Web 2.0: The Next Generation

In his 2003 OOPSLA keynote The Internet Paradigm Shift Tim O’Reilly summarized some of the common traits of the successful applications of the Internet era. They included software built for use in delivering services, dynamic data and languages, architecture of participation, low barriers to experimentation, interoperability, and a few others. Here are a couple of snapshots from his keynote (October 30, 2003).

A few years later he expanded on and explained the traits as design patterns. He then used the design patterns extracted from web applications such as eBay, Craigslist, Wikipedia, del.icio.us and a few others to define Web 2.0. While today there’s no general consensus on what Web 2.0 really is, many new systems exhibiting Web 2.0 traits have emerged since Tim’s paper–Pownce, SlideShare, friendfeed, reddit, and so forth.

Now why am I telling you this? If you’ve built Web 2.0 applications then you too could leave your fingerprints on the next generation of Web 2.0 design patterns. We are aiming at extracting new patterns from this post-eBay/Craigslist/Wikipedia crop at the Web 2.0 Pattern Mining Workshop at the TOOLS Europe conference. During the 2-day workshop (June 30-July 1) Web 2.0 and pattern experts will crack-open several Web 2.0ish systems, identify the recurring problems and common solutions, and extract new patterns.

Workshop participation is open to anybody who could contribute. If you’re interested check out the Call for Participation and send your proposal by the May 5 deadline. Feel free to contact me with questions or clarifications.