#19 Web 2.0 Awards

After examining several of the Web 2.0 award winners, I settled on .
That's an image link, so go ahead and click it if you want to visit the site. Upcoming is a fantastic concept in action: Join a community of people interested in catching the best events in their favorite locations and areas of interest. It's neat that you can register a location, then search by a topic, such as gardening. I did this, and found out about the CT Flower and Garden show coming up in Hartford on February 23rd. If you'd like to meet up with folks in a particular interest group visiting the same event as you, this tool connects you. In some cases, you can subscribe to RSS feeds. For example, someone registered the Cloisters in this tool, and there was an RSS feed for Cloisters events. The only problem was that that person registered it in 2004, and no events were ever loaded, apparently, so it's a dead area in the site (and while the Cloisters lists upcoming events on their web site, there is no convenient RSS feed there, either). You can also monitor a particular location. Doing so for Fairfield, CT, is easy, because not much is in there. The Fairfield Theater Company is listed though.

I wish every cultural institution/park/venue/community group would become a member of this tool. I don't care if it would amount to a lot of self-promotion--at least it would be very convenient and useful. I for one need some easy help with planning events on the fly. With a busy life, it's hard to keep track of all the great things going on and pick one before it all passes by. This tool isn't that useful to me yet, because so much isn't in there, but the potential is great. Of course, I could by-pass this tool entirely if places like the Cloisters would just publish an RSS feed. On the other hand, this tool offers something extra: serendipity and social networking. You can join groups, add your own events, tag things by topic, and connect with others who share your interests.

Library applications? Who has time, but if we had time, we might keep track of local events of interest in our liaison areas, post them in here, and guide students to them--some extracurricular learning for the kids! I don't see why we couldn't also post philanthropic activities in the local area. That reminds me, there was a whole category for philanthropy on the Web 2.0 Awards page.