After six months of being a digital tour guide for the Big Idea, I thought it was time I explored what 'Web 2.0' is and what it means for creatives. The term was coined at an O'Reilly Media Conference in 2004, but has come to mean many things to many people. Wikipedia has the detailed lowdown for geeks, but Valleywag has the simplest explanation with their Web 2.0 for Idiots. As they succinctly put it in a way your Mum would understand: Web 1.0 - They make it for you; Web 2.0 - You help make it.There is a fantastic video overview called The Machine is Us/ing Us that I think everyone who wants to get their head around Web 2.0 should see. Created by Michael Wesch, Assistant Professor of Cultural Anthropology at Kansas State University, it inspires me every time I watch it. It traces the path of text from linear to digital hyperlinks through to blogs, social networks, mashups and the current separation of form and content with RSS feeds. This new wave is led by the tagging of data by the former users of websites and portals, and may force us to re-think everything we currently take for granted. We're no longer just passive downloaders of data but have become Prosumers (producers/consumers) as predicted by Alvin Toffler in 1980.

We're now working on the Webtop rather than the desktop and storing our data online, to take advantage of hotdesking, online collaboration and teleworking. We are still limited by bandwidth in some parts of the world, but soon more webtop applications will work off-line too. Google Gears lets you to run their Gmail service offline, and one of my favourite online tools mindmeister has just launched an offline edition. One of their top mindmaps is on Web 2.0 Hacking and currently in the top spot is my mindmap on Renaissance 2.0.

It's a brave new world for creatives in cyberspace to take these digital opportunities and turn them into a living - making, selling and distributing online, from home studios wherever in the world they are. The old 20th century systems are being replaced by innovative new models, to support independent artists from idea to income stream. In the Creatives Toolkit I've put together a roundup of the top online tools to help you run a creative business, by helping you plan, collaborate and get paid at the end of the day. In my Indie series I've covered some of the new self-publishing opportunities now available for independent authors, tv producers, re-fashion designers and musicians.

I've also written about how to plan with mindmap tools - a quick, easy way of getting ideas out of your head and into action; how comics are not just for laughs but also for serious applications; how ceiling height and space can affect your linear or creative thinking, and looked at how countries on the fringes of the earth like New Zealand have an internet time advantage and can be ahead of the rest of the planet. I've also covered more esoteric subjects beauty of Information Aesthetics and the new graffiti in Urban Overlays, led by global teams of knittas and electronics artists.

Over the past year I have also created a huge directory of links to Web 2.0 Tools for you to delve into at your leisure - a collection of Web 2.0 Tools and Webtop Application for creatives, designers, musicians, filmakers, indie tv producers and digital entrepreneurs, from my forays into the far reaches of cyberspace, all lovingly tagged by yours truly from 3d to writing resources. It's a bumper pack of digital delights, served up using my favourite social annotation site Diigo. There are plenty of big ideas in there to inspire you and lots of useful resources for creative startups and digital media pioneers. Share and enjoy!

8/11/07

As well as being TBI's strategist, Helen Baxter a.k.a. MsBehaviour runs dance-music label TMet Recordings, 3D animation company Mohawk Media and has a fortnightly slot on National Radio called 'Virtual World'.