Dr Michael J Rees FBCS, CEng, CITP Associate Professor of Computer Science School of Information Technology, Bond University As Associate Professor in Computer Science in the School of IT at Bond University Dr Michael Rees has gained 10 years of research expertise in Web 2.0 technology, the basis of social media tools in use today. A pioneer in Web 2.0 collaboration software Dr Rees now specialises in social media architecture for deploying a mix of online tools to build communities both within the enterprise and to reach out to enterprise clients, customers and suppliers, as well as for personal use. In 1995 together with his PhD student Michael is attributed with the invention of the word 'weblog' now usually shortened to 'blog'. At the time both were creating online web sites to record a journal or log of activities in online meetings with later analysis and processing into meeting minutes and other documents. These web sites were the precursor of the blogs we know today. For more details see: http://mrees.wordpress.com/2007/08/18/a-father-of-the-weblog/
Michael is a great believer in the maxim "If it's not on the Web, it's invisible". It is important for individuals, community groups, professional associations through to whole organisations to have a web presence. With the rapid spread of interactive Web 2.0 social media sites online visibility has reached a whole new level. Customers, business partners, and the community at large expect to enter 2-way conversations with enterprises big and small. Social media makes this possible. The key factors here are the people in the various communities of interest, how easily and conveniently they can interact, and the quality of information generated. While the social media technology is secondary the choice of tools can be important in terms of scaling out to very large groups, reliability of access, privacy of information and the overall installation and maintenance costs. As a social media architect Dr Rees advises on the combination of social media tools that can be tailored to meet the social needs of organisations.
For himself as a professional and for his organisation Michael has been using and gaining experience of social media tools such as blogs, wikis, social information sharing, and microblogging over several years. With a colleague in 2007 Michael undertook a survey of social media tools across Bond University for teaching, research and administration. He presents on the underlying technologies that make social tools possible and comments on:
Dr Rees is the chair of Social Media Club, Gold Coast, the second to be formed in Australia, with the goal of spreading an appreciation of the benefits of social media tools in business, education and government. The club motto is 'if your get it, share it'.
Social media contact details are to be found at http://card.ly/MichaelRees |