Google sets up, the ability to disseminate massively social functions in (pervasive in English) other web services

Google is faithful to his way of growing.

It is also one more step taken by the realtime web: permanent and real-time interconnection of Internet users through its services.

After having precisely defined the global idea of the project as explained in the previous note, we had to complete the website we were responsible of. We won this part of the contract because of our proposed costs and solution given the short notice (less than 8 weeks for the first version), that were realistic unlike other responses to the tender).

We were able to propose this thanks to:

• An offshore development team (reducing costs)
• An agile method of project management (gain speed and quality)
• The XWiki development platform

The set up of an offshore development team

To provide competitive cost of development, Kimind has been working from the beginning with an offshore development team located in China. We have acquired a great expertise on the subject, tested on many large scale projects. The offshore development is a very current topic… It clearly requires a good knowledge of remote collaborative work  and management, and agile methodologies when you are a small team. Which is fortunate, because everyone is teleworking at Kimind !

In addition to financial benefits, the agile operating methodology used with the development team, needed because of distance to avoid skidding, greatly contributes to fluidify the project progress!

Quality monitoring and compliance with specifications , reporting

Our client did not have to directly deal with the development team. A Kimind’s consultant acted as an interface and has been the single point of contact and project management. This avoids the communication problems associated with offshore.

The consultant acts as a coordinator between the different actors (customers, developers, designers …), supports the definition of detailed functional specifications based on feedbacks and monitors quality and progress.

The reporting was done transparently using a collaborative platform website, Google Sites in this case, since it was possible for our customer to follow the project evolution in real time and to give their feedback when necessary. Indeed, developers reported directly their progress there, specifications and other documentations were stored, avoiding any functional misunderstanding.

By the way, we notice that this way of working often helps to make people more sensitive to the “2.0″ working methods, and they often emerge conquered! (Once the apprehension of the lack of an ultra-detailed specification is exceeded (aka “the umbrella”)) ☺

We were able to show a large flexibility. The agile methodology used, based on short iterations and customers’ feedbacks allow us to anticipate and resolve problems quickly, and also to change the specifications throughout the project if necessary, keeping well in mind the imperatives of time.

Finally

We have managed from start to finish the project, from requirements definition to delivery, providing both functional expertise and technical execution. All this, on the basis of very competitive costs due to the offshore development team and the use of the open source XWiki platform for development.

The client was very satisfied by the result that was shown in a trade show less than 8 weeks after starting the project and has fully covered its expectations (functional, budgetary, delays). Feedbacks on the project progress were very positive, particularly concerning the reactivity of different actors and flexibility.

But all this was possible only because of the mutual trust relationship: no one was hiding behind a rigid 200 pages specifications, and everyone (the client, we, developers, designers …) worked with one goal in mind: keeping responsibilities and completing the project. This is for a light project management: a great confidence and reliability of collaborators.

Kimind delivered at the end of summer the first version of a Web 2.0 site on behalf of one of our customers which specializes in car parts equipment. A project we have supported from requirements definition to delivery passing by its executions.

The context

The technical documentation center wanted to launch a platform enabling them to provide their customers with the documentation associated with their products, that is so far stored in inaccessible places, not really available and in different formats: text documents, presentations, videos … Moreover, their partners needed to easily add content themselves, and that customers can efficiently navigate in it. It should also facilitate interactions (comments, rating system …) to eventually create a community around the catalog and make it a reference, without falling into the complexities of many online catalogs.

Obviously we had to share the draft central contribution of Web 2.0 to this project: social networking, user-generated-content, assessment by users.

The first version should be ready for a trade show scheduled less than 8 weeks later…

The first major phase of the project was to define the project in itself and to choose the best solution to achieve:

We first had to identify needs and to establish general functional specifications.

From an original vague idea, requiring a collaborative and participatory vision of the problem, a Kimind’s consultant conducted a brainstorming session to clarify the project, generate ideas by the participants, define the participatory dimension and define all needs associated. He then formalized it and he generated in few days functional general specifications that gave the outline of the project with its Web 2.0 their dimension.

We could then choose the best solution for the project in terms of cost, time and sustainability.

Following this, Kimind quickly moved on Practice (technical recommendation): choice of a collaborative CMS and/or a programming language, advised infrastructure… all this being based on defined needs carried out. Our thorough knowledge of collaborative tools, through our everyday experience (for our customers but also internally), gives us fortunately a complete picture of opportunities, beyond the single dimension of technology.

Because of the short delay, it became necessary to start with a CMS that have a similar architecture to the expected results, and on which it was possible to graft complex modules. We naturally led to XWiki, a second powerful wiki generation, customizable and suitable for specific developments. In addition, XWiki is a French and open-source product!

In a forthcoming note, we will explain how we have successfully completed this project with short delays and very competitive costs…

Stay tuned!

The following : here

(for those who attended presentation this morning, I’ve added two slides about files/email paradigm shift, we discussed about this and I’ve found interesting to add this here)

If you have any comments, don’t hesitate to discuss on this post…

With:

• Marc Benioff, CEO, Salesforce.com
• Vic Gundotra, VP Engineering, Google
• Amitabh Srivastava, Corporate VP, Windows Azure
• Lew Tucker, CTO, Cloud Computing, Sun Microsystems
• Scott Dietzen, SVP Communications Products, Yahoo
• Paul Buchheit, Co-founder, FriendFeed; creator of Gmail
• Werner Vogels, CTO Amazon
• Mike Schroepfer, VP of Engineering, Facebook
• Gina Bianchini, CEO, Ning
• John Engates, CTO, Rackspace

We have already initiated this process with Netcipia two years ago, allowing owners of Netcipia places to monetize access to their places, and their contents, by selling access rights through subscription-based fees or page-access fees. It is certain that more and more people will seek in the coming years to make money with their content, and this slideshow made by Sophocles (publisher of the solution klatcher.com) shows it clearly.

But I think there is a misuse of the term “Web 3.0″ to describe this trend in the presentatino. Web 3.0 is already a term in use with currently two definitions: (1) the semantic web (USA) or (2) the Internet of the objects (in Europe). So adding a third definition is more confusing than another  thing, and the risk for this company is to not reach their goal clearly. I would recommend them to don’t use it.

About Web 3.0, my thoughts are that semantic web is essential of course for the future of the internet, because we’ll need to manage so much information that having mecanisms to structure and automate understanding of this content will be indispensable. But I’m not sure that this will be such a massive users revolution than web 2.0 has been. In the other hand, the internet of the objects, having any object of our daily life capable of interconnect and communicate each with the others, and even with our own environments (social networks, communities, personal organizers, etc…) will be a major usage transformation. In this sense, I think this will be a real revolution for all the users worldwide, like web 2.0 has been, and will lead to be the true web 3.0.

Examgeneral.com is dedicated to the creation of tests or exams online, whatever their field of activity. You can be a teacher, a school, a university, a business, an administration, in short any structure which needs to create tests or exams online and have taken by students, colleagues, employees , etc … examgeneral.com offers a platform dedicated to the creation and taken of these tests.

By default a easy mode allows you to do everything in one step: creating the exam, retrieving the URL and giving it to who will take the exam. You can also create public exams, which will feed the public database of examgeneral and will enable everyone to take public tests in english, mathematics, and any other idea that you will wish to make it public.

But there is also an expert mode, to be activated in the preferences of the “teacher”, which lets you manage classes, assign examinations for these classes, manage courses themselves divided into various examinations, etc… In short examgeneral.com provides a comprehensive management environment for online test and exam craation, where students and teachers will benefit from sophisticated dashboards to monitor their respective progress.

What’s the difference from the numerous already existing online test websites? First it is an open and free website, professional, and hence the mere creation of online testing, we come to the management of classes, students, statistics, deadlines taken examinations, comparison between results, friends social network, etc … All this for free in its public consumer version, without limits. Will only pay the organizations that manage large-scale multiple classes, professors, students, courses, etc … with specific management tools which will be dedicated to them. But it will be for the next version.

Feel free to visit the site and make it known around you. And if you have any feedback, you can share it with the community of users (it is emerging …).

From the original idea to the launch of the website

We obviously put our web 2.0 expertise in designing and implementing examgeneral.com. In the beginning, a simple idea from the founders. We worked together to brainstorm, formalize, evaluate the implications and how to make participatory the original idea. We have also worked together on the business model to make the project monetizable in the long term.

Then we set up a dedicated development team, led by one of our project managers and build from our high performance development center in China. The achievement has been based on our agile methodology that emphasizes the interactive relationship with the customer and the delivery of iterative versions (very short cycles between 1 and 3 weeks max) to promote the dynamic design and guarante a common vision from the beginning to the end of the project.

It is important also to note that hosting is made on the Amazon’s cloud computing infrastructure. It is a know-how we have developed very early at Kimind and that we make available to our customers. The scalability is guaranteed at all times and costs are 100% proportional to the actual consumption of CPU and bandwidth.

First, a private alpha was built, a necessary step because the original idea had no functional specifications and we had everything to build and demonstrate. Then the following versions, like this first beta version, can be realised like packages, now that the functional perimeter is fully well defined. This is one of the forces key points of Kimind to be able to engage in this way on projects from start to finish.

Feel free to contact us directly if you have any questions or needs similar achievements that you would like us to cover.

Description

Europe faces a major
demographic challenge! According to OECD, demographic projections are
uncertain, but on middle-of-the-road assumptions, the ratio of people
over 65 to those between 20 and 64 could double between now and the
middle of the century. And in some countries, such as Italy and Spain,
this ageing will be much stronger. The situation is similar in most
developed countries due to the combined effect of the lowering of the
birth rate and the “boomers” reaching retirement age. The phenomenon
will be reaching the emerging economies within a few years as was
discussed during the eSangathan Mumbai
conference.

The
shift from an industrial society to a knowledge society, as well as the
extension of the individual lifespan in healthy conditions, and the
increasing role of ICT in the work process are a set of factors
enabling people to work longer in good conditions. It will be a
personal choice for some people, and a necessity for others. The real
question remains: how to increase the percentage of aged workers
(55-64) included into the labour market?

This was exactly the purpose of the
eSangathan project!

The
project focussed on two particular segments, of this 55-64 population:
one consisting of employees about to retire in the corporate world, and
the other being people willing to be further involved into the labour
market as entrepreneurs. eSangathan analysed
the situation based on two pilots: one in a major Indian corporation,
Mahindra & Mahindra and one at regional level in the Öresund region
in Sweden and Denmark.

ICT
played a major role in the project and in the life of the pilot
members. Indeed, the consortium made the “a priori” assumption, based
on previous experiences, that Collaborative Working Environments (CWE)
could represent a well adapted solution to improve working conditions
and offer a better work-life balance to the ageing workers. The
consortium members will be happy to share with you the results of these
experimentations during the conference.

eSangathan
was also eager to innovate in the field of tools and methods used to
reach the social goals of the project. We all know that the Nordic
countries are the “best in class” in Europe with regard to the
employment of the “seniors”; so, we knew we would learn from our
Swedish, Danish and Dutch partners. So will you when attending the
conference. You will discover how we shifted from a hierarchical
management approach to a heterarchical one.

The
inclusion of the ageing workforce into the labour market becomes a hot
topic in all the countries where their employment rate is low. Indeed,
15 countries out of 27 do not reach the strategic objective of 50%
employment rate for the 55-64 population segment. This brings Europe at
44,7% of employment rate at the end of 2007. The employment rate varies
from 28,3% (Malta) to 70% (Sweden).

Despite
the recent research led by IRDES saying that 31% (The Netherlands) to
67% (Spain) of the 50-64 workers say they want to retire as soon as
possible, one can assume that the working life of the Europeans will be
longer in the future. This economical and social reality has been a key
concern of the eSangathan team. It results in a set of recommendations and proposals which will be presented in the
eSangathan White Paper.

The White Paper will be presented and made available during the conference!

You want to know more or share opinion: contact us at event@esangathan.eu
or visit us at www.esangathan.eu

Register the conference at http://www.esangathan-conference.eu/registration.asp

San Francisco, March 26 2008

Netcipia, a Web 2.0 company founded in 2006 by Bruno de Beauregard and Miguel Membrado (former co-founders of Mayetic) in Palo Alto, has
launched the new version of its free online participative platform.

This new version boasts advanced wiki-type functionalities that place Netcipia amongst the 10 top wiki platforms worldwide in terms of features and ergonomics.

Better yet! The first Web 2.0 service to offer both free and unlimited wikis and blogs within a single interface, Netcipia innovates again by enabling its users to charge for the online content they provide.

Netcipia place owners can charge for their content by offering:

• Weekly, monthly or yearly subscriptions giving access to the entire Netcipia Place.
• Fee-based access to specific pages within the Place.
• Time-limited access to the Place.

Whereas historically, advertisement has been the only way for users to earn some income for the content they provide, Netcipia
now enables every professional or expert-amateur to use the power of
Web 2.0 to build, expand and manage participative communities as well
as charge for valuable content. In exchange for this service, there are not fixed costs: Netcipia will only charge a percentage for every transaction.

Consultants, teachers, gardeners, architects have already begun using
their Netcipia participative communities as a lucrative business tool,
using one or several of the three payment models available.

However, Netcipia can still be used free of charge to create one or several wiki/blog communities.

Netcipia therefore offers a Win/Win proposition:
Users can benefit from the Netcipia platform free-of charge to build
their community and offer their content worldwide, until they are able
to generate some income by monetizing their content through the use of
the Netcipia Online Expertise Monetization Platform.

It is no more a mystery for anyone that we have entered the Web 2.0 era. Precisely since October 2004, date of the first Web 2.0 conference according to the article in Wikipedia, by O’Reilly, Batelle and Dougherty. This is how it defined this concept of Web 2.0 (Wikipedia) :

• the Web as a platform
• data as the driving force
• network effects created by an “architecture of participation“
• innovation in assembly of systems and sites composed by pulling together features from distributed, independent developers (a kind of “open source” development)
• independent developers (a kind of “open source” development)
• lightweight business models enabled by content and service syndication
• the end of the software adoption cycle (“the perpetual beta”)
• software above the level of a single device, leveraging the power of “The Long Tail“

It is very interesting to note that (according to the same Wikipedia article) :

“An earlier usage of the phrase Web 2.0 was as a synonym for “Semantic Web”, and indeed, the two concepts complement each other. The combination of social networking [...] with the development of tag-based folksonomies and delivered through blogs and wikis creates a natural basis for a semantic environment.”

On the other hand, ScotT Mc Nealy, former SUN’s CEO, declares on February 24 2006 , on the occasion of the twenty four years of the company :

“The biggest industry trend in the IT sector is the move from the Internet world to the participation age [...] With regard to the move away from the “Internet age” to the participation age, in which instant messaging, blogging, e-mail and podcasting are the norm, McNealy said this move was a good and positive thing and would enhance all forms of media.”.

These definitions lead me to a few preliminary comments before entering the subject :

• The term “architecture of participation” has been created first to describe basically the processes of open source development. This is rather evident, since the same processes apply to the creation of content in a broad sense ( there are even a license for using this, called creative commons license), and not just programs.

• “Data-Driven” seems too technical an expression. It is not the “Data” that the users manipulate, but a “Content”. If there were no interpretable meaning associated to the data, the user wouldn’t do anything, and wouldn’t participate. You don’t participate around a relational database of statistical numbers. However, you may participate around a content describing or interpreting these data. This is why, without a confrontation with this definition, at the time, I preferred suggest Content-Oriented as a name to this new vision ( in a note in my blog entitled “the end of the file era, towards the content era”).

• “Semantic Web” has always seemed to me as an “oversized” term. Because semantic signifies meaning, and when you use the word meaning you imply interpretation. However, the Web, and also the technologies derived from it, are still unable to interpret the meaning of the content managed by them. Therefore it is the final user who interprets it. Semantic here simply means structuring some data, like RSS threads, blog notes or wiki pages. It is then better to talk about “Structured Web”. Fortunately the term used is “Web 2.0” and not “Semantic Web”.

• McNealy talks about the “participation age”, and names instant messaging, blogs, email and broadcasting. He forgets among others the wikis, social networks and citizen newspapers , but the error has surely been corrected since. He is right anyway to say that we have entered the participation age.

• And consequences are enormous, not only for our daily activities, but also for our enterprises and our democracies.

Content and Flow

All those who are interested in the Web have noticed during the last two years that something has fundamentally changed. Personally I feel coming back to the source of the internet, in the 1993-1995 era when internet lovers of the time chatted in IRC, exchanged the best tips and tricks from one side of the globe to the other, had extraordinary encounters, etc. This epoch of exchange and human relations seemed to have disappeared with internet’s commercial boom, and here we see that blogs have once again changed everything, since a few years ago in the USA and recently in France, and have permitted once more the creation and emergence of totally interactive human communities. We may call them social groups, interest groups, or give them any other denomination, the result is the same and this is what we are interested in here, these people who would have never gotten together in real life, get to know each other and share a lot in the virtual world, even though they may then continue to the same in the real world.

And so we have entered, at least for the general public, into the content era : products consulted, exchanged, shared, broadcast directly online, with no other intermediate. We are subject to a continuous flow of information through email (note that teenagers almost never use this tool) or through IM and now RSS threads.

We are structuring our lives via this flow of information, through both our individual and collective actions, since all this flow of information come from other people (our enlarged social network = real + virtual relations), even though sometimes timidly, we participate in this flow by gradually making our own contribution (some comments here and there, opening a blog, a public and taggable photo album, etc.)

Is this collaboration? Yes and no, for collaboration has always been meant to be structured and “working” (working with others – on a common task), responding to strict rules established by the community who collaborates. However, we can easily notice that facing such a tremendous flow of information , it is not possible to do structural collaboration, or anyway, it cannot constitute the backbone of inter-human relations. Only participation becomes possible ( involvement, association according to dictionary definitions), which is a wider concept than collaboration.

Participative Web

Blogs, wikis and social networks of relations constituting new Web 2.0 communities on the one hand, and the ability to comment, to create links, to become part of virtual networks, to modify content written by others, to publish one’s own articles in citizen newspapers, to vote online, on the other hand, are all changing the relational mode between individuals, where everybody is both actor, author and reader. This type of relation is quite more than collaborative, it is participative.

Consequently we are all participating, thanks to the internet, in the creation of a continuous flow of content, which gradually reshapes all along depending on the needs of everyone and bring us into a new dimension: the Participative Web.

Many steps have been successively taken since the emergence of the Web, and tools as well as Websites or intranets and extranets have gradually followed these evolutions. The pattern includes five steps :

• Publication

• Interaction

• Exchange

• Collaboration

• Participation

These five steps are like Russian nested dolls, they are nested one in the other, the smallest being that of publication.

The participative mode is unstructured, transverse, evenly spread, non-hierarchical. Paradoxically, structured collaborative tools could hardly find their way in the organizations who are themselves highly structured. In fact it appears after 15 years of producing diverse collaborative work software that it is hard for human beings to work structurally.

Inversely, participative tools, setting practically no structures, and creating an information chaos in large volumes, are rapidly being adopted by users themselves, even though they may be faced with structures and hierarchies established within the organizations (a boss can hardly accept his subordinates make a comment on the Web page he has published, and more so if they edit the content…)

Is this an unchangeable situation? No, the experience of Web 2.0 and the massive adoption by common users show the opposite : this is an unavoidable evolution. And we, who have worked so many years within the collaborative structure, know vividly that the human nature prefers a non-organization to a structured organization, even though cycles of reorganization may follow.

And so we have entirely entered the Participative Web era, commonly called Web 2.0, which due to its use, deeply modifies the relations between human groups, inside or outside structured organizations, and is going to give a blow to hierarchical relations as well as the relations of power in our societies. This can but contribute to an awakening of the creative and live forces from within each of us, on condition we can manage to control them properly in order to remain productive and create value.

Participative Web is then the ultimate step in terms of organization and creation of value. It is going to create its own rules, its own uses, and we are only beginning. Everything remains to be constructed. The enterprise will be badly shaken (Enterprise 2.0 has been in fashion since several months ago) and so will democracy ( Democracy 2.0, discussed for a long time in the blogshere, and maybe working in real life in the months to come).

Let’s get prepared, for the new generation has already entered this dimension. And like all great changes in paradigm, we should get involved in using it in order to understand it, to become part of it, and then be able to benefit from it. Otherwise we would be taking a big risk in staying on the roadside…