Week 1 Recap

Well this was a rather fast paced week for me, 3 blogs in one day! I promise it will not happen like this normally. But when you have to set up a class for 60 students and answer first day questions every single day for the first week, you tend to forget what else is happening around you.

But seriously, I love them all and I will cherish them as the best students. BEST STUDENTS.

This week focused on the introduction to web 2.0 and what it exactly is, the producer and consumer or prodsumer (hope I am saying this right), work to create and enjoy content from the devices due to connections of the people using the service. Web 2.0 is a great technology not just for the public sector (I just happen to be a strange person with a huge fixation on how the IRS is such a cool place), but the private and business sectors as well. We have seen applications of it all around us, in some increasingly amazing ways (such as Summer Games Done Quick, which benefits doctors without borders, which HEY YOU SHOULD CHECK IT OUT RIGHT HERE). What interested web 2.0 is just how easy any user can get on and share, and create some amazing content, some of it which shaped some our early internet culture (lolcat saturdays, rules of the internet, the rise of e-sports, and so on and so on). But the functionalities of social media, the honeycomb that Kietzman and Hermkens(2011) bring up stating the different ways web 2.0 can be used (presence, relationships, identity, sharing, conversations, reputation, and groups) is becoming more and more melded together. Facebook, once known for its relationships and conversations, now takes from other web 2.0 services such as instagram and the now defunct vine to create and share user created content. Sites like etsy, originally for just user created products by hand, have now expanded to communities within the selling services and now include business involvement. Small sites such as 4chan...well it is still 4chan. BUT there are so many ways on how web 2.0 services touch our fingertips and how we can enjoy learning from it.

Recently from content creation of another, I learned through a mix of instructables, a website dedicated for community sharing of how to build your own cool things, and lifehacker, a social media site showing cool ways to improve things on the cheap, taught me how to build an ARCADE CONTROLLER OUT OF IKEA PARTS! I know right? how would that even work? I don't know how to build wood stuff...but heck I build computers like the back of my hand so....I did it through Q&A with those who made it in the past and well....

My SO freaked when I gave them this as a present...and this is as far as "personal relationship sharing" will I go for this class.

In this instance I WAS A PRODUSER, or "an enabling of all participants to be users as much as producers of information and knowledge" (Bruns, 2011). This is only a start for me in what I want to do. It opened me up to a new community which I now appreciate as a hobby, and has connected me to "retro gamers", "twitch streamers", and "Pinball enthusiasts", all of which are just several examples of what I want to do "For fun" now. Web 2.0 isn't only for hobbies or charities, and has so many other practical services in both the private and government industries. Companies like Arby's interact with social media every day, posting pop culture references with their containers.

Seriously, awesome (Arby's, 2017)

Governments have been latching onto web 2.0 services now, hosting town halls, and using it for so many applications that have to be appreciated by both government fanatics and the common citizens. The future of 2.0 and just how fully interactive it can be is a great topic of discussion, and when technologies do come, what can we do with it? Virtual reality is finally at the forefront, there have been VR concerts already, and interactions with those participants in those concerts! The usage of VR is still raw, but when we can fully interact and learn how to prodsumers of some creations to technical to just read or watch on a video, how far can we go? 

Well that is my blogs for the week, for now I got to get ready for the next big thing as a governmental scholar, aka my appreciation of the best holiday in the United States, Happy 4th of July!

Still the best president of all time in my heart.