ICT "It's a Change Agent" - first day wrap

The first day of the ICT local government conference has been a real eye opener.
Dr Steve Hodgkinson's keynote on Web 2.0 was probably the highlight.
This technology is a stereotypically hard nut to crack for the public sector, however I felt that some of the ideas were really well received.
Although the applications for e-government and also e-services were limited to some trials being done by one council and sites like "Youth Central", hopefully IT departments can be inspired by some of the work that is being done in these areas.  I was suprised by how good a fit the profile of some of our own products, such as Central Portal, Youth Portal and Aged Portal are in this area.
I was particularly interested in the concepts of the "webtop", collective intelligence and the "programmable web".
Facebook integration seems to be a consistent theme, but I was suprised by the complete lack of mention of LinkedIn.  These technologies are so edgy that I found it amusing that the speaker from Acumentum, in his rather confused sermon on what he felt were relevant Web 2.0 technologies appeared to confuse MySpace with Facebook.  While he presented a number of fragmented facts which were by themselves at least of wikipedia quality, to be frank the whole spiel seemed completely directionless.  Or maybe my brain was a bit tired by that stage .... at least his earlier attempt at a question directed to Steve Hodgkinson about the computer game "Second Life" in relation to Steve's great speech on Web 2.0 seemed straight from the Twilight Zone (strangely irrelevant). 
Anyway, Robin Eckermann was as usually quite entertaining with a summary of the technology and take-up of broadband in Australia and its implications.
The presentation on the 6 star building CH2 and its web based information system was of personal interest.
Overall, it has been great value, though I do hope that the second day is as good.
More from us next week.