I am liveblogging the conference at the moment and what better place to start than a session on Web 2.0 .

Bruce McEwen, a blogger on law firm issues, is the speaker.

He talks about three stages leading to where we are:

1. Web 1.0 which is about surfing
2. Web 1.5 which is about searching
3. Web 2.0 is about sharing

His point is that web 1.0 is consuming professional content, but the web 2.0 is about user-generated content.

Good phrase: “Data is the next Intel Inside”

Collective intelligence and collaboration - he makes the point (via an example about Wikipedia tracking IP addresses of contributors and showing the resolved DNS) that if you can remove anonymity, value of the data increases, because one understands the provenance.

Blog styles:

1. Short form, which is like a link aggregator
2. Long form - “discursive essay approach”

RSS Feeds - data containing reports

Two types of value propositions for blogs:

1. Internal - to facilitate communication
2. External - Demonstrate expertise and influence public conversation about the firm.

In re negative comments - allow them and don’t get defensive.

Lawyers are clamoring for wikis internall

Blogs at the intersection of

1. KM
2. Business Development
3. Assets (Existing resources)

Best practice for a wiki (though he extends this to all “web 2.0″): “To control quality, don’t lock things down - open them up.”

He makes a note on mashups for strategic advantage, but is not that clear on how that really works and it seems off-track the theme of collaborative technologies.

Question 1: blogging as more reflective, think/write/publish. Wiki being immediate and less control. Bruce then discusses the difference between a newspaper and a book - the first being a “first draft” vs the more considered output. Not sure that this is right though, we are really talking about a

Question 2: problem snapshotting dynamic content (wikis and blogs) for e-discovery. Bruce says this is a great opportunity for a vendor (and it might be).

The bullet that got back to me most was Demonstration vs assertion. The idea that these technologies are about showing one’s knowledge, rather than merely describing it. That is a powerful idea that many firms - including my own - can take to heart.