Top Down Or Bottom Up Approaches To Web Innovation?

1
Top Down Or Bottom Up Approaches To Web
Innovation?
http//www.ukoln.ac.uk/web-focus/events/meetings/s
emantic-web-thinktank-2007-03/

• Brian Kelly
• UKOLN
• University of Bath
• Bath

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2
Traditional Approaches

• What we thought
• W3C was the trusted guardian of Web innovations
• W3C saved us from fragmentation threats
• W3C would continue to roll out innovations which
  would be deployed in the market place
• W3C standards would form the basis for digital
  library development programmes (e.g. NOF-digi
  JISC programmes etc.)

3
Were We Right?

• NOF-digi JISC Standards documents
• Use PNG SVG SMIL
• Flash, PDF, Java, arent open so they dont fit
  in with an open standards approach
• Web Services Semantic Web standards will be
  important
• What happened
• PNG SVG SMIL?
• Flash PDF Java widely deployed, so a more
  flexible approach for use of standards was
  adopted
• Web Services Considered Harmful panel at WWW 2005
  
• Amazon report REST approach preferred to W-S
  standards (80/20)
• Semantic Web vs. l/c semantic web debates
  flourish
• W3C revive HTML developments

An evidence-based approach begins to be
preferred to ideological beliefs
4
Role of Web 2.0

• Web 2.0
• Forget (for now) blogs, wikis, etc.
• Consider characteristics such as rapid
  development, user engagement, always beta,
  clean URIs, microformats, mashups,
• Suggestion
• Web 2.0 clearly provides (today) the rich
  environment for developing popular
  user-focussed services
• We should be looking (outwards) at the successes
  of the Web 2.0 environment and not (inwards) at
  new schema developments

5
Light- vs. Heavy-Weight Development

• Lightweight Exploitation
• Companies with limited funding (6 months to
  release or we dont get paid)
• This helps to avoid mission drift, feature creep
  a user-focus (it must be cool we must
  exploit viral marketing)
• Heavyweight Exploitation
• (Typically) public-sector bodies in large
  consortia
• Worthy but most definitely not cool
• Focus groups advisory bodies and need to address
  multiple political cultural pressures stifle
  innovation
• Academic organisations cause drift towards
  addressing intellectually challenging problems
• Inability to respond quickly to technological
  cultural changes

A Daily Mail stereotype of public sector IT
development, or a valid criticism of national
/international development activities?
6
Exploiting Web 2.0 Developments
Yahoo! Pipes is RSS Feed Mashup Editor

• What can we do?
• Explore Yahoo Pipes as a lightweight development
  tool

7
Are Museums Doing It Right?

• Reflections on Nick Pooles vision
• NP We should place a 2-year moratorium on new
  projects, programmes and initiatives focus
  public funds instead on sustained investment in
  core capacity building and skills development

NP Significant investment should be made in 3-4
high-value, high-density destination sites such
as the 24 Hour Museum which act as 'ambassadors'
for our sector in the online environment
BK Small-scale investment should be made in 3-4
low-cost, high-density mashup sites such as the
24 Hour Museum alongside encouragement to 3rd
party 'ambassadors' for our sector (e.g. YouTube).
8
In Harmony With The BBC

• BBC 2.0 vision outlined at JISC Conference (13
  March)
• Do not attempt to do everything yourselves link
  to other high-quality sites yourselves (cf use of
  Flickr as repository selection process for John
  Peel day photos)
• Fall forward fast make many small bets
• Treat the entire web as a creative canvas (i.e.
  blended stuff)
• The web is a conversation join in. Adopt a
  relaxed conversational tone. Admit your mistakes.
  (i.e. dont tell)
• Maximise routes to content. Develop as many
  aggregations as possible reflecting as many
  people, places topics, channels, networks and
  time as possible.
• Let people paste your content on the walls of
  their virtual homes. YouTube is an excellent
  example of this.
• Link to discussions on the web, dont host them
  Only host web-based discussions where there is a
  clear rationale.  (i.e. exploit 3rd party
  services)

9
Why Not?
Why Not?
JISC
Were reliant on large funds from the EU
We have to own the data, the metadata, the
software
JISC
This Web 2.0 thing is simple to use and can
provide lots of benefits!
This doesnt fit our research agenda
Google might go bankrupt
Adapted from Washington Post cartoon
10
Issues

• Some issues for discussion
• Would a heavyweight Semantic Web recommendation
  be appropriate at present?
• Is a recommendation for a top-down approach
  appropriate in a Web 2.0 environment?
• Can we regard Web 2.0 as a testbed rather than a
  solution?
• If a user-focussed approach is advisable, do we
  have concrete evidence that a heavyweight
  solution (a) is needed and (b) will be used?
• What lessons can be learnt from previous cultural
  heritage development activities?

In reality well probably have both bottom-up and
top-down approaches. A challenge will be