Preaching What We Practice

Depending upon where you live, this statement may or may not surprise you…not everyone gets Web 2.0.

Mercury Grove has offices in Ottawa, Cincinnati, and Lexington, KY. The Web 2.0 community is fairly mature in Ottawa. In our other region (the OH, IN, KY tri-state), however, Web 2.0 is a foreign concept that hasn’t been bought into (yet).

The hi-tech scene here is limited to the IT departments of plodding giants - P&G, Lexmark, Fidelity Investments, Kroger, etc… While isolated IT software groups certainly know Web 2.0 and employ limited facets (e.g. Wikis) the companies themselves are unwilling to ween themselves from low-risk, low-reward Enterprise software.

So how do we spread the word? How do we generate excitement? How do we get these people to understand the power of Web 2.0 and maybe attract the “creative class” that is so important to creating regional job growth and developing a commerce built upon innovation?

Note: I’m not expecting to be able to mobilize an entire population, but I think it’s important to showcase to the regional leaders that it should be a priority of theirs.

So here are three vehicles to help develop the community…

• Web 2.0 “unconferences” such as Barcamps/Democamps - Mercury Grove was responsible for hosting one Democamp in Lexington, KY and another in Cincinnati. The attendance was good and the participation lively but there has been no continuance. We will need to somehow convince a Community to own these events.
• Chambers of Commerce - We’ve recently joined the local Chamber and will be assessing the acceptance of the group to “innovative thinking”. I know several members of the Chamber and it seems like an humble group that recognizes its shortcomings. We hope that the primarily SMB makeup of the Chamber will be receptive to our suggestions.
• Press - We’ve had some success having our company covered in the regional papers but the lack of coverage for Web 2.0 or the IT community as a whole is dreadful. I’d like to put together a press-kit that is convincing enough to the agencies to make them realize that they, themselves, are the foundation to forming the sense of community.

If it doesn’t work. I guess we’ll move.

Seriously, though…much of our existence is based upon being able to give back to our community. If our community won’t have us, I may be forced to look for a foster city.