Jeff Jarvis writing in the Guardian yesterdayCoelho finds the perfect alchemy of print and digital describes how digital web 2 approaches such as blogs and twitter can enhance the core business,  through engaging with readers (customers?), giving away freebies and getting ideas and inputs from fans for the next project.  All this contributes to Coelho being number two best selling author in the world, with over 100m sales.

Now this has got me thinking – what are the similarities in the built environment world of design, support, build and maintain?  Certainly we can twitter for new ideas on the next project, give away freebie designs and management tools, blog about successes, projects and problems, collaborate with strangers on the other side of the globe.   The technology is there, but …. where is that key to make it come alive, where or what is that alchemy between digital and build?

In the support I provide to organisations as an introduction to the world of web 2, moving them away from searching for to having important leads and information delivered, using igoogle and RSS, I am amazed how many still see the web as a time consuming one way search device and an email machine.  (Contact me for more on this, email, twitter or leave comment below)