"The world is abuzz with social computing: Facebook, My Space, YouTube, Flickr, Wikipedia, blogs, wikis and other spaces powered by Web 2.0 technology. It’s a social revolution, empowering individuals to communicate, share what they know online, and help others locate information that is important to them in both their private and working lives.

Some see all this as a big waste of corporate time, but is it? Is there value in handing over control of collaboration and sharing knowledge to individuals, rather than hoarding it in records systems, knowledge systems, and thousands of network dive folders? Is there a way you can harness this social revolution to help improve our organisation’s knowledge management practices? Is there actually a solid business value proposition for social computing?"

A presentation given at Web Directions User Experience, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

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Matthew Hodgson is regional lead for Web and Information Management at SMS Management & Technology in Canberra. He has over 10 years experience in e-business strategy, information architecture, information management and knowledge management, working with the government and commercial sector to deliver innovative solutions to difficult web problems. Matthew has published papers in the areas of social psychology, has lectured at the University of Canberra on social computing, and is passionate about the way in which technology can positively impact on social change through facilitating interpersonal communication and knowledge sharing.

Here is a presentation given at at Web Directions User Experience, Melbourne Town Hall, May 16 2008, and Web Direction Government, Old Parliament House, Canberra, May 19 2008.

Most great web applications have a few key things in common. But can you name them? Better yet — can you achieve them consistently in your own projects?

In this closing keynote, Robert Hoekman, Jr., author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious (New Riders) describes the seven qualities of great web-based software and how to achieve each and every one of them by learning to communicate through design.

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 Robert Hoekman, Jr., is the founder of Miskeeto, a product development and web design consultancy focused on socially-conscious projects that improve the world.

He’s a passionate and outspoken interaction designer, writer, and user-experience evangelist who has written dozens of articles and has worked with Adobe, Automattic, United Airlines, DoTheRightThing.com, Go Daddy Software, and countless others to create superior user experiences for a wide range of audiences. He also gives in-house training sessions and speaks regularly at industry events like Adobe MAX, Flashforward, SxSW, Future of Web Design, and others.

Robert is the author of the Amazon bestseller Designing the Obvious, which focuses on seven guiding principles of great web-based software and how to leverage them in any real-world project. Learn more about Robert through his blog at rhjr.net.

A presentation on "Enhancing User Experience By Employing Collective Intelligence"

From the HFI April 2008 Newsletter:

"There is a lot of chatter going on about designing the customer experience.

Usable designs – interfaces where the user can do the task – are no longer enough. Today's focus is broader. An individual interface is less important than understanding how the interface fits in the larger system of interactions. We don't create customers, we create relationships with customers.

Establishing a relationship via technology-2-human "conversation" is tricky. Without actually being there, you need to hold up your end of the conversation. This means predicting both where the conversation could go, and knowing how to repair it when it doesn't.

It's well known that humor is an important part of human-2-human interaction. Appropriately invoked, humor can help to establish and deepen relationships. Can humor also help to establish and deepen relationships in a technology-2-human interaction?"

From Boxes and Arrows, March 2008

"In Part I of We Tried to Warn You, three themes were developed:

1. Organizations as wicked problems
2. The differences of failure leverage in small versus large organizations, and
3. The description of failure points

These should be considered exploratory elements of organizational architecture, from a communications information architecture perspective. While the organizational studies literature has much to offer about organizational learning mechanisms, we find very little about failure from the perspective of product management, management processes, or organizational communications."