Thoughts on the new ruralnet|online - Part 1 (of many!)

Before going offline for a well deserved break (although I say it myself!). Can I leave these thoughts with you?

Yesterday I was hauled before the ruralnet|uk team in a Dragons' Den-type scenario to explain what I meant buy a 'web 2.0 version of ruralnet|online'. David Wilcox was there as a critical friend too.

Over the last 12 months we have been moving our online services on to a Web 2.0 platform. See, for example, Experts Online, xPRESS Digest and Inforurale. We are now deploying these as independent services or as part of the services others are offering using widgets (see Essex Rural Partnership for example - the Experts Online widget is at the bottom left of the page). Oh, and it's here too.

We now need to lash these services together and add a networking function (a forum?) and re-launch this as 'ruralnet|online 2.0' to coincide with ruralnet|online's 10th birthday in March.

The question is, what does a 'forum' look like in the Web 2.0 world? The presentation below is my initial thinking on this. Please dive in with any comments you have. Are we on the right track here or have we fallen off?

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The animations are lost in the above slidecast so you might want download the original from here .