What are the trends in using web 2.0 tools in the non profit, business, library and education sectors. 

The point of the strategies and tools we want to share is to save time, become more efficient, provide better service, connect with each other more effectively, avoid duplication of effort, etc.

Trends include:

• 2-way flow of communication - the tech is inherently social, collaborative, transparent and interactive
• "guide on the side" vs. "sage on the stage" role for service providers/agencies
• extending the idea of "going to them" online
• expanding our sense of our role, including the skills we have/need to do this work effectively
• combining the best of live, in-person service complemented by online/web-based service delivery

Library 2.0 (from Wikipedia)

Library 2.0 is a loosely defined model for a modernized form of library service that reflects a transition within the library world in the way that services are delivered to users. The focus is on user-centered change and participation in the creation of content and community. ^[1] The concept of Library 2.0 borrows from that of Business 2.0 and Web 2.0 and follows some of the same underlying philosophies. This includes online services and an increased flow of information from the user back to the library.

With Library 2.0, library services are constantly updated and reevaluated to best serve library users. Library 2.0 also attempts to harness the library user in the design and implementation of library services by encouraging feedback and participation. Proponents of this concept, sometimes referred to as Radical Trust expect that the Library 2.0 model for service will ultimately replace traditional, one-directional service offerings that have characterized libraries for centuries.'

Business 2.0

How to Profit from E-Business: An Introductory Toolkit

Change "profit from e-business" to "create an effective e-service" and you have a great overview of issues, challenges, strategies, case studies and checklists/tipsheets for an agency in our sector.  E-business is the use of Internet technology to facilitate doing business. This toolkit demonstrates that not all e-business activities have to be complex or costly to achieve benefits. Small businesses that are new to the world of e-business will find information and tools that will help them get started.

Things to Keep in Mind:

Privacy

Security

Copyright and Intellectual Property

Are We Knowledge Workers or Concept Workers?

You're knowledge and concept workers -  you manage information, and do work where you face unusual situations and need to do more conceptual knowledge work.  Knowledge is more than information - it is understanding unspoken and undocumented pieces of knowledge that people learn through there experience and using that information in your practice. It's well know that only 20% of knowledge is explicit or "published, documented, refered to in policies or procedures. The other 80% is tacit knowledge - it's there but hidden, not documented or discussed in official ways. Think of the complex set of skills you use when you asseess a person for the first time or when your tying to prioritize options or resources for that person. This is the 80% tacit knowledge that you use all the time in your work. The tools you see used in the web sites or blogs are tools to tap into that 80% tacit knowledge, not only from workers but consumers as well. Social media tools can help you get at the hidden knowledge and bring it out for everyone to access.

Knowledge Worker List of Skills:

Needed skills for new media literacy (starting post points to Henry Jenkins New media literacies and indirectly to a white paper):

Settlement Workers, by definition, need these skills to do their existing work.  We are generalists, by nature and need.  Settlement workers are gateways to accurate information. Too much information may lead to underutilization of resources, as application of this volume of information becomes a problem. Clients need to be supported by consulting and advisory services to assist them to understand how the system works, how to pick up information and apply it in a relevant context.  This reality changes the way we look at our roles.

• Work Integration — the ability to leverage social media and personal learning as part of problem solving
• Meta-Learning — the ability to look at your own work and learning processes to continuously identify improvement opportunities
• Simulation — the ability to interpret and construct dynamic models of real-world processes
• Appropriation — the ability to meaningfully sample and remix content as part of work and learning
• Scanning — the ability to quickly scan from a wide variety of sources, to focus on salient details in order to maintain a broad picture and also to focus as needed to salient details.
• Distributed Cognition — the ability to interact meaningfully with tools that expand mental capacities
• Collective Intelligence — the ability to pool knowledge and compare notes with others toward a common goal
• Judgment — the ability to evaluate the reliability and credibility of different information sources
• Transmedia Navigation — the ability to follow the flow of information and conversation across multiple modalities
• Networking Building — the ability to build a network of people who can help with a wide variety of needs
• Network Access - the ability to quickly access your network for a variety of different kinds of needs in different ways using different tools
• Negotiation — the ability to travel across diverse communities, discerning and respecting multiple perspectives, and grasping and following alternative norms.
• Knowledge Work - the ability to search for, synthesize, and disseminate information as part of work processes that captures personal value, builds network, and collects appropriate feedback

I would add the ability to apply the CRAP test to information.

Would it be fair to say that we have a responsibility to build these skills in ourselves? And help build these skills in others?

That's what Learning/Library/Business 2.0 is all about - combining the best of live, in-person service complemented by online/web-based service delivery.

Daniel Pink's book A Whole New Mind: Why Right-Brainers Will Rule the Future contains a description of new age - the Conceptual Age.

http://elearningtech.blogspot.com/2008/11/concept-worker.html

He describes how our society has gone from agricultural to industrial to the information age. But then he describes how we've really moved on past that to a new age where the dominant value for most organizations are created by high-end knowledge workers working on concepts. He calls them creators and empathizers. That is to make emphasis on his focus on the right-brain aspects. But, I actually think we should be focused on the emphasis on the type of knowledge work and the type of workers. In other words...

Concept Work

and

Concept Worker

I've often been a little bothered by the fact that we categorize the a person working in a call center handling customer service requests in the same category as an engineer working in R&D - they are both called knowledge workers. That's not as helpful as it should be. The person in the call center does quite a bit of routine knowledge work. They will occasionally encounter unusual situations and then need to do more conceptual knowledge work. To me it's all about how easy it is to obtain the answers. The harder it is, the more conceptual. Certainly our work around Work Literacy is all about concept work and concept workers.

I'm sure that if I went back and looked at Davenport's Thinking for a Living: How to Get Better Performances And Results from Knowledge Workers and the various categorizations of knowledge workers he would have several ways to describe the difference between someone in a call center and the engineer and the doctor. And while these are more granular, I'm not sure I hear much of it being discussed. That's why I'm liking the idea of referring to work that involves figuring out unknowns as concept work and the people doing this work as concept workers. This more succinctly and clearly differentiates the issue for me.

When it comes to information and technology in your daily work, do you find yourself feeling overwhelmed? Can you easily say yes to some of the following statements?

• I spend a lot of time sifting through irrelevant information to find what I need.
• Not being able to get my hands on the right information at the right time impedes my ability to work efficiently.
• If my information flow increased in the future, I would not be able to handle it.
• I spend too many hours a day conducting online research.

Well, then, you're not alone. The 2008 Workplace Productivity Survey suggests that professionals (in the U.S., for this study) are "headed for an information 'breaking point.'" (review a PDF of their report PowerPoint presentation - 850 KB, 51 pages - but only if you have time!)

Just a few useful tidbits:

While an average workday for white collar workers is 8.89 hours, the survey finds that on average, 7.89 working hours are used conducting research, attending meetings, and searching for previously created documents, and;

White collar professionals spend an average of 2.3 hours daily conducting online research, with one in ten spending four hours or more on an average day.

The study suggests that, to ease this growing burden, employers should be providing workers with the right technology, training and tools to ensure that they need to do their work. One blogger suggests that "Assistance in managing the flow of information - to free up time so they can apply their expertise in pursuit of the organization's goals - is required ... but how?  Is the solution to be found in technology?

Information professionals offer to help establish a REASONABLE flow of RELEVANT information, using their tricks of the trade.  With every reduction in the typical knowledge worker's time spent in unproductive information seeking, they contribute value. Managing knowledge worker information supply is a daunting challenge - get information professionals on it."

Not that this should be current news to you. As far back as 2001, a report called The High Cost of Not Finding Information - PDF format (379 KB, 10 pages - see HTML summary here) told us that "[r]ecent research on knowledge work shows that knowledge workers spend more time recreating existing information than they do turning out information that does not already exist. Some studies suggest that 90% of the time that knowledge workers spend in creating new reports or other products is spent in recreating information that already exists."

What's The Social Technographics Profile Of Your Clients?

Companies often approach Social Computing as a list of technologies to be deployed as needed — a blog here, a podcast there — to achieve a marketing goal. But a more coherent approach is to start with your target audience and determine what kind of relationship you want to build with them, based on what they are ready for. You can use the tool on this page to get started.

http://www.forrester.com/Groundswell/profile_tool.html

A sample result using the tool - PDF.