Talk:Projects/SDW

The use of the term "Social" as in SDW and SM - its just a thought, but I've been seeing an increasing trend, particularily in e-Gov/Gov2 circles, as well as business, in using the term collaboration in preference to social. It's something I've been thinking about for the last couple of days (esp. since I'm involved in the SM project) and I find myself agreeing with some of the blog sentiments I've seen - "social" - either media or data, does tend to be associated with Twitter, Facebook etc - ie: Social Networking, whereas collaboration is what most .gov types and CIO's understand - essentially working with others to produce an outcome. And whilst they grasp the concept of consultation (we write, you comment) vs. collaboration (you and we write and comment), "Social" still smacks of media, marketing and faddish technologies. And its not just these terms - we're seeing Gov 2.0 evolving into the term Gov2, and e-Gov is being relegate back to it's technical definition of online government services - perceptions change, and I'm just wondering if its not better to anticipate these changes and write for them, rather than for the now terms which may be dated by the time this piece is released?

Would it be better to term things along the lines of the "Collaborative Web" or "Collaborative Data Web" - it's not necessarily a question of semantics in this case, but an observation of how public perception, particularily within the .gov.* community, appears to be changing in relation to these terms.

Prehaps it's just me, but certainly within the Australian .gov sphere, there seems to have always been the view that Social Media is a single facet of the Collaborative web, and that Open Government is more than just web technology - collaboration can happen in so many different ways, including good old face-to-face or via the phone.

I have so many thoughts on this piece/page - will you allow edits? Would this be better done via email?