10 Questions You Must Ask Before Implementing a Wiki #4

Ask yourself and your team the following questions before you start to implement a wiki, and be truthful with the answers.

Think about the issue you are trying to solve, and then see how a wiki might be applied, but remember don’t just focus on the positive, think about the potential down sides too.

4. Where is the content going to come from?
Meaningful content is the key to any successful wiki, but you need to think about where it is going to come from. While you will most likely be looking for the community to contribute, you will most likely want to seed the wiki. Where is this initial content going to come from, will you need to invest time in creating new content, or will you import existing legacy content from other systems, such as technical documentation, training, policies and procedures or marketing materials?

10 Questions You Must Ask Before Implementing a Wiki #3

Ask yourself and your team the following questions before you start to implement a wiki, and be truthful with the answers.

Think about the issue you are trying to solve, and then see how a wiki might be applied, but remember don’t just focus on the positive, think about the potential down sides too.

3. What’s the expected return on investment?

One of the first questions asked for any new system is usually a financial return on investment (ROI). With wikis the software could be as low as zero and as high as several thousand dollars for an enterprise solution. The highest cost will be a resource one, so think about your answers to the previous question. The ROI may not be one directly attributable to the wiki itself, but may come from a change in collaboration methodologies and operational
improvements.

Getting over the barriers to wiki adoption

My latest article on wikis is now up at the Conde Nast Digital ars technica website.

Here's a taster...

As I continue to research and write my upcoming book on wikis, I keep hearing one word over and over again. That word is "BUT" (complete with all-caps), as in, "I would like to use a wiki, BUT…" or "We tried using a wiki, BUT…"

What follows is usually an excuse for why the speaker feels that a wiki isn't a worthwhile tool for collaboration in his or her environment. I use the word "excuse" deliberately, because rarely does anyone articulate an actual business reason, such as a lack of need. When I ask deeper questions, I invariably find that the objection isn't to the wiki technology itself, but instead to the concept of collaborative authoring and a perceived loss of control over the content.

The true business benefits of collaborative knowledge sharing, such as improved productivity, greater efficiencies, removing cross-functional boundaries, enabling customer feedback etc., are often lost to a perceived, and understandable, fear. In the modern workplace, we have traditionally been defined, both in terms of success and hierarchy, based on what we know.

The old saying that knowledge is power has been a true axiom for a very long time, but the first few years of the new century have changed that. Internet culture, especially the social networking phenomenon of the last few years, has made knowledge-sharing the accepted norm outside of the work environment. Today, anyone who has access to an Internet connection has immediate access to a wealth of knowledge at their fingertips, to an extent literally unparalleled at any other time in human history. We expect to be able to use that information, and we expect to be able to contribute to it.

Yet there remains a reluctance to transfer this social behavior into the work environment. The knowledge base is clearly moving away from a select number of individuals towards the community; and companies that embrace the idea of community are becoming the biggest success story of recent years.

You can read the full article HERE.

10 Questions You Must Ask Before Implementing a Wiki #2

Ask yourself and your team the following questions before you start to implement a wiki, and be truthful with the answers.

Think about the issue you are trying to solve, and then see how a wiki might be applied, but remember don’t just focus on the positive, think about the potential down sides too.

2. How will you measure its success?

The business issue will impact how you measure success, these could be along the lines of percentage of community contributing, number of people registered, number of new articles or comments. Or it could be asking did the wiki reduce the time taken for a particular process; or even analyzing its impact on other systems, such as the reduction in email traffic, or a reduction in number of meetings

Marking Up The Fab Four: Just Imagine What XML Could Do For Your Books

Just posted over at THE CONTENT WRANGLER is my first article in what is planned to be a series examining how the traditional book industry could benefit from adopting XML.

Here's an extract from the first post ...

When I look at my book (Before They Were Beatles) on the Kindle, or on my iPhone, I am frankly disappointed in it. The reason? eBooks and eBook readers today are little more than simple electronic page turners.

But it doesn’t take a lot of imagination to think what they could be like. My book references lots of early recordings of various incarnations of the group that would become The Beatles – wouldn’t it be great to click on a link and actually hear those recordings, or even compare early versions with later versions recorded at the height of their fame. How about when I mention their encounters with other musicians? It would be cool to be able to click on a name and get a snapshot biography, links to books about them and access their music catalog. How about accessing photographs of 1950s Liverpool street scenes, or being able to tour the Fab Four’s childhood homes?

And it’s not only non-fiction where I see these sort of enhancements, imagine reading your favorite novelist, and when a character mentions a location being able to click through to the Google street view, or when they eat at a nice restaurant being able to access the recipe. Ever wanted to know exactly how to make the type of vodka martini that is best served shaken, not stirred? It could be just a click away.

There is no technical reason why this sort of interactive book couldn’t be done today.

You can read the full article here.

10 Questions You Must Ask Before Implementing a Wiki #1

Ask yourself and your team the following questions before you start to implement a wiki, and be truthful with the answers.

Think about the issue you are trying to solve, and then see how a wiki might be applied, but remember don’t just focus on the positive, think about the potential down sides too.

1. What business issue is the wiki being used to resolve?

For any technology implementation to succeed, there needs to be a problem that it is trying to solve, or an operational efficiency to be gained. Think about why you are considering a wiki, do you have examples of wikis being used to address similar issues? Did they work? If so, why?

iPad - Racing Towards Publishing's Future?

This afternoon I’m sat watching the first major motor race of the 2010 season, the Rolex 24 Hour sports car race at Daytona in Florida. When the race started it was raining, but over the last hour or so the drizzle has stopped and the track started to dry out a bit.

As in any race where the conditions change several drivers choose to come in early and switch their treaded wet weather tires for slick dry weather tires while the track was a little damp. Racing drivers being racing drivers several set off at full throttle back on to a damp track with cold slick tires and promptly spun off, some of them several times. While others balanced the risk with a degree of caution and soon found them selves making rapid progress.

Watching the race unfold over the last hour in changing conditions made me think about this week’s launch of the Apple iPad and the various reactions to it among the digital and technical publishing markets.

There is no doubt that the iPad is a clear sign of changing conditions in the industry. The trick will be how you approach those conditions.

Some will go full out to get to the first corner, by making hasty judgments, rush into new markets without testing, or just repackage existing material without adding any value. I believe that many of these chargers will ‘spin off.’ Some of them will crash and be out of the race, others will work their way back.

Others will take a more cautious approach, feeling out the new conditions, making small adjustments, see how the chargers are doing, watch others make mistakes and learn from them.

Over the last few days I’ve been asked several times what I think about the iPad. I think it’s too early to make a call about doing a ‘pit stop’ to start ‘changing tires.’

At this point I’m not sure what additional value the iPad brings – sure I’ve seen the videos, but I need to see one in action, maybe take a look at what some of the hard chargers are doing, and then maybe I’ll get a better idea of what race strategy we need to peruse to get to the finish line.

This Week in Wikis - Week 4

Another quite week on the wiki front, but here's a short list of some articles that caught my attention over the last few days.

- Wiki Web Help - "an AJAX-based wiki designed to operate like a CHM viewer"
- EBU's Wiki helps Haiti radio stations
- Wiki vs Professional debate in travcl guide industry.

As always the full list of all Wiki Week links can be found at http://delicious.com/wikiweek/

This Week in Wikis - Week 3

A shorter list this week, but here is a quick summary of interesting wiki related articles etc. that I came across over the last seven days.

- Atlassian Snags 2009 Elearning! "Best Social Learning Tool" Award.
- MyWiki app of the iPhone
- Appropedia - the 'green" wiki
- Antifeatures Wiki Catalogues Tech Annoyances You Hate

as always a full archive of all Wiki Week links can be found online at http://delicious.com/wikiweek

Video Interview on Using Wikis in Technical Documentation

I was recently interviewed by Ellis Pratt of Cherryleaf about the use of wikis in technical documentation. It was a fun and wide ranging conversation that lasted about an hour.

Ellis has prepared the following couple of short, 10 minute, extracts from the video interview and posted them on You Tube.