Taking Web 2.0 to the Office

This class has been a great and rewarding experience for me. Keeping the blog going was something that really got me into figuring out what all the Web 2.0 talk was about. I entered the summer with very little knowledge of what the term meant and why I should care about it. During a class with Dr. Robin last semester, I remember hearing him gloss over Web 2.0 momentarily and did not think my need for information would go much beyond there. Heck, even at that point, I did not realize that I was already using a couple of tools from the genre – Google Calendar and YouTube.

Now, these handy little applications have executed a full frontal assault on my daily life. Over the summer, I have begun using Cozi Calendar to organize my family better. I currently have plans to help my father-in-law take all of the pictures he captured on his Rolling Thunder trip in D.C. and putting together a movie. This movie will be shared with the entire family using YouTube. I’ve also been able to help colleagues in Pensacola with some standardization presentations by working with Google Docs. The really interesting part is that these are merely the tip of the iceberg. It seems as though you could spend an entire year dedicated to working through all of the available tools and not get to all of them. Even if you did, they are multiplying at the cyclic rate.

What does that mean for my future? Well, when I graduate next semester, I will be heading to Headquarters Marine Corps in Quantico, VA for a tour in the Education Command. I fully plan to integrate many of these tools into the daily operation of the shop that I will be running. My hope is that I will be able to provide team results that prove the worth of Web 2.0 to the Marine Corps. From there, I would like to help implement the use of several collaboration tools throughout the Marine Corps’ daily processes.

I will be keeping this blog up – although the updates will be less frequent. I hope that my classmates will be doing the same, as I have learned as much or more from their reviews and suggestions as I have from conducting my own reviews. Thanks to all of you for your efforts and your inputs. Finally, thanks to Drs. Robin and McNeil for their guidance throughout the summer session.