Does Development 2.0 exist?

In order to better put my previous post on the Great Indian Developer Conference in context of this blog, I read earlier a post today by Giulio Quaggiotto on PSD Blog about the possible arrival of Development 2.0 — the utilization of web 2.0 and other new technologies to improve fundraising, community interaction and overall social venture performance. He argues that two camps have emerged on this matter.

On the one hand, there are those who see Web 2.0 tools as an enhancement of traditional collaboration and outreach capabilities. On the other hand – and to my mind more intriguing – there are those who believe that Web 2.0 is heralding a new business paradigm.

Quaggioto leans towards the latter of the creation of a new pardigm, which he considers a much more interesting perspective.

The latest voice to be added to the choir of advocates for a disruptive new paradigm is, quite fittingly, Anthony Williams – author of Wikinomics. His vision for NGOs 2.0 is remarkably similar to some of the ideas presented in this blog. For instance, the proposal to use Second Life for collaboration between donors and recipients, or the idea of launching a development market to tap into the wisdom of the crowds.