Web 2.0 for the existing/traditional industry?

[Tom Chance]

I'm coming along from BioRegional, an independent charity that invents and develops mainstream solutions for sustainability. We were a partner on BedZED, and are now pioneering sustainable communities around the world with our One Planet Living programme.

How can we sensibly embrace web 2.0 technologies and ideas? This is what I'm interested in exploring at be2camp. We're industry and government facing, not public, and we work on practical demonstrations that we then disseminate to inspire and persuade industry and government figures. We've just published a joint report on "what makes and eco town?" with CABE based upon this experience. We've sent copies to about 100 key contacts, but we don't have the time to enter into the many, many discussion forums/conferences (real world and online) that exist around this subject.

We don't blog or twitter, but we've got an article onto Wikipedia. What's the role of web 2.0 for us?

Discuss, here or on the day! I'd be very interested in people's thoughts.

[Jodie Miners]

Tom, it will be great to chat to you on the day... I think Web 2.0 can benefit you a lot...
I think starting with a blog is the best place to start - you need to get the message out there and a blog helps to give a lot of credibility because it is up to date information and you are engaging with your audience via comments etc.

Many government bodies have had a lot of success with Wiki's also so that may be an area to explore...

[Asesh Sarkar]

Hi Tom,

I think web 2.0 (and social networking in particular) has a lot of potential in today's society to help build socially cohesive and sustainable communities. There seems to be a lot of focus on the physical aspects of sustainability (which is good and paramount in my opinion) but to build a "sustainable community" the social aspects also need to be designed and this is where I think social networking has an important (and largely underestimated) role to play.

I founded ResidentsHQ earlier this year - a social networking website designed exclusively for residents in new developments - and we have achieved some great results in terms of building socially sustainable communities. By way of an example, we launched a private social network at Royal Arsenal (a development with 1,000 properties at present) on behalf of the developer and residents' committee - prior to our launch there was very little interaction between residents and little community activity - since our launch, residents have initiated football clubs, running clubs, poker nights, mother/toddler groups and a party in the local park, to mention just a few. By giving the residents the tools to interact with each other easily, the benefits in terms of community cohesion, spirit and sustainability speak for themselves.

I'll be at the be2camp and happy to discuss further if of interest.

With kind regards,

Asesh

[Phil Clark]

Hi Tom,
I blogged about this yesterday after attending a conference on Wednesday - http://zerochampion.building.co.uk/2008/10/03/web-20-and-the-built-... There's plenty of opportunities there and I think Asesh's example is a great one. For me there is a great opportunity to share data and technical information as well as, just importantly, facing the public.

[Martin Brown]

There are some really good thoughts in this thread, ones which I hope will get further discussion next Friday, and make a step forward in the recognition of the role that web technologies can make in sustainability. I have long maintained that sustainability can only really be achieved through collaboration, by working together, through supply chains, across sectors, and it is the web 2.0 approaches that will allow and enable that. There is also an important role in the concept of open source approach to advance and enable sustainability.

Looking forward to great discussions on the day

[Tom Chance]

Interesting replies.

I can definitely see the potential for strengthening community cohesion, which our monitoring has shown to be a powerful driving force behind sustainable lifestyle choices at BedZED as well as just being obviously good for residents and workers.

Opening up a bit more in our corporate communications is an interesting topic, as is collaborating more with the rest of the industry. These raise a couple of more specific questions to explore...

Are many people in the construction industry, policy circles and other traditional sectors reading blogs, twitter, really networking on LinkedIn (rather than just, say, building a list of connections)? Are they likely to, or are these actually just fads that would take up more time than they're worth? Or will the discussions at be2camp be more relevant to the self-build/ bespoke architecture / crowds?

Is there a need for something like LabourHome or PlanetPlanet to bring together the various voices in the "practical mainstream sustainable build environment" world?

From our point of view, there is absolutely loads of information out there, the challenge is to forge partnerships that lead to practical outcomes - new major sustainable communities built, large-scale retrofit projects with proven financial models carried out, local/regional/national policy changes, and so on. Is this the sort of work that web 2.0 is likely to facilitate, or will it be more helpful for people who need a way of finding and understanding the information that's out there?

I don't mean to sound too negative, but I've always been quite sceptical about the buzz around web 2.0; I have always tried to ground myself in practical, real-world applications like a local arts community I founded around Creative Commons and a free software lab, rather than twittering about the theoretical benefits with a few fellow converts.

I'm very interested to find new ideas and connections that can actually improve our work!

[Paul Wilkinson]

I think there has been a change in the past year or so. Bloggers used to be relatively rare in the somewhat conservative AEC industry, but the adoption of blogs, RSS and even Twitter by the mainstream media has helped make them more acceptable. And with Google Alerts, RSS and the like, relevant articles in the Web 2.0 world are increasingly likely to be picked up by workers in the mainstream industry and its client organisations (including UKgov plc).

Also, it is worth remembering that the mainstream construction industry has historically been somewhat adversarial, rather than collaborative, and it has taken some years for even a small minority of projects (15% was the most recent estimate by Constructing Excellence) to be created by integrated teams. Albeit slowly, the industry is becoming more collaborative, and therefore more likely to embrace Web 2.0. And one reason for launching Be2camp was to try to accelerate this process.

[Tom Chance]

I've blogged a few more thoughts after the conference, which was really a treat, some great ideas.

http://tom.acrewoods.net/blog/2008/oct/whizzy-web-2-0-built-environ...