Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory culture

EU conference on social network software and web 2.0.

"Social Tools for Business Use: Web 2.0 and the new participatory culture

The adoption of social software / Web 2.0 ideas by large organisations has begun, and it is going to be a game changing development. Many are leveraging the benefits of social software to address immediate business issues, rather than just for the novelty factor. According to Business Week, "Potentially, these Web 2.0 services could help solve some vexing problems for corporations that current software and online services have yet to tackle."

Web 2.0 has been defined as any web site that provides value through the actions of its users, and as such includes Blogs, Wikis and other forms of collaborative or social tools. Blogs can bring great involvement and transparency when used in an organizational context. The originator becomes real, human and influential, while the new, participatory culture gives power to the users and draws them in to taking ownership of the published material.

Benefits of attending

The successful businesses of the future will be complex, adaptive, agile, proactive, and creative. The aim of this conference is to assist staff at all levels to exploit the new technologies for business benefit. In particular:

• Discover how Blogs and WIKIs change the traditional models of managing knowledge and how they can support purposeful social networks
• Explore the use of podcasting and RSS feeds to target customers with clearly defined interests
• Find out why IBM and other organisations are investing time and money in Virtual Worlds
• Learn how to plan a strategy for encouraging use of social software in business
• Hear how to protect your legal rights and your reputation within blogging and other social media
• Learn from the practices of those who are achieving real business success using social network tools"