According to Jason

Web 3.0 is defined as the creation of high-quality content and services produced by gifted individuals using Web 2.0 technology as an enabling platform.

I remember saying something very similar quite some time ago, but I’ve since changed my mind. There must be more to it than that. Before getting straight into Web 3.0, I’ll start by providing my brief definition of Web 2.0.

From a technology perspective

Web 2.0 can be described as technology which enables end users to create content on the Web more quickly, easily and cheaply. Examples of such technology include blogs, wikis and platforms such as flickr.

From a marketing perspective

Enabled by technology, Web 2.0 can be described as consumer behaviour influenced by consumers. We no longer live in an era where brand owners are in total control of their own marketing. Consumers now find it quicker, easier and cheaper to communicate their opinion about products and services, which in turn, influences other consumers.

What is Web 3.0?

One thing is for sure, it has got to be something more than the ability to do all of the above, better. Let’s call that Web 2.5 service pack x. Gifted individuals who deliver higher quality content is incremental and continuous in my opinion. So I don’t think we should draw a line in the sand to define a specific milestone for people’s ability to do something better.

Jeremiah Owyang thinks that Jason is right just because Google appear to have a similar opinion. He says

By chance Jason’s definition completely matches what Google (his competitor now) just launched. Because this is a Google product, could we expect search results to favor Google products that are correctly optimized to be found over Mahalo or Wikipedia?

Jeremiah’s first commentator responded by saying

To give something a label like web 3.0 there has to be some major innovation behind it. Minus Googles credibility this product is not bringing anything new. This is more like baby steps in that direction.

I agree.

According to Udi Manber on Google’s official blog to which Jeremiah refers

The web contains an enormous amount of information, and Google has helped to make that information more easily accessible by providing pretty good search facilities.

What a load of crap. Google doesn’t ‘make information any more accessible’ than Excite did during the 90’s. It certainly doesn’t provide ‘pretty good search results’.

The only thing that Google has done for search is turn it into a mass of untrustworthiness. What they do well is mix organic search results with those that have been paid for. What’s worse, is that Google gives precedence to the highest bigger.

Don’t get me started on Web sites that are created specifically to market products they don’t sell, but instead, redirect you to Web sites that do sell them.

Google could just as easily provide more information about Web sites to allow users make better-informed decisions based on the suitability of content on each Web site. The only information it provides (admittedly the only information that any search engine provides today) is the title and description. How do you know which ones to trust? The answer is, you don’t!

My definition of Web 3.0

There is a philosophy enabled by a technology that’s not yet understood or utilized properly and I think the realization of that, should be referred to as Web 3.0. That philosophy is called the Semantic Web. The technology can be described as ‘interoperable metadata that lies beneath each Web page’ (for the techies it’s called Resource Description Framework). It’s not all about RDF, but it is pretty central to the conversation.

By reading additional metadata about Web sites, Google could provide end users with more information from the search results. Wouldn’t it be useful to know which Web sites are appropriate for minors, accessible to disabled users or mobile friendly? Wouldn’t you also like to know at times, which Web sites adopt advertising and marketing best practices, adopt privacy best practices, or have been independently verified by a medical authority?

This is all possible with the aid of metadata. That’s what I call better content discover based on trusted search results. The problem is, search engines such as Google choose not to read it.

That’s what I call Web 3.0

[Update: 00:50] I forgot to mention that Jason and I have discussed a possible collaboration. I believe there’s a place for Mahalo. I also think there’s a need to improve all major search engines (including Mahalo) based on open standards.

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What’s worse, is that most developers force you to install their application just for someone else to use it with you. For example, if you want to add me to your best friends, I need to install the application, even if I have no intention of adding anyone. This is down to poor insight to human behaviour and a huge assumption that this approach will guarantee mass adoption.

Could the new Google approach attract more developers to build more compelling applications which in turn, will encourage more users to join their networks. One thing is for sure in my mind, we’re likely to see some good vertical social networks come out of the Google camp.

Source TechCrunch

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MOK is a claim that anyone can make if their Web site conforms to a defined subset of MWBPs. It comes in 2 flavors, Basic and Professional.

MOK Basic is a series of machine determinable tests and demonstrates that a Web site owner has made reasonable steps to create a mobile friendly user experience.

MOK Pro covers the best practices which are not necessarily machine testable. These are not yet available for public review.

W3C Candidate Recommendation means that the Mobile Web Inititiative (MWI) Working Group is happy with the document as it stands and is publishing it with the goal of getting real world implementation experience.

The MWI Working group has a task force who is charged with delivering a tool for checking MOK Basic conformance. This tool is currently in alpha and can be found here. Try it out yourself and see if your Web site is MOK compliant.

In my next post I’ll commentate on the test cases for the MobileOK Professional Trustmark which I’m heavily involved with. Making conformance claims to both levels of MobileOK will come in the form of a Content Label (AKA POWDER to the W3C).

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Getting other trust providers to adopt Content Labels sooner rather than later will help build the ecosystem more quickly. It will then become more compelling for mainstream browsers and search engines to read this extra Metadata.

Why should you have to visit each Web site to see if they have a trustmark of some kind? You should be able to specify in your preferences; ‘show me Web sites that are qualified by a medical authority’, ‘show me Web sites that allow me to reuse content under creative commons’ and ‘show me Web sites that enable text resizing’.

Furthermore, we’re going to announce new price points which will shock even our partners. This will help get more Web sites certified and more importantly, labelled.

If you haven’t seen the power of Content Labels yet, why not download our Firefox extension to see how the future of search is likely to look like. If you install the extension, please note that it’s a pre-alpha build. You will also need to search for specific terms such as ICRA, Segala and E-consultancy. There are plenty more terms that will bring up labelled sites but that’s enough to get you going.

This is an exciting time inside Segala as we’re about to see our hard work over the past few years pay off by launching a *true* Semantic application that makes a real difference to end users, by enabling more trust, relevance and reliability in search.

If you’d like to help us seed interest, please get in touch and we’ll give you show and tell before making a formal announcement.

Visit our Web site where you can find out more about our Firefox extension.

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I was first prompted to write this post when one of Segala’s Certified Partners directed me to their ‘blog’. I can’t remember why, I think it was regarding the design and it was asking us to review it for accessibility standards compliance.

I was bemused when I was unable to converse with the author by leaving a comment. It wasn’t the first time I witnessed this, but it was the first time it (almost) frustrated me. All I could think of was ‘why?’ Why not just call it a Personal Web site?!

A few weeks later a Microsoft colleague directed me to the same agency’s white paper on Web 2.0 as he found it very interesting. So, here’s an agency that clearly understands Web 2.0 but yet, wasn’t sure whether to enable comments on its ‘blog’ or not. I was delighted to see comments later enabled as a direct result of my personal feedback on the subject though.

Personal Web sites have been around for a very long time. Running commentary on subjects such as movies and sport isn’t a good enough reason to call your Web site a blog.

As Wikipedia states

A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are written in chronological order and commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. “Blog” can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog.

Blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject such as food, politics, or local news; some function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) or sexual topics (Adult blog), and are part of a wider network of social media.

The bit that interests me most is, “The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs.”

Calling a Web site which allows two-way conversations a blog, is a way of benchmarking time, technology and/or techniques. The very same can be said for Web 2.0. Although, Web 2.0 principles have been around longer than the term itself, Web 2.0 enables us to talk about the same stuff, well, sort of. Most of the confusion in my opinion, appears to be around whether people are talking about technology or marketing.

One could argue that if your comment is worthy enough, it should in fact warrant its own post on your own blog, thereby mitigating the need for comments in the first place. However, this is a cop out and doesn’t counter my argument to use the term ‘blog’ when referring to Web sites that enable comments from readers.

Sethi Godin, Dave Winer and Russell Beattie are just 3 people who call their Personal Web sites blogs. Perhaps people like Winer can get away with it as people are very likely to write posts on their own blogs and then link back to his original article.

Perhaps a few people should be given a ‘get out of jail free’ card? Can they get away with being an exception to the rule?

For me, ‘blog’s without comments is just evil 99.9% of the time. There must be a very good reason not to have comments on a full time basis.

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Like most, I wrongly assumed that the vast majority of our readers fully understand RSS and how to subscribe to our blog. I’ve been asked on a number of occasions however, how to subscribe, so I thought it was worth sharing the different options with everyone. I intend to highlight/remind readers of the different options available at the bottom of each post for a short while.

Subscribe only to content that interests you

Subscribe to specific authors

Like our readers, my team and I have different areas of interest, so we provide the option for you to subscribe by author. That is, you can choose to receive updates from specific writers whilst paying less attention to others.

Subscribe to topics of interest

You may wish to receive updates on specific topics irrespective of the author. For example, you may wish to receive updates about my shenanigans, or be notified about subjects such as Web 2.0, Mobile Web, Social Media, Web accessibility or Content Labels.

Subscribe by email

If you’re not keen on RSS, then why not subscribe by email. We will automatically send you updates each day. Just type your email address in the field on the left sidebar and hit subscribe.

Get updates when other comments are left after yours

When you leave a comment on our blog, we’ll notify you whenever someone leaves a comment after you. We do this because other commentators may comment on your view and not just the original author’s. This also helps you get to know other readers who are likely to have similar interests.

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Making it easy for readers to learn about updates to your blog is vital. Subscription is the most compelling method to gain readers and retain them. There are more than 22 million blogs tracked by technorati so competition for readership is buoyant. What’s the point in providing quality content that’s hard to subscribe to and difficult to navigate. Chances are, someone else is providing similar content with user friendly subscription and navigation. So, improving the user experience by providing a friendly navigation and easy subscription method makes your readers feel that you care.

Its not rocket science, a few tweaks here and there in your blog template code is enough. Naturally, if you run out of fuel and need specific help, just post a comment and I’ll help you out.

Allow readers to subscribe to comments

Some readers may only be interested in the ongoing discussion of a specific post, rather than the whole blog. This is especially true when they’ve posted a comment themselves and wish to be updated when others respond.

There are two popular methods to enable comments subscription; comment feed and email subscription. Personally I prefer using both methods at the same time, as that gives readers a choice.

By automatically emailing people who comment on a blog post when someone else has added a comment after them, you are significantly increasing the possibility of them coming back to post more comments. In turn, this increases the possibility of them becoming more active on the blog to possibly even become a member of your community.

Method one: Via comment feed Adding an RSS feed to your posts is very simple. WordPress already has a global comment feed present, which you might have noticed if you installed a new theme. You can access this by placing the following tag in your sidebar (sidebar.php) or footer(footer.php).

<?php bloginfo(‘comments_rss2_url’); ?>

But for showing RSS feed of a specific post and let readers subscribe you need a different function, actually a WP template tag.

<?php comments_rss_link(‘text’, ‘file’); ?>

The “text” parameter represents the anchor text to display the comment’s RSS feed and “file” parameter represents the file the link points to. The default is ‘wp-commentsrss2.php’. Better to leave the file part at the default if you are not playing with your feed core file.

Place the code below in your themes comment section header (usually comments.php) just bellow the #postcomment call (as shown in the image). Replace the Anchor Text to suit your test.

<?php comments_rss_link(‘Anchor Text‘); ?>

Method Two: email subscription

Via email subscription, your readers can be notified by email when a current discussion has been updated (someone leaves a new comment to which they may wish to respond). The advantage of adding this feature to your blog is that you are giving your readers an update alert even when they are away from their feed readers, through email which can easily be accessed via phone or PDA.

The easiest way to to add this feature is using a plugin (Subscribe to Comments). Alternatively you can implement it with a few tweaks in the comment form (Moderate PHP and SQL knowledge necessary).

Place this code snippet just bellow your comment form (comments.php) function call. Note that the classes can be configured in CSS. You can customize it further by adding subscription management, auto subscription (off course all in PHP).

<form action=”http://<?php echo $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . wp_specialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']); ?>” method=”post”> <input type=”hidden” name=”comment_subscribe” value=”comment_subscribe” /> <input type=”hidden” name=”postid” value=”<?php echo $id; ?>” /> <input type=”hidden” name=”comment_ref” value=”<?php echo urlencode(‘http://’ . $_SERVER['HTTP_HOST'] . wp_specialchars($_SERVER['REQUEST_URI'])); ?>” /> <p class=”subscribe_comments”> <?php _e(‘Subscribe without commenting’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?> <br /> <label for=”subscribe_email”><?php _e(‘E-Mail:’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?> <input type=”text” name=”email” id=”subscribe_email” size=”22″ value=”<?php echo $user_email; ?>” /></label> <input type=”submit” name=”submit” value=”<?php _e(‘Subscribe’, ‘subscribe_comments’); ?>” /> </p> </form>

Go the extra mile – Subscribe to categories

This is a very simple yet highly adorable feature you can offer to your readers. You may write about lot of things in your blog but that doesn’t mean your readers are interested in everything you have to talk about, that’s why you sort them into categories. Now if you can offer your readers the ability to subscribe to specific categories, it would be wonderful, don’t you agree? The method is simple, as WP already has a template tag ready to take care of it.

<?php wp_list_categories(‘arguments’); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above] <?php wp_list_cats(‘arguments’); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]

These two functions work almost the same, they dynamically list categories available to your blog. There are two ways you can let your readers subscribe to categories.

By showing a text RSS link beside category name-

<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed=RSS’); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above]

<?phpwp_list_cats(‘orderby=name&feed=RSS’); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]

By showing RSS feed image link beside category name-

<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed_image=/files/rss.gif‘); ?> [for WordPress 2.1 and above]

<?phpwp_list_categories(‘orderby=name&feed_image=/files/rss.gif‘); ?> [Prior to WordPress 2.1]

For feed images do not forget to replace /files/rss.gif with your own feed image location. You have to place these codes to your sidebar template (usually sidebar.php) above </div>.

Good luck and give me a shout if you need a hand with anything.

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I’m writing this post in direct response to a post written by Damien Mulley, columnist for the Sunday Tribune in Ireland. Damien is well respected within the Irish blogsphere and is responsible for creating the Irish blog awards. Ok, so it’s a small country with a few people when compared to the countries that most of our readers live in, but his view (and those who commentate on his blog) is undoubtedly valuable to this debate.

Damien entitled his post Blogger code of conduct? Two words – F*ck off. Note that I replaced the u.

So, I think we can gather from Damien’s post that he doesn’t like the idea of a code for blogs. However, I’m hoping this view is tainted by a misconception so we can have an informed debate, rather than slamming the door on his way out of the room. I also feel that many of the commentators on his blog now have a tainted view based on his own opinion, which I believe, is misinformed.

Damien wrote

When I see companies starting up codes of conduct I think ISO certification, I think of these astroturfing “plan english” campaigns which charge organisations A LOT to write better documents. What happened to Kathy Sierra was horrible but this hysteria does nobody any good and it is sickening to see business people pitch their products at such a moment.

I don’t wish to make any assumptions as Damien hasn’t named any companies. However, I’ll state Segala’s position for the record.

I came up with the idea for a code of conduct (as I’m sure many others did) for blogs a couple of years ago. This was mainly because I saw the potential for mainstream commentators to pretend to be someone they’re not, with the aim of positively or negatively commenting on brands that they either owned, or were in competition with. In doing this, they could have a huge impact on consumer opinion and therefore make an impact on a company’s bottom line. In fact, a PR company was caught doing this recently.

Damien went onto say

Follow netiquette, follow good manners, be civil, or don’t. I really hope that something like this doesn’t spawn some elitist bully-boy standards or code body that does nothing more than charge an admin fee and bully people into signing up. That’s what unions are for. Freedom of speech should not be cut back on because of a few assholes. Why on earth do we need to impose guidelines on ourselves online when we don’t need to offline? A blogging community won’t tolerate people like those that attacked Kathy and will de-link from them and will just shun them and then don’t need a checklist to do so.

Unless Damien is referring to a specific code that I haven’t seen, I think he’s blowing this whole idea way out of proportion. I agree with everything he says about bully-boy standards etc. However, who said that someone, or more importantly, some government was going to impose anything on anyone. I don’t believe for a second a code for blogs could possibly become an ISO standard, nor would I like it to be. I just happen to be a qualified ISO auditor so I have the experience (and qualification) to know that it’s not applicable, relevant, warranted or wanted. Perish the thought even!

What I (Segala) intend to do is facilitate debate, formalise codes and then endorse/promote them through ContentLabel.org. It’s not for us to say what is appropriate or inappropriate in a particular country or for a particular culture; it’s about enabling more relevance and reliability on the Web using technology and new content classification standards.

I’m not trying to police the Internet, or suggest someone should. In fact, I hate the idea of companies such as DoCoMo restricting access to the Web.

The vast majority of blogs on the Web are not likely to follow a code, or even know that one exists. Most blogs are personal ramblings of individuals who like to share their thoughts online. There is however, a small percentage of bloggers who may consider themselves professional bloggers, online journalists, or just journalists (or something else?). Of these bloggers, some of them may wish to promote themselves as professionals of some description, as a differentiator from the long tail of blogs.

I wonder if Damien’s fear of a code was due to Sam Sethi’s reference to my brainchild, in his post about an unfortunate incident which involved Kathy Sierra receiving death threats from other well known bloggers.

Sam wrote

I too am going to do two things.
1. Turn off anonymous comments
2. Work with Paul Walsh to help bring out a bloggers code of conduct which he and I have spoken about for sometime, using content labels.

Please note that I didn’t write a post in response to Kathy’s unfortunate situation to promote the use Content Labels. I didn’t remain silent on purpose either; I just didn’t see the need to talk about a (potential) code just yet. I actually wanted to put some very rough guidelines together before putting something on ContentLabel.org.

It’s very unfortunate that Sam’s post could be perceived as him and I discussing a code due to Kathy’s situation. This is not the case.

So, some people will like the idea, such as Tom Raftery, Dennis Howlett, Jemima Kiss (journalist and blogger for the Guardian) amongst others and as I said earlier, some won’t.

So, my response is simple, if you’re a blogger and you don’t like the code, don’t adhere to it. If you like to read blogs and don’t care for a code of conduct, then this conversation is almost irrelevant. Perhaps more than one code is needed for different requirements, who knows?! The conversation hasn’t really started until now.

So, please feel free to keep an eye on http://contentlabel.org where the code will be created, debated, ratified, formalised, endorsed and promoted by industry.

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The subject matter is ‘how to better engage with the public through the Web’.

When delivering a keynote, I tend to focus on no more than 2 messages. Less is more. That is, fewer messages will increase the likelihood of people remembering.

I intend to cover general accessibility, Web accessibility and blogs, but would like to solicit your feedback.

Accessibility

• Make local council staff more accessible. This can be achieved by putting names and contact details for every service that Councils offer the public.
• Make it easy for disabled users to access the same information as everyone else. This can be achieved by making sure their Web sites are designed and built with best practice techniques in mind. The W3C Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) are the defacto guidelines used to help developers build accessible Web sites.
• Make their content more discoverable for search engines so when users can find reliable and relevant content when searching for local information. This also covers internal search. This is automatically achieved when Web sites have incorporated Web accessibility best practice.

Blogs

I intend to explain the benefits of blogs. My aim is to demonstrate the importance of being more interactive and engaging with the end user. It’s important for end users feel that Web site owners care about them. So, whilst I don’t think every organisation should necessarily have a blog, I do think it’s important for them to understand the importance of putting the end user first, by constantly improving what and how it delivers products and services based on their feedback.

Having said that, perhaps local councils should have blogs where nominated staff talk about bullying, drugs, pregnancy etc. as well as talk about local initiatives.

What do you think? I do realise it might be too late to get feedback but I’d appreciate last minute comments as I tend to change my presentations on the fly based on listeners responses (or sometimes lack of).

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A much needed ecosystem to enable better collaboration is starting to form in London, with people like Saul Klein kicking off initiatives such as OpenCoffee, Robert Loch and Paul Birch running (compelling) Internet People and informal gatherings for Creative People (supported by me from a BIMA perspective) and Sam Sethi running mashup events. And these are just a few of the networking opportunities that attract an average of 80 likeminded opportunists on a regular basis. Then you have intimate and private breakfast meetings which I’ve attended, along with people such as Paul Birch, Robert Loch, Olly Barrett, Saul Campbell, Judy Gibbons, Judith Clegg, Michael Smith, Saul Campbell, Sam Sethi, Daniel Appelquist and more.

Sam wrote a very interesting post that grabbed the attention of some of the UK’s finest investors recently, most notably Doug Richards, one of the originals from Dragon’s Den. Sam articulated what I’ve been thinking about for a while – about the disconnect between investors, brands that can make a difference such as BT and Microsoft, government initiatives and entrepreneurs.

I was interested in the debate it sparked. Each investor articulated their involvement in various initiatives, all of which were unknown to me personally. That’s not to say they’re not compelling and very worthwhile, but it does highlight the necessity for each community to collaborate and not just each person in each community.

During the exchange of comments on Sam’s post, I raised the question about working with government bodies to seek more support to help build the foundation of such an ecosystem. There were no takers and only Robert suggested something similar.

Whilst Enterprise Ireland does very little, the Irish government has decided to roll out free WiFi access across Dublin city. This is the type of stuff that’s needed, but much more needs to happen if budding entrepreneurs are to, well, blossom. Unlike the dragons, I wouldn’t necessarily expect an inventor to have the business acumen to realise the full potential of their product – you can’t be good at everything.

So, whilst I believe entrepreneurs have the ability to sell, that doesn’t mean they have the time to fill in application forms for innovation type competitions to ensure they end up on the radar of people who count, nor are they likely to have time/money to spend on PR firms to do it for them. Congratulations to Nooked though, they deserved to be on the list! I believe the rest of the value chain should seek and discover such talent and help them realise their full potential. It’s not just about the money; it’s about building an ecosystem where better collaboration can take place.

I work with what I like to call ‘widget companies’ instead of trying to build everything. We now work in an environment where ‘plug ‘n play’ companies work together to deliver compelling products and services that don’t cost an arm and a leg to build.

So, who are the ‘The Digital Pioneers’ and how are they discovered?

So, here’s an example of where a vital stake holder could better engage to make a bigger impact.

I was contacted by the British Council this week and asked if I would consider becoming a mentor to a Hong Kong based mobile games company under a new scheme called the ‘Digital Pioneer Programme’. I have accepted because I think it’s a brilliant initiative.

I will also be talking to them about how to improve the programme itself. I’m impressed by their open-door policy to change where necessary.

The Digital Pioneer programme is a British Council programme for digital pioneers in the UK and Hong Kong. Six people, three from each country, have been selected following a competitive application process to take part in the first Digital Pioneer programme.

The Digital Pioneer programme 2007 is focussing on content development and an integral part of the programme is mentoring. Each digital pioneer has been asked to outline the area that they would like their mentor to be working in and the kind of input they would like from their mentor.

The Digital Pioneers from Hong Kong will have mentors in the UK and the UK pioneers will have mentors in Hong Kong. The initial visits will take place at the end of March with the UK pioneers going out to Hong Kong first and the Hong Kong pioneers returning the following week.

The UK pioneers will be in Hong Kong 17-24 March and we would like them to have the opportunity to meet their mentors during this visit. The Hong Kong pioneers will be in the UK 29 March – 5 April and again we would like the pioneers to have an opportunity to meet with their mentors during this week.

My role as a mentor will be to work with the Digital Pioneer and help them to access the market opportunities they are seeking in either the UK or Hong Kong.

I will

• put the pioneer in contact with people in industry who might be interest in buying the services/products offered by the pioneer’s business;
• be able to advise on how to access the market for example who is the best person to contact, what form the contact should take for example email or telephone;
• comment on the business they are running and offer advice on how to run the business more effectively;
• be a sounding board for ideas that the pioneer might have in terms of business or market development.

The (lucky) company

The guy from Hong Kong that I’m going to mentor is Wallis Wong.

Walis set up his first start up company in 2004 and has successfully developed and launched more than 20 mobile games and services including two award winning games, 3G Mopas and Hong Kong War. More information can be found at www.3dynamics.com.

It’s ironic to think that Enterprise Ireland sent 2 of its consultants to review my company’s business recently. Neither of them had any experience in our area. In fact, one of them was so bad I asked him to leave our office in Dublin, as he was ‘wasting my time and I was wasting his’. Note to Enterprise Ireland – please hire people who ‘get the Internet thing’ and stop wasting tons of EU funds in administration fees.

So, how do we get all the relevant stake holders to collaborate and discuss how to implement better collaboration? I know this may sound a little silly, but sometimes you need to plan how you’re going to plan.

UK
May I call all of the aforementioned, the DTI, British Council, Business Link and Gordon Browne to a sit down breakfast? If Gordon is going to pay for it, why don’t we make it the Ivy?

Ireland
I’d like to call upon Enterprise Ireland to have a meeting with those of us who author Web2Ireland blog (I’m one of the authors), Tom Raftery, James Corbett, Judy Gibbons and all the other smart and well connected people I’ve failed to mention by name. I’ll happily host it at one of our restaurants in Dublin.

What are your thoughts?

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