Managerial approaches to Web 2.0
The following are hypothetical extracts from conversations with managers. Any resemblance with reality is a pure coincidence:
Case A: He lived in a bubble for the last 3 years
One day the manager started an unexpected although highly desired conversation:I was thinking of updating the company's website... making it more modernI was quite surprised of hearing such thing:
Me: What do you mean... updating it or completely rebuilding it?I kept thinking on the crap which he called website, and how horrified we were each time he wanted to update it since nobody really understood how it worked. And those tables... the source chart extension couldn't cope with so many nested tables...
Manager: Ah yes, completely rebuilding it... current version looks a bit outdated, it needs to look a bit more 2006, more advanced...I thought: "a bit outdated" he says... it looks like a 1995 website... and what about the crappy stock pictures with wrong aspect ratio... outdated is so mild...!
But I had good intentions, I wanted to help him look a bit more trendy:
Me: ahhhh! so maybe we could have it look more web2.0I really hoped he had heard at least something about the super web2.0 trend.
Me: Have you heard something about it?
Manager: Ah yes! sure! Any web to have a look at?
Me: err...I said to myself: I will think again twice before making assumptions next time.
Case B: Master of the buzzwords
Manager: we are gonna rebuild the current website which is a piece of shit to be honest and it looks so old and outdated and we are going to do it very web2.0-ishI was hallucinating... admittedly the website was a piece of crap without any doubt, but I had never heard such a sincere declaration from a manager in the last years, I think. He continued his principles declaration:
next thing you guys are going to do is to have a look at a website which is a list of all web2.0 websites so you can have an idea of what I'm talking aboutOh thank you very much for showing me what web2.0 is. Had to contain my laughing spams when I saw the "web 2.0 list of web 2.0 websites" - it was one of those webs aimed to appear in digg, like "Top web 2.0 websites - the deffinitive list". Two days later he came back:
hey guys have you seen the website?Then he turns to the designer, without giving us time to answer:
cool can you change the current blue background with a web 2.0 blue? like that blue of flickr...Surprisingly he turned to me and asked me:
what do you think?I tried to not to laugh (once again) when hearing the sole idea of "web 2.0 blue" and in general the way he applied web2.0 to every possible concept. And said, kind of joking:
Well, for it to be a real web 2.0 it needs gradients. And increase the font size which is too small. And less text. There's way too much text. A couple of badges won't harm, and a big BETA on right side of the title would be superb.Obviously he didn't understand the joke. Next thing he said to the designer was: OK can you put more gradients on it?
Sigh...