Web 2.0 Consultant ...

My friend Lakshman Pillai had asked a very interesting question over at the K-Community - India forum ... about what comes to mind when you hear someone say they are a web 2.0 consultant.

Now, there are quite a few folks out there who are Web 2.0 consultants, and this question gets to bring out the expectations from the other side ... the client, as to what they think when they are talking about engaging a Web 2.0 consultant.

Now, i am not sure what they think, but this got me thinking what i would think about when with a web 2.0 consultant. The work can be divided into two parts, definitely:

• Technical
• Non-Technical (for want of a better word)

And this is indicative, actually ... if you cant come up with a better word than non-technical to describe the process/business aspect of web 2.0, that means that it is the technology which is the key, at least the way we look at it.

Having said that, there is another aspect which i would look at, in a web 2.0 consultant. And this is to determine the inflexion points in the organization which would help web 2.0 adoption.

Let me explain ... we know that web 2.0 is about adoption, if its about anything. And adoption, which theoretically, is about as large a number of people as possible engaging with each other using web 2.0 tools. But having said that, there is also the aspect that not everyone would use these tools for the same purpose, and derive value from them in the same way, and to the same level. What this implies is that there must be certain parts of the organization which would bably derive more value from web 2.0 tools than other, basically because the tools address their requirements more easily than they do for others. And seeing that we know, its important to build up quick wins, identifying these, and building the way to these, and from these onwards, to other parts of the organization would be an important part of the work that a consultant would need to do.

Any thoughts?