HostingCon 2006 played host to the first step in the creation of an industry association that certifies business practices and ethical standards, gives members consolidated buying power, legal clout, "big business" benefits and preferred treatment by vendors.
Some very prominent names in the industry, such as 1&1 and Microsoft have expressed interest in supporting such an association, and many hosts and hosting industry vendors seem to warn up to idea whenever it is mentioned.
If you're wondering when we can expect to see the IHA come to fruition, ask Tony Holloway of Mad Rooster. He is the chief proponent and project leader for the association. He'll probably tell you the time period necessary to complete the formation of the IHA is inversely proportional to the number of people who volunteer to help get all of the components into place. I'm assisting in these efforts myself (I'm the resident pest - Tony probably hates me by now), and I would love to see more people take part in these formative stages. The association will only be as good as the efforts of the people who help create it, and right now, there's a lot of room for more of those efforts.
Take a look at ihaweb.org and see what's taking place. The answer is not much at the moment. Will that change? The answer is partly in your hands!
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I think in order for the IHA to build momentum, it needs to set forth an initial to-do list and provide some way for interested folks to sign up for and pitch in on specific projects. Tony put up http://www.ipitha.org more than a year ago, but the forum format isn't very action-oriented. 103 people have signed up so far. Some of them most likely have common goals? Instead of waiting for consensus to emerge across the industry, they should get together and start working towards whatever they're most interested in.
Wikis offer a horizontal format on which many topics can be discussed in parallel. Forums, on the other hand, displays threads by time, even though most recent doesn't necessarily = more relevant for every viewer.
And CollectiveX extracts more commitment and accountability from participants. The IHA needs prospective members to step forward with details on what companies they represent and what their goals are. That goes much farther than getting people to sign up for forum alias.
But are the applications themselves over hyped? No, not at all. There's some great stuff out there. You look for what fits, what fulfills a need, makes your site easier/more pleasurable to use, drives efficiency, whatever the case may be, and you evaluate that particular piece of technology in the context of the bigger project.
But if I hear someone tell me they want their site to be "Web 2.0" again, unless they're talking about the visual style that's adopted this name, I think I'm going to vomit on my keyboard.
Onto a more valuable conversation you brought up - the question of Wikis v. forums. I've seen the arguments for both, the collective creation/editing model of Wikis and the controlled forum environment. Both have their drawbacks and advantages. Forums tend to show you the process, but you have to wade through more of this to get to the final result. Wikis tend to give you the here-and-now in its most updated, accurate state, but you see less or none of the progression that got you there in the first place, which can be a real loss. I do not think the two are mutually exclusive. It may be very valuable to have both running at once, one as the sandbox and one as the keeper of official results, even as they are being refined.
I'm not familiar with CollectiveX. This might also be worth consideration. But first and foremost, we need a roadmap! We need to have a clearly defined end result, milestones, deadlines and we need to identify who is responsible for what along the way. Without SOME sort of documentation like this, the whole process is chaotic, minimally productive and you lose the aspect of ownership that tends to create an emotional investment in participants. Three months ago, the emotional investment was as high as I've seen it. Now, people are showing very little if any, and it's because of the lack of direction.
Tony, say something!
Tony's not solely responsible for coming up with the roadmap, but he's taken on the responsibility of orchestrating this project. Typically, ennui sets in somewhere around the 75-90% completion point in most projects, not right in the beginning. I wonder if it isn't starting to kick in now...