I & K Social Net

It was in August 1997, when I met Jim Bair, Director of Qumana. Inc, when he taught a Summer Course in Syracuse University (NY). Some colleagues from Barcelona and I were passionate with his teachings on Knowledge Management, a very unknown discipline in our country.

Knowledge Management seemed to us something very theoretic and difficult to put it in figures. We learned about IT systems supporting knowledge management and we also learned the theories by Nonaka & Takeuchi, which have become a reference in KM.

Jim is really a very communicative person and was fantasticly representing the evolution of KM in the previous years. He explained how people reacted to the first e-mail systems implemented in a company. Most people found that the phone was easier to get in touch with other colleagues, but those using the e-mail realized that they could get easier to the directives of the company. They were never available on the phone, but they answered the messages on the e-mail. It was a sort of flattening the hierarchical structure of the company, facilitating information to flow easier.

In social networks, information is the fundamental token that people exchange and build the visible link between nodes. But information tends to flow in homogeneous networks. Our society is so strongly organized that hierarchical structures have still today a dramatic weight in peoples consciousness. The possibility to move outside our level or our circle is something that most of the people dream, but hardly achieve. The virtual world has made this possible, because users can change their identity and become the personality of their dreams. This is the avatar in Second Life. We feel in an homogeneous network when we interact with others on the Internet and this makes us more relaxed.

Today Jim told me about his new book Making Knowledge Work: Impact of Web 2.0. (Ark Group, 2007. 185 p., ISBN: 978-1-906355-09-8 (hkb)). It is a very useful book for those companies wanting to jump into the web 2.0. The book talks about the Enterprise 2.0 and how companies have to adapt to these tools.

I read today in TavelMole a post on a speech given by the General Manager of Cheapflights at the Travel Technology Show in London where she states how important Travel 2.0 can be for Brans awareness and also for absorbing customer’s ideas into the marketing strategy.

Here’s a part of the comment I posted in Turismo 2.0. It’s in Spanish but can be translated with Google.

He recibido la edición de hoy de TravelMole donde aparece una noticia, que para nosotros (los miembros de Turismo 2.0) no es nueva, pero que vale la pena leer, para ver como la idea del 2.0 va expandiendose.
El artículo con el nombre: Social networking ‘can enhance brand awareness’ trata de una presentación hecha en Londres en el reciente Travel technology Show por Francesca Ecsery, General Manager de Cheapflights.
Vale la pena leer sus comentarios porqué explica algun caso de como un vídeo viral en YouTube sobre BA incrementó su market share. También menciona la fuerza de las redes sociales para conocer mejor al cliente e incorporar sus ideas a la empresa.
La noticia aparece en: http://www.travelmole.com/stories/1126171.php?mpnlog=1&m_id=_rn…

Cheers,

Oriol

In my last post I talked about the annual meeting of Turismo 2.0 in Madrid, last week, and about the president of this very successful (over 1.500 members) network, Albert Barra explained how difficult it was to make tourism business people understand what the web 2.0 can afford to marketing. This Wednesday the world famous Tourism exhibition FITUR had begun in Madrid too with lots of tourism professionals from all over the world making deals.

Two days later, on Friday, in FITURTECH, a workshop on ITC in the same exhibition, the web 2.0 was again on the spot. We all have to push hard to spread out all the good things that Travel 2.0 can bring to this industry, the leading one in e-commerce by now.

Social networks on the Internet are really helping also to get news that would be difficult to get so fast with other means. O friend on Facebook invited me to visit “Tourism and Internet marketing” a blog of a Jens Thraenhart with excellent news and information on Travel 2.0. In this blog Jens has embedded a video of an interview with Gregg Brockway, co-founder and President of Travel Planning Website, who talks abu Tripit, his new project on Beta version, that brings nwe solutions for tourists integrating old trustworthy relations with tourists together with new web 2.0 solutions. I found TriPit really interesting and it seems it can be a reference in the near future.

I invite you to visit Jen’s blog and to view the video: