Explaining Web 2.0 to publishers

In a special edition, Ifra's Newspaper Techniques tries to explain Web 2.0 to publishers and does a remarkably good job making a very complex subject accessible to a general audience in only 26 magazine pages.

I giggled at a transcript of an interview with Tim O'Reilly that cites the "Jengo." Actually, it's Django, a Python development framework named after the famed Roma jazz guitarist Django Reinhardt of le Quintette du Hot Club de France. (Explanation: Adrian Holovaty is a jazz nut.)

Incidentally, O'Reilly has his own explanation of Web 2.0. I think publishers should stick to Ifra's.

Comments

At least Tim O'Reilly decided not to call his new Tools of Change conference "Publishing 2.0"

Somehow I think TOC (sic) is safe from becoming the next big buzzword.

By the way, what do you think of that Flash document format IFRA is using?

I've changed my point of view about PDF-to-web conversions. I opposed them for a long time, largely because they seemed to be something print luddites wanted to do instead of using the Internet for its strengths. I think we're largely beyond that now. When we launched BlufftonToday.com, we converted PDFs to Web display in order to clarify that the purpose of the website was to support community interaction and that the printed newspaper was exactly that. What we discovered is that quite a few people came to the website to read the print conversion and interact in the blogspace.

I haven't spent a lot of time with Ifra's print to Web conversion, but we're preparing to shift vendors in Bluffton to one that can not only support the Flash interface (including the cutsie page turning) but also searchability. I forget the vendor's name; it's a deal Lisa Smith drummed up.