Flickr Photo: celestehodgesChange is buzzing through our ears -- and not just from the Obama campaign,but in the NTEN Affinity Groups, as well.

Marc Osten, Summit Collaborative, invites us to join a discussion that puts Web 2.0 on the hot seat, asking, "Will Web 2.0 be the tool set we need to change the world?" View the conversation here.

Mark's idea for this discussion stems from a recent thread on the UK Riders list. The UKRider thread was started by David Wilcox, who shared a bit about Clay Shirky's book, Here Comes Everyone. Shirky states the following regarding Web 2.0.:

Everywhere you look, groups of people are coming together to share with one another, work together, or take some kind of public action. For the first time in history, we have tools that truly allow for this."

After Day 2, there was general broad agreement that Web 2.0 tools are simply not enough and that there are a variety of other issues that drive the use of the tools. Comments led the discussion to get more concrete:

"WHAT ARE THE SPECIFIC QUESTIONS WE NEED TO ASK TO APPROPRIATELY AND EFFECTIVELY USE WEB 2.0 TOOLS AND STRATEGIES?"

Can you contribute? To join the discussion, login here with a Hot Seat account (If you do not have an account, it is easy enough to create one).

At the end of the two week online discussion, Marc would like to see if we can together contribute something very concrete and usable to the wider audience of colleagues we know who didn’t have time to join us. He's thinking along the lines of a fact sheet, decision-making tool, postings of the synthesis to blogs, a short online video summary, etc.

On a similar note of how we can best collaborate and use tools for good, Adam Lauglin, graduate student in the Knowledge and Information Technologies program at the University of Denver, shared his plan to start a nonprofit, FLOSS4Good (Free/Libre and Open Source Software for Good) with NTEN Discuss.

Right now it is just an informative site to share theories and work on global nonprofit software improvement. Floss4Good's primary organizational role is providing structure and support for collaboration between technically inclined youth, open source and corporate software professionals, and nonprofits. He would love to hear your thoughts, which you can provide by emailing floss4good@googlegroups.com

In other Affinity Group happenings, two new groups have been created: Working with Technophobes and Phone Stuff.

• Join Working with Technophobes if you work with those who are scared of, clueless about, or downright hostile to technology to have a place to sympathize with others.
• Phone Stuff is a place to discuss best practices in Local, Long Distance, Cellular, Voice over IP, and telecom equipment.

Join these discussions and more in the NTEN Affinity Groups!