What's happening out there?

Lots of this web 2.0 stuff is new to me, but it's been around for a while, so I decided it was time to see what other people in university/teaching institutions are doing with it. So far the outstanding institution is just up the road - CRASSH. Which is:
The Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities, or
"a crossroads. A way in which people can move from one end of the university to the other, from one discipline to the other, from one set of interests or problems to the other...A continual and busy crossroads of exchange, circulation, ideas"

Oddly, I first noticed CRASSH's presence in the TLS (Times Literary Supplement, weekly journal on the arts esp. creative writing, amazingly good in patches but pretty reactionary). CRASSH was advertising a conference to be held in June, and I noticed there was a "collaborative blog" related to the conference and went to have a look at it. Unfortunately the conference topic is totally baffling "Reconsidering detachment: an emergent discussion of the productive potential of disconnection, distance and detachment ..." you may get the idea. But I was intrigued to read the blog: conference speakers had posted abstracts of their papers, researchers posted abstracts of related journal articles. Several people had used the comments to raise questions they would like to see addressed at the conference, and a discussion had already been started well before the conference began. Researchers from several different disciplines were involved, in fact anyone could register for the blog and comment. It seems to have great potential for opening up the exchange of ideas among different academic specialities.