It is “an informal, bar camp style event allowing participants to listen, network and share experiences with those who have designed and are managing Web 2 services. Speakers and workshop leaders from Health, Business, Web design, Colleges and Universities, Social Enterprises, Social Media, Journalism, Government and Civic Society”.

The event is being organised by Alex Stobbart of the Scottish Government (née Executive). Alex is an evangelist for the opportunities offered by the web. He is a giant floating brain who has recruited a coven of like-minded individuals within the SG who meet at the dead of night in cowled hoods, exchanging arcane passwords and sharing forbidden knowledge about tags, tweets and user content…

Actually we made that bit up – we got carried away with the fact the event is on samhainn. But Alex is an evangelist and does lead a high-powered group of colleagues who are keen to embrace the openness that the new web offers. Having worked closely on Scottish Government projects, we at w00tonomy have met many civil servants who “get it” and cheer Alex’s efforts to mobilise them.

However, ScotWeb2 is a separate project for Alex and BT are backing it. Tickets are available from Eventbrite.

The speakers include Simon Dickson: an e-government consultant and “Whitehall’s first full-time website specialist back in 1995″; Iain Henderson from personal data protector MyDex; Ross Ferguson from Dog Digital; and w00tonomy’s endlessly self-promoting Stewart Kirkpatrick, who will talk about how to optimise content to get messages across.

“I have been elected to the New Media Industry Council of the National Union of Journalists (in a jobshare with Euan Williamson of Imagineering). Like nearly every large body, the NUJ has struggled with what the web means for today and tomorrow. I am delighted to have this opportunity to help guide its thinking.”

Stewart will also be speaking at the Sunday Herald’s Shaping Scotland’s Digital Future event – at 9am on 24 April at The Teacher Building, St Enoch Square, Glasgow – where he will be tarred and feathered by the rest of w00tonomy if he comes out with anything similar in tone to the above statement.

That’s a lot of work to get a lot of traffic for not much cash. That’s a key problem for commercial publishers online. Another key problem is the way that online has moved in the past two years or so.

Thanks to the phenomenon known as Web 2.0, the focus has shifted to individual items of content not to where they are displayed. Blogs, RSS feeds, widgets, wikis, social network and umpteen other phenomena take content out of its context and share, manipulate and distribute it in more ways than seem possible. If the content is interesting enough, that is.

This presents a bijout problemette for commercial content producers. While it’s great to have lots of people reading their stories or watching their videos it’s hard to generate revenue unless you can drag those users under an advertising banner or beside a sponsor’s logo. This mission is not impossible but it is damn hard.

But this is all great news if your aim is not to make money from attracting people but to demonstrate value for money and getting the right message out there. And this is where the public sector wins big, especially when it comes to delivering public service messages.

Online is now about distribution and content. If you can embed your message in interesting content then the natural flow of the web will take it to the people for you.

Tony Purcell
Arch-technician, futurologist, visionary, entrepreneur: with the help of a dictionary Tony can spell nearly all these words. Struck down at an early age with Irishness, he is a man of strong convictions, most of which are judged to have lapsed under UK law. And he has integrated well into society thanks to the miracle of Guinness. His most prized possession is his complete box set of series 1-12 of Channel 5’s Pimp My Shirt.

Stewart Kirkpatrick
For many years the “Ling and Sand Eel Correspondent” of the Craphampton Evening Argus and Fish Smoker, Kirkpatrick was later promoted to the post of assistant editor and then bathroom attendant. His reputation is such that he was recently offered a frontline, customer-facing post by a multinational but chose instead to remain with w00tonomy. Truly, McDonald’s loss is our gain. His range of skills includes fiddling expenses, stealing other people’s stories and enthusiastic backstabbing. His proudest possession legally belongs to someone else.

Is this some kind of joke?
Yes. And no. You see, we are a content marketing agency. We preach that to get through to an audience you must first engage their interest, build a relationship with them and then direct them to your message. We practise what we preach. You can find out who we really are on the Who’s w00tonomy page. Of course, none of the things above about our directors are true (though you might want to press that Kirkpatrick guy on exactly what “entertaining contacts” means on his expenses claims).

A radical new online agency has been launched with a view to helping Scotland overcome its “digital deficit”.

Stewart Kirkpatrick Editor, Content Marketing Director of w00tonomy and award-winning editor of scotsman.com from 2000 to 2007, said: “We believe that Scotland’s online ecosystem is five years behind London and ten years behind where it could be. There are many very talented web and marketing professionals in our private and public sectors but for one reason and another that pool of talent has not led to the digital landscape that Scotland deserves.”

Kirkpatrick and his colleagues, two of Scotland’s leading online thinkers, Graham Jones and Tony Purcell, believe that Scotland needs a national discussion on how to rectify this situation. They believe that their content marketing agency offers a unique service and is well placed to lead the debate. Kirkpatrick said: “Scotland’s invention gave the world television, tarmac and penicillin. We have traditionally punched above our weight – and still do in the games market – but as a nation we have yet to get to grips with the opportunities of digital.”

“Imagine a world where every citizen could access every piece of information they needed wherever they were, whoever it was from in a way that was relevant, engaging and – most of all – interesting to that individual. Imagine too that they were then able to enter into a dialogue with the organisation that provided the information so that they felt involved and engaged with the service provided. Every message would be tailored to them, every point of contact would make them feel part of a community and every transaction would involve something far more meaningful than the simple exchange of cash.

“Thanks to the improvements in mobile phones and the evolution of the internet into a two-way discussion based on the sharing of information, all this is possible now. All we need to do is make it happen.”

About: Formed by three of Scotland’s leading online experts, w00tonomy is the first “content marketing” agency in Scotland and it represents the next evolutionary step in online marketing.

w00t: (Internet slang) Used to express joy, particularly that felt during success or victory. (From Wikipedia.) W00t was Merriam Webster’s “word of the year” in 2007.

-onomy: system of rules, laws, or knowledge about a particular field. (Also from Wikipedia.)

Why did we do this? because of the way we saw the internet moving. The first phase of the internet was really about technology, the second was about the visual element. But for now and for the future it is all about content, particularly with the launch of new mobile devices like the iphone.

Our experience has taught us that to reach target audiences clients need to build a relationship with them based on interesting and relevant content – not ads. This content must be developed over time in response to intelligence about how the audience behaves. This is at the heart our business – content marketing.

What we stand for: We believe that every client has a story to tell to every one of its customers – w00tonomy will tell that in a way that builds a long-term relationship with the online audience.

How we work: We use the changing online landscape to deliver and develop our clients’ message through high-quality creative content on next-generation platforms, and then give them bite-size intelligence about how it performs so it can be evolved.

How we are different: Traditional online marketing has focused on building a web or mobile site, uploading the client’s content and then (maybe) monitoring the traffic. The process ends there. But this approach fails to take into account how people and content behave – especially after Web 2.0. All content competes for attention with all other content – regardless of who publishes it. Our business is built on the realisation that clients now want to demonstrate real value from their online spend. Our directors boast decades of experience in editorial, strategic, technical, analytic and operational fields. We bring all components together to make your online presence effective. We will guide our clients on every stage of building a successful online strategy.

Stewart Kirkpatrick – Content Marketing Director
Stewart is Scotland’s leading content consultant, working for the Scottish Government on major projects. He was editor of scotsman.com from 2000 to 2007. In that time traffic increased ten-fold to 4 million unique users a month. The site became one of Google News’s top 30 worldwide news sources and was identified by Media Week as the sixth biggest news site in the UK. scotsman.com won the Newspaper Society’s New Media Award for Best Daily Newspaper Site in 2002, 2003 and 2006 and was shortlisted for numerous national and international journalism awards. Last year, Stewart, a member of the international committee of the Online News Association, was named as one of “the top 50 people shaping online journalism” by UK Press Gazette.

Tony Purcell – Online Strategy and Research Director
Tony is a pioneer of the Internet industry in Scotland and a serial entrepreneur. He founded Communicata in 1995, a company specialising in web application development. Along with developing web applications, the company produced promotional websites for a number of large corporates including Sony, Scottish & Newcastle, The WM Company, Newcastle United Football Club, General Accident and the SQA. In 1999 the company was listed in Oracle’s top 50 list of e-business solutions providers worldwide. In 2001 Tony founded CIVIC with Graham Jones which went on to become the leading digital agency in Scotland. CIVIC provides a wide range of web services to the public sector in Scotland and is a supplier to the Scottish Government. Tony is also a business mentor and represents the interactive industry on the Scottish Skillset industry panel.

Dr Graham Jones – Client Services & Planning Director
Graham was Managing Director of CIVIC, Scotland’s fastest growing Online Communications Agency from its inception, in August 2001 to Nov 2007. In this time the business grew from an initial £0.5m and 7 staff to £2m with a staff of 28 people. His responsibilities throughout this period were to provide the strategic vision and direction to meet the needs of a dynamic and rapidly growing marketplace. His responsibilities also included Client & project Management, contractual negotiations, managing legal risk, business development and marketing of the agency. He was successful in establishing a reputation for credibility and industry expertise with clients to the extent that CIVIC became trusted suppliers to the Scottish Government. Graham has also worked for 7 years in the software industry, 5 years at Edinburgh University as Research Associate & 4 years as a Management Accountant.