Last Friday a colleague of mine (who also happens to be a fellow UIUC GSLIS alum — GSLIS alums are plentiful where I work!) gave a lunchtime presentation introducing the social web to other colleagues in our library organization. We only had an hour in which to present a broad overview and as a result, we were quite rushed toward the end of the time period. We had over 30 people sign up but only about 11 actually showed up, mainly due to the weather, I think. (We had a winter’s-last-gasp-type of heavy snowfall that day.)Our general purpose was to provide some clarity to the various bits and pieces that make up the social web (a.k.a. Web 2.0 and its many derivatives, e.g. Library 2.0). We gave an overview of what comprises the social web in terms of concepts that include friends, commenting, recommendations, “push button” publishing, and so on. Then we covered several specific social web tools such as wikis, blogs, social bookmarking, tagging, social networks, RSS, etc. Our hope by giving this presentation is that it will be a catalyst for more active learning and participation among more staff in social web initiatives. Our company is only just beginning to explore ways in which to incorporate social web-type stuff into its technological infrastructure. Frankly, it’s not the technical that is challenging but more the cultural aspect. We have a huge way to go to overcome a mindset that can be rather clueless about Web 2.0 and why it might be of value to use and to know about. One of the points that became clearer to me while we were talking about this stuff in that presentation was that many corporations are already on the social web bandwagon in terms of external relationships, i.e. with customers. I suspect that a much smaller set of companies has made progress with using social web tools internally, i.e. for staff use. Part of what my co-presenter focused on was that aspect, that is, identifying what we are working on, testing, or considering for internal use relating to the social web. It seems to me that this is a much harder thing to sell management on or to simply implement with an expectation of immediate, concrete ROI.Even though there weren’t as many attendees as we had hoped, we both really enjoyed giving the presentation. There was quite a bit of enthusiasm among the participants as well, and I think we’ll be planning followup sessions to explore more details of particular tools, e.g. social bookmarking, and how we might apply them in our particular setting. We really want our library to be leaders in this area and we believe there is a strong opportunity for the library to play a significant role in social web initiatives within the company. This is just the beginning.On the way home (it took me 2 1/4 hrs. to drive what normally is a 50 min. commute, due to the snowstorm) as I was reflecting about the presentation, it occurred to me that I’d love to be able to do this kind of thing all the time. To be a sort of evangelist for emerging technologies, if you will. Maybe that’s the dream job I have always wanted.