Let’s start at the very beginning

bmj.com will have a new “look and feel” come January 2007, provided by New York interactive agency, Digital Pulp. After that comes a range of new features. This is where you come in.

With the Digital Pulp presentation on Web 2.0 ringing in my ears, I sit down to prepare my presentation on Interaction and Community for the Big Outside (Non-Medical) Publisher. Digital Pulp told us that whereas Web 1.0 was based on a publishing model, Web 2.0 is based on a model of participation. It’s a world where upload is as important as download.

Without too much headscratching, I can think of the following interactive features we’ve introduced on bmj.com over the years – rapid responses (1998), polls (1998), debates(1998), choosing theme issue topics by public consultation (2000), interactive case reports (2003), Q&A (2003), webchats (2003), blogs (2004), and BMJ audio (this September). Rapid responses have also been pretty potent sources of user generated content, that other favourite of the web 2.0 crowd. We’ve posted 60 000 rapid responses, compared with 50 000 articles, on the site to date. So were we Web 2.0 avant la lettre? more…