The Big Question is a monthly feature on the Learning Circuits blog. December asks What did you learn in 2008?

Looking back over the last 12 months, another year which has gone by in a flash, my learning journey has brought me to where I am right now – writing this blog post. In 2008 I took on the role of managing the creation and launch of a brand new website for ThirdForce. As someone who remembers the very early days of the World Wide Web I have a pretty good understanding of how far things have come and more so how fast they are moving in the world of technology and communication.

Up until recently though, I would have considered myself a fairly basic Web 1.0 user – emailing, information searching, online shopping – so embracing and getting to grips with the latest advances, Web 2.0 and beyond has been and still is an exciting and rewarding learning experience for me.

YouTube, iTunes, podcasts, blogs, micro blogs, wikis, meta data, del.icio.us, Digg, RSS…are to name a few of the new areas I have been exposed to in 2008 which in my previous life I didn’t really have too much involvement in. In order to create, build and launch our new website we had to look at all the opportunities out there in the current world of the web and also think about what’s coming in the future. I was lucky to have some really knowledgeable people to work with, who came to recognise the blank look of dispair that would often cross my face, and who with patience taught me what I needed to know.

So NOW I can write some html; I can update and edit our website; I can write and manage our blog; I can share articles and items of interest without having to send an email with an attachment; I can subscribe to feeds and manage information that interests me and others much more coherently and effectively; I can create and analyse SEO reports; I can use technologies to help promote our business in new ways; ultimately I understand WEB 2.0 and am getting excited about 3.0!!!

Believe me I’ve come a long way on my 2008 journey and I hope and look forward to another one in 2009.