I went along to the IIA –Irishdev.com – DJMG web 2.0 event in the Morgan hotel last night.

It was very interesting to see this Irish Developer movement. There was a real sense of new beginnings. I got talking to Fergal Breen, of Irishdev after the talk. We both agreed that Web 1.0 was full of people that got involved without knowing what they were doing. The post 2001 downturn in the IT sector has shaken all of these people out of the picture. Employers want people that really know what they are doing and that is an important aspect of web 2.0.

Is this the next generation of web design?

I hope it is.

Will it change all of our lives?

Lets participate and find out.

As Paul Browne reiterated in his lecture, web 2.0 is all about choice and communication. People need to feel that they are in control. The freedom to personalize web page (Google Personalized Homepage) or simple the freedom of information. To know what a company knows about you and that you can remove the information if you wish.
We have to move away from an era of “big brother is watching us” and start trusting big brother.

How are we going to gain this trust?

Choice, freedom, honesty.

There are going to be many challenges to face along the way. We have new Architectures and User interfaces to learn. We also have the ever present issue of security to overcome. It’s not going to be easy but it is going to be fun.

One short term goal that I learned from last night is this:

If I want my web site to join the web 2.0 paradigm, I need to increase my font size, round the edges on all my boxes and blog, blog, blog…..