Two Favorite Presenters

There were two presenters this semester, Gretchen Klebasko and Mike Abbaei, that really grabbed my attention, since they discussed how Web 2.0 technologies fit into their overall, but very different, job responsibilities. I liked how the focus of each of their presentations stayed away from defining the differences between Web 1.0 and Web 2.0 and instead spent more time providing concrete and personal examples of how Web 2.0 technologies have enabled cost reductions in their jobs.

Gretchen's personal stories of hunting down Intellectual Property thieves by using freely available information on the Internet highlighted how Web 2.0 technologies have increased the access to information that in the past was unavailable to the general public. I mostly knew about each source of information that her company used – Google, Google Maps, Domain Name Lookups, phone directories, etc. – and understood the types of information that each source provided. However, it was rather exciting to hear about a specific example where all of these sources were actually used to provide credible information that was leveraged to catch an 'evil' person whose mission was to financially harm her company. Another part of Gretchen talk focused on specific cases that detailed the various new Intellectual Property threats that that companies face in a Web 2.0 world. Hearing concrete examples from industry leaders, instead of just within a classroom setting, further exemplified true Web 2.0 dangers that companies face.

I also found Mike's talk was intriguing, since it highlighted the point in the SDLC where Web 2.0 technologies come into focus – the actual implementation stage. I had never considered that while Web 2.0 technologies can drastically reduce software development time and costs, they don't necessarily help with each and every phase of the cycle. In other words, using Web 2.0 technologies for a software development project is not a magic solution that allows a team to skip through the initial steps (requirements gathering, high level architectural design, etc.) of the SDLC.

I also liked how Mike focused on the bigger picture of how Web 2.0 technologies can be used to form a single community that can tie together various Web 2.0 technologies that a single company might employ. I had always thought that investing funds into building an online community that seamlessly combined all of their various communication applications together could have a very low ROI. What Mike taught me, was the power that a combined community environment could provide in terms of establishing simple and shared access points to information. In turn, this information could be shared to other online communities. This large circle of trust could then be used to help seamlessly connect people with information in order to dramatically reduce the time required to get information and increase the ability to share useful information with the larger online community.