'The Guru' Questionnaire

Phil Bradley, Internet Consultant

What is your favourite gadget?
My camera. It's a Canon 350D which I've had for a year or so now; I really enjoy photography; I'm still getting to grips with the technicalities and this camera really helps getting the basics right. Mind you, I'd be lost without my Swiss Army penknife; it's got more functions than I know what to do with and it goes everywhere with me. I couldn't really decide between the two.

 

What is your favourite website for business use?
I'd have to go with Pageflakes (http://www.pageflakes.com/ ) for this - it's my home/start page on the net and has all my key links, most important RSS feeds, a few useful widgets, training pages and so on. It's simple and elegant to use and saves me a lot of time every day.

 

What is your favourite website for personal interest?
Following on from my favourite gadget it would be a site called Photosig at http://www.photosig.com which is a little bit like flickr in that you post up photographs, but these are then critiqued by other photographers and they're not backward in telling you how to improve.

 

If you were marooned on a desert island and were only allowed one item of technology - what would it be and why?
I'd take a Kindle full of books. Hopefully I'd be able to choose the titles so I'd make sure that I had some novels, but also useful ‘how to survive on a desert island' books.

 

If you were to time travel 10 years into the future - how will the internet have changed?
If we look back ten years we would just have started hearing rumours of this new search engine called ‘Google', but no-one would have any idea on the effect it was going to have. The best that I can come up with therefore is that the internet is going to have evolved in ways that we can hardly grasp yet. However, if pushed I'd say that given the current development of mobile devices and early steps towards personalization ‘my' internet will be different from ‘your' internet, and both will be so entwined in our daily lives we're not going to be able to function without it.

 

What do you think are the key developments that will shape the search landscape in the next 2 years?
There will be NO Google killer, despite every other new search engine claiming that they're it. Search will continue to become more personalized, more of the ‘hidden web' will be indexed, video will be searchable and results in different formats will be blended together more than ever.

 

What advice would you give to someone starting out as an information professional in 2008?
Embrace change. Constantly try out new things and don't stand still; the people who will survive and flourish will be the ones who can adapt. Don't think in terms of 9-5; information is what we do, and it's 24/7. Oh, and have fun. If you don't enjoy what you're doing, what's the point?

 

What do you see as the main challenges for information professionals in the future?
Without a doubt it's justifying our existence. I'm not sure people realize that we're on a knife edge right now - it's too easy for people to say ‘it's all in Google, why do we need information professionals?' We need to go onto the offensive, and challenge, challenge, challenge. We need to adapt and embrace things like Web 2.0 and use them to our advantage and demonstrate that we know information and can do things that no-one else in the organization is capable of.

 

If you had three wishes relating to the development of technology and the internet, what would they be?

1. Faster connectivity. The amounts of data that we're starting to send around the globe are already unimaginable and adding video into the mix means that as near as possible instantaneous communication is going to be a requirement, not a luxury.

2. Global access to the internet. We still live in a world where 50% of the world has never made a phone call. Hopelessly idealistic I know, but if people can talk to people and understand them and their cultures we all might get on together rather better. We can't do that while governments get to decide what people can and can't see.

3. Finally, developers who consider ‘how can this help people' rather than ‘can this make me money?' Again, hopelessly idealistic, but we can all dream.

 

Phil Bradley is a Librarian and Internet Consultant who spends much of his time talking and writing about the internet. He also teaches people how to search more effectively and how to use the net to the advantage of them and their companies.  His website is at http://www.philb.com and weblogs are at http://www.philbradley.typepad.com/ and http://philbradley.typepad.com/i_want_to/