Web who.0 - Journeys end?

A journey of a thousand miles must begin with a single step

Lao-Tzu

Well, after this long journey, I must admit to feeling rather like a mama polar bear, emerging blinkingly into the spring sunshine from the winter hibernation, new babes in tow. The first days of this exploration did indeed seem a long time ago, and I know there were a number of us questioning the wisdom of the quest. But persevere we have, and we have learnt much along the way. Helen Keller once said "Life is either a daring adventure - or nothing."

It's hard to pick highlights, so maybe I'll start with the lowlights, as they are quite fresh in my mind. I can't see that I'll hurry back to places like bebo, facebook or myspace for more explorations, apart from taking a peek at the NSL community there. Rollyo is also something I can't see a great deal of use for, personally, as well as finding it a bit clumsy to use.

RSS I still haven't come completely to grips with, but as I have moved on and done more exploring I have used it a little more, and can see the possibilities and usefulness of it as a way of keeping up-to-date with various topics that are of particular interest, and which you won't necessarily have a chance to seek out yourself. So not quite singing it's praises yet, but... (and you can guess where my quest here will focus on).

Exercises I did enjoy were much like some others whose comments I have read - Generators and YouTube were a lot of fun, places you can too easily while away hours and hours of time, being quite unsociable in the process if you're not careful. LibraryThing I will also probably continue to use. E-books was more enjoyable than I thought it would be, although this isn't a format I can picture myself using for my reading pleasure. I will have to remember to revisit Zoho and master some more of it's tools. I may be doing this the wrong way, but I have difficulty dropping images to my posts in the place I would prefer them, something Zoho is good for. Yet another skill to work on. Flickr and wikis are also places I will remember to come back to for some more exploring, once I have got over the fact we don't 'have' to anymore.

Some things I am still not convinced about are technorati and del.icio.us. Clever sites, and I can see their usefulness, but not for me I feel. Mashups are something I still need lots of practice with, but I can't imagine returning here just to 'play'.

So what have I learned? Life truly is a mystery. What gives sense to it is learning - learning that leads to insight and then to understanding. Irrespective of how long in the tooth we may be, all of us must be prepared to learn. Challenge assumptions - explore beliefs. Discover new trails; revisit old ones, and where needed - make fresh tracks. Let the pack sing out a collective howl of thanks to our alpha leaders, aka the NSL Web 2.0 Admin Team, who have marked out a path through the snow, mushed the way ahead and kept the pack (mostly) on task.

However, there are those among us who have ranged the rugged wilderness of cyberspace, on edge. Cautious and ever watchful - hackles up, neck ruff raised, noses lifted to the four winds. On guard - alone and independent. The lone maverick wolf - fringe guardian of the pack, curious but mistrustful of the material, and alert to all - seen and unseen - that flows by.

Just as wolves have been reintroduced to Yellowstone National Park, this Web 2.0 experience has reintroduced me to a professional landscape and convention I thought I knew well. However, on occasions I have felt like a recently released wolf might, liberated at last and left to fend for myself in an environment culturally familiar, yet disconcertingly foreign - all at the same time. I sought to avoid traps that could waylay me on the journey - and have only lost a little bit of fur along the way.

So - has it been worth it? Sometimes. I've really enjoyed the creative process week by week, thinking about the images and quotations I've used to illustrate my ideas - an acknowledgment to the innate and intuitive wisdom of the Great Spirit, and the connectedness of all things - a trait also inherent in canis lupus. The duties to consider the great drifts of information along this trail has been exhausting at times, and not entirely rewarding - akin at times to when the alpha leaders return to the den after the hunt - unrewarded! Owhoooo - no meat on the bone there! As H D Thoreau so aptly said - "In wildness is the preservation of the world". Which leads us to a question - will lupi not the olive oil continue in the blogosphere, or fade back into the timberlands? Now - that's a mystery.