Using a Web 2.0 Tool to Prepare a Web 2.0 Seminar

Jason Keeling and I will present “Business for Breakfast” at the Charleston Marriott’s Whitewater Grille tomorrow morning. That's Friday, April 25, from 7:30-8:30 a.m. We surely hope to see you there!

Our focus will be Web 2.0: Blogs, Pods and Twitters — How Emerging Internet Technologies Can Enhance Business Communications.

We’ll be discussing the growing importance of blogs, podcasts, and social media sites like Facebook and Twitter. We will discuss the significance of these technologies to West Virginia businesses and organizations.

In a bit of an unconventional twist, we utilized a Web 2.0 tool, a Zoomerang survey application, to poll our audience in advance of the presentation to assess their familiarity, needs and expectations. Here's what we learned:

• There's an absence of understanding of the phrase "Web 2.0" (53% have not heard of it).
• Likewise, most folks do not understand or utilize RSS (69% have not heard of it).
• More respondents (80%) have been to YouTube than any of the other social media.
• Twitter and Flickr were among the lowest (17% and 15% familiarity, respectively).
• Most (84%) are familiar with blogs, either publishing their own blog or reading blogs.

Most encouraging to us was the fact that a strong majority (67%) of respondents agreed with the following statement: "I believe that Web 2.0 tools are viable tools for business applications." Now that is precisely the foundation for learning that we plan to build upon tomorrow. Thanks to this valuable, advance information from our audience, we have content that has been carefully tailored to their needs.

The event is sponsored by The State Journal, SCORE, and the West Virginia Small Business Development Center. We greatly appreciate their support.