Information sharing in web1.0 was one way publishing, static, and subject to a quick de facto obsolessence by the sheer amount of information created that would render this one impossible to reach.

By contrast information sharing in web 2.0 recognizes that information is most of the time an expression of a knowledge, which is embodied in an individual.

Finding the exact information you need (the answer to a simple question) on an intranet for example, is often a vain quest for many reasons :

• people don't add critical metadata to uploaded documents,
• the search engines do not access all databases and are not good enough to cope with natural language or unstructured data,
• and more important, you don't have on an intranet enough information because the number of contributors simply can not be large enough vs the number of readers, …

What you then need is some kind of virtual breadcrumbs which will lead you to the individual most likely to hold the best answer … for a quick phone call or email ! Such tools such as Visible Path do a good job to automatically monitor many informations exchanges (email) or other pieces of information. What you need is a system that seamlessly collects that collective intelligence and gives you an effective way to pull the answers you need from it (think visualization :-)), and I am confident a workable B2E solution can be developed out of the tagclouds, probably something linking it with visualization tools like VisualThesaurus for a drill-down in the information, but keeping a sense of weight/importance given by the size of the words.

Then of course you can add a voluntary system where real contributions can be added on top of it, from simply tagging (see Cogenz for example) to actually post "hard" information. About motivations for those 1% of contributors, see my previous January blog post for more details on how one organization should develop tools for employees to develop their reputation inside the company. For more on the 1% rule (1:9:90 in fact ;-)), see the blog post on participation inequality from Jakob Nielsen or the recent HitWise stats shown at the April 2007 Web2.0 Expo. 

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As industries get more and more productive (as measured by the increase of EBITDA/employee), we see the emergence of the knowledge worker (see Peter Drucker 1959's paper). This emergence can be measured by the growing importance of tacit interactions between workers, and as a result more and more intellectual capital (employee knowledge and abilities, in the form of information) is exchanged in a non-structured way. Tools like email, instant messenging, collaborative workspaces, allow synchronous and asynchronous exchanges of information and knowledge over a wide area (across different sites and organizational departments). But when the stakes get higher such tools are not enough. This takes place in several cases :

• the information is complex and need to be synthesized / clarified
• the targets (individuals, departments or businesss units) lack a common culture and do not share a common vocabulary
• the communication is massive and/or urgent and/or critical
• a common future vision (a new organization, market, product) existing as concept must be formalized, shared and people adhere to it

In such cases visualization has proven to be a useful approach, and the most widely used tool by managers is PowerPoint, but more recently another one has started to get traction : MindMap, named after Tony Buzan's early 90's work

Both tools have got their fans and their detractors, so let's look at the opposing parties arguments :

1. PowerPoint

• Detractors : the most famous vocal critic is certainly Edward Tufte, a recognized guru in information visualization, and his "PowerPoint is Evil" phrase is widely quoted. His thinking is developed in his book "The Cognitive Style of PowerPoint" and mainly states that the tool is misused, that information is buried in tons of slides, that the bullet point approach is terrible, … Other critics include the French entrepreneur Rafi Haladjian in his famous 2004 essay "Become beautiful rich and intelligent with PowerPoint", full of irony.
• Pros : Donald Norman, a famous designer who has been the head of Apple Advanced Technology Group, teaches at various universities and co-founded the Nielsen Norman Group, has a strong stance against him (see Cliff Atkinson's interview and D. Norman's own defense piece). Another strong user is entrepreneur turned VC Guy Kawasaki with his 10/20/30 rule for PowerPoint
• Tools & resources : for software there is Microsoft PowerPoint of course, but also Apple's KeyNote, Google's recent acquisition of Tonic, a web-based presentation tool, and open source Impress from the OpenOffice suite. For good references and tips in addition to the ones listed above, see Cliff Atkinson's book "Beyond Bullet Points" and more on my Delicious bookmarks, updated regularly

1. MindMap

• Detractors : some recent research limit its scope and power, such as a 1998 study on college students and metacognition that indicates focusing too much attention to the tool limits content learning
• Pros : of course Tony Buzan's, a British psychologist who started working in the 70's on cognitive abilities such as creativity and memorisation and is often referred to the "inventor" of mind maps (see his 1991 book "Use both sides of your brain:New Mind-Mapping Techniques") but also in France the French Heuristic School (see the scholl website and the Petillant portal, a key node of the mind mapping community in France)
• Tools & resources : commercial softwares include the very good MindManager from Mindjet or Inspiration (more for the teaching/education environment), open source FreeMind and web-based Bubbl.us. Reference books and websites include the good portal Mind-Mapping.org, the book " " and my Delicious bookmarks, plus the following video from Tony Buzan "himself"

This post has only been a brief introduction to those tools … more in a future one !

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