IT Solutions Blog

Finally I got my head around posting a presentation I gave last March. The title is “Wiki – the right tool for my organization?” and had the purpose of introducing the concept of a wiki to a group that was about to install a wiki within their department.

Background: About three years ago I went through the effort of evaluating existing wiki platforms, installing/hosting it for our department and keeping it alive for the next two years before it got sacked. I’m here to tell you why it didn’t work out in the end.

Characteristics

I jump right into the characteristics (the slide “Characteristics” is duplicated in the presentation on purpose) because I found understanding them key to a successful implementation. That’s why once more I want to emphasize on the issues that need to be met in order to successfully implement a wiki, for example if your company has no culture of sharing content or employees are reluctant to give up ownership of their code, a wiki is most likely not the ideal collaboration tool.

These are the characteristics of a wiki:

• Perpetual work in progress
• No one owns the content
• No specific organization (hyperlinks)
• Anyone can edit other people’s work
• Discussion area for each page
• Version control: list of all changes made to a page

Critical Success Factors (aka truth about a wiki)

Only implement a wiki if you feel comfortable you can meet the following critical success factors:

• Only 10% contribute; only 1% on a regular basis.
• Obey the characteristics of a wiki
• Power to the people
  • Trust the user
  • Authority to change something
  • Refuse defined structures

My previous experience taught me that implementing a wiki into your organization is doomed to fail if one is not aware of their importance and therefore

• overestimates the reach and participation,
• neglects the characteristics of a wiki,
• or doesn’t want or cannot give power to the people.

The truth is, only 10% of users contribute to a wiki and only 1% on a regular basis. If you have 100 employees you can expect between 1 to 10 of them to contribute and the rest to consume – which in turn will lead to lesser contribution and lesser consumption over time. Wikipedia works well because there are millions of users where 1% is still significant number to keep up quality content.
The argument of mandatory (or even monitored) participation runs directly against the characteristics of a wiki, is counter-productive and will result in your wiki failing.

Choosing a wiki: What to consider

Obviously there are many criteria and features that will directly affect your choice. I recommend Comparison of wiki software as a starting point for finding the right software but I wouldn’t be surprised if you ended up with MediaWiki which is the used by wikipedia for one simple reason (besides its free usage under the GPL license and its huge community): the MediaWiki syntax is widely used and makes actually sense to learn – because it is wikipedia

Criteria

• Cost (open source license)
• Programming language (PHP, C#, Java)
• Data backend (File system or DB)
• Extensibility & user community

Features

• WYSIWYG editing & Syntax
• Version control & Discussions
• Permissions & Security

Keys to get a wiki going

Once you’ve decided to go ahead and install a wiki, what can be done to make it successful?

• Find dedicated helpers
• Partner with groups/people related to your mission
• Offer structural templates for new pages
• Add some content to major categories
• Do lots of marketing
• If possible, offer training

Do you work with wikis?

What are your experiences? Do you use a wiki in your company? How do you use it?

Create your own web 2.0 BS at http://www.emptybottle.org/bullshit/

It’s been 4 years since the term ‘Web 2.0′ became popular and I still hear critiques that it doesn’t mean anything. Common arguments include ‘nothing new’, ‘not based on a new technology’, ‘just a trend/bubble’ or ‘just a marketing buzzword’. Here I am, taking a stand by telling you why Web 2.0 isn’t just another buzz or bubble, why Web 2.0 became and is common wisdom and why Web 2.0 should actually matter to you. Call it differently if you feel thrown off by the marketing jargon but have a peak at Scott Berkun’s extraordinary take on web 2.0:

“We have always been collaborative. Always been social. It’s in our genes and it’s what we have evolved to do well. Good technologies enhance our natural abilities, give us useful artificial ones, and help us to get more of what we want from life. Web 2.0 and social media make the process of collaboration and developing relationships more fun, efficient, powerful and meaningful.”

Web 2.0 is a Transition

Web 2.0 is neither a trend nor a revolution, Web 2.0 is the transition from

• proprietary web applications to open services platforms
• monolithic releases to perpetual beta
• publishing to participation
• static content to syndication
• directories (taxonomy) to tagging (folksonomy).
• …

Add to this list by sending me a comment.

Web 2.0 is Power to the People

Web 2.0 is software that gets better the more people use it! Sites like del.icio.us, Flickr, eBay or Amazon base their success on the use and contributions by their users. Social networking sites measure their success by the involvment of their participants.

Trust your Users! Now that is what I really love! Wikipedia is probably the ultimate example of an experiment of trust, content creation through the user community – yes, it works! Amazon’s reviews distinguish them from other online bookstores like Barnes and Nobles that work with exactly the same data stores, just Amazon makes use of suggestions, ratings and other statistics to enhance their search results and create a basis of trust. Same holds true for eBay’s reputation system or Googles PageRank.

Some rights reserved! Share, Remix, Reuse – Legally. ‘Hacking’ and ‘Mixing’ (creating mash-ups) is crucial for creative work and probably the single-most important movement of our time, thanks Creative Commons.

You control your own data! Syndicate, add, upload, tag, allow, deny, connect! It’s about you and your data, with all its benefits, dangers and responsibilities, but wonderfully powerful

Web 2.0 is the Next Generation

I don’t mean the next generation of technology, as a matter of fact none of the key technologies XHTML & CSS, DOM manipulation, XML & XSLT, XMLHttpRequest and JavaScript is new. I mean the Next Generation of Users, the Net Gen. It is no surprise to me that the flagship website Facebook was created by a Net Gen-er (Mark Zuckerberg) who at the age of 20 understood how to apply the existing technology to the demands and desires of the new generation.

His vision embodied some of the core competencies of Web 2.0 companies (from What is Web 2.0):

• Services, not packaged software, with cost-effective scalability
• Control over unique, hard-to-recreate data sources that get richer as more people use them
• Trusting users as co-developers
• Harnessing collective intelligence
• Leveraging the long tail through customer self-service
• Software above the level of a single device
• Lightweight user interfaces, development models, AND business models

Facebook scores high in most competencies but like every early-adopter had and still has to face concerns and rejections for others. Facebook had to appologize when huge protests occurred after introducing the News Feed in 2006 which is now the most used part of Facebook or dealing with privacy concerns about the social advertising system Beacon.

And to be honest, I still don’t understand the real power and use behind Facebook. At this point I should make space for the next generation like my friend Robert who offered to give some insight and explains:

“When you look at vamp bites, slaps, gifts and all, it seems pretty pointless. I’m a big fan of my feed though ( obviously ). Facebook pulls data from Twitter, Flickr, Digg, Last.fm, Hulu and Google Reader — so I see feed more like ‘This is a slice of Rob’s life, RIGHT NOW’ instead of ‘Here’s some stupid stuff he did on Facebook…’”

and how he thinks about Privacy:

“Yeah, I don’t have much online privacy. Everything but my age, which is out there but I make it a little harder to get. I find that If someone knows my age first, It might be a problem. If they learn it last, no problem at all. I like people to be able to talk to me, I want all my info to be assessable. I can’t really think of anyone who I wouldn’t want to have my info that couldn’t get it anyway; but I do know people who I want to have my info but might not be able to get it otherwise. Plus, I love messing with the internet shy.”

Why does Web 2.0 matter?

Businesses need to understand the opportunities and potential offered by Web 2.0 and its changing user behavior. To become or stay competitive, companies need to create applications that learn from their users and support an architecture of participation. Understanding and implementation of one or more of the following Web 2.0 concepts are paramount:

• Users add value: Involve your users in adding value to your application
• Trust your Users: Provide users with the tools to create unique, hard to create content which will eventually give you a competitive advantage.
• The Perpetual Beta: Engage your users as real-time testers and instrument the services so that you know how people use the new services.
• Cooperate, don’t control: Offer API’s and content syndication and re-use data services of others.
• Some Rights Reserved: Keep barriers of adoption low. Use licenses with as few restrictions as possible.
• Utilize Network Effects: Aggregate user data as a side-effect of their use of the application.