Last week I managed to sneak out of the office for a few hours to attend some of the sessions at Toronto Tech Week, held at the Metro Toronto Convention Centre.

One of the many well-attended programs included a panel discussion hosted by Sequentia Environics: “Future Forward: the digital customer experience in 2010, 2015 and beyond.”

The panelists included:

• Parth Shukla, Director Interactive & MultiChannel Marketing, Bell.ca
• Sulemaan Ahmed, Director of Digital Marketing at Harlequin Enterprises
• Jay Goldman, Vice President, Marketing, Zerofootprint
• Steve Mast, Vice President and Managing Director, Delvinia
• Brendan Kenalty, Loyalty and Retention Programs, Research in Motion

The panelists were asked their opinions on a number of predictions about the state of the Internet in 2010, 2015 and beyond. Given the pace of change we’ve seen over the past decade and considering the current economic turmoil, it’s a pretty tall order to expect anyone to accurately predict what the world will be ...

Last week the inventor of the World Wide Web, Sir Tim Berners-Lee, gave a keynote address at the Linked Data Planet conference in New York.

Since bringing us Web 1.0 he's been busy working on his next vision - Web 3.0, commonly referred to as the Semantic Web. The Semantic Web extends the World Wide Web such that the semantics of information and services on the Web is defined. In the Semantic Web a computer understands the meaning and context of words. For example, a Google search based on this principle would understand the question, understand and analyze all knowledge available, and link the two.

From a technical and standards perspective, central to making the Semantic Web possible is keeping information free and available to use in the Linked Data format. Said Berners-Lee, "We all want to do stuff with data. Let's get it on the Web and do stuff with it, and have one standard for doing that. Linked data is a very simple set of rules of putting [this data] on the Web."

There is a dedicated team at ...

Solving the Social Media Conduct Challenges

Every transformational technology introduced in the workplace has had an impact on how we do our jobs but has also challenged the existing rules that govern our behaviour.

Web 2.0 is just the latest technology to emerge in the enterprise that transforms how work is done. The rapid pace of technological change has many organization’s legal and HR departments struggling to understand it and develop appropriate policies to guide and govern it. More often than not the knee-jerk reaction is to "ban it now and sort it out later" (http://www.thestar.com/News/article/210014)

However in social media technologies - control of these applications is more likely in the hands of the end-users, and not within the restrictive controls of the IT department.

The potential for social media in the enterprise – for sharing information, spreading ideas, promoting innovations and collaboration – is tremendous. As employees increasingly clamour to use these tools at work the HR, ...

This white paper from Helix Commerce and Allstream provides an introduction to Web 2.0 tools and technologies, highlights Web 2.0 best practices from organizations pioneering in this area and suggests leadership practices for the successful execution of a Web 2.0 strategy. You can download a copy of the paper here: http://www.cata.ca/files/PDF/Media_Events/2008/MakingSenseofWeb2-0.pdf .