A World of Wikis

Late last week, I was putting the finishing touches on speaking proposals for the Web 2.0 Expo NYC and was brainstorming ideas around 'the world is a wiki.' And then I read about Frost & Sullivan's new report, and I realized 'the world wants a wiki!'


Frost & Sullivan recently published Web 2.0 Technologies in the Recession-hit Europe as a Solution for Small and Medium Businesses.

Research Analyst Iwona Petruczynik said: "In Europe, there is a common misconception that a true deliverable is measured in how many kilograms of paper one produces and hands over to a client. This belief is hindering the adoption of Web 2.0 solutions, as more end products are being delivered in the form of a wiki or a blog."

However, businesses are seeking new ways to stay productive while significantly cutting costs with the help of Web 2.0 solutions, according to the press release. "From lower-cost versions of enterprise applications, to utilising cloud computing, 'crowd sourcing' business owners are taking advantage of what Web 2.0 has to offer."

As they well should.

It's a cry being heard 'round the world: we're cutting back, but be more productive. Yikes! A scary proposition. But that's the magic of innovative technological solutions. They remedy the problem.

Petruczynik explains: "Web 2.0 solutions may be part of the cure for the recessionary headache that many European businesses are now experiencing; social networking sites, wikis, and blogs are just some of the more well-known examples of Web 2.0 technologies that can play an important role here. These solutions are becoming more prevalent in the European small and medium businesses (SMBs) arena, especially at a time like this, when workers are being forced to do more with less."

I echo that thought without reservation.

Built for Collaboration; Ready to Work

Armen Grigorian, a manager at Defoe Fournier and Company, merchant bankers since 1824, have used a wiki for more than two years, and Grigorian loves it.

“We needed a way for people to collaborate on projects. All our projects have at least six people involved,” said Grigorian. In a company of a dozen people, half the employees work together on each project. The problem is, those employees are scattered around, between headquarters in New York City, Atlanta, Rochester, Pittsburgh, and even Armenia.

Grigorian continues with a description that sounds like most small businesses. “There's no real IT department or money to develop a custom application. We rely on typical tools for small businesses, like Excel and Word from Microsoft. We're all finance and accounting people who can just barely use a computer.”

Defoe Fournier needs to keep all their working documents per project in a central place where everyone can get to them from anywhere, securely. SamePage makes it easy for Grigorian and his coworkers to organize their documents per project, keep track of documents as they change, and store files for finished projects so they're out of the way yet still easily accessible.

“When we start a new project, I assign someone to start it, and I allocate the jobs and access to the project files,” said Grigorian. “We have pages for each project with discussions and notes. Sometimes we have live discussions by invitation, or people can comment later.”

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Excerpted from a Network World article written by James Gaskin. Read the rest at: http://www.networkworld.com/columnists/2009/030909gaskin.html

Don't fear the wiki

Wiki consultant Stewart Mader posted on his blog last week about an issue that seems so simple, yet one that becomes a major hindrance to wikis not taking off within a corproate environment: FEAR.

Fear can motivate or disable you. However, Stewart suggests ways to turn around someone's fear of contributing to a wiki. In fact, he says, contributing to a wiki can solidfy your value to an organization.

Once again, Stewart takes a very real issue and provides a simple answer.

"The more a person shares on the wiki, the more their value is known to the company," Stewart says. He adds that, of course, it's natural to be afraid of sharing your knowledge. But he explains that when people start to 'give away' or share what they know, their value to the company will be greater, and they will create more time to work on even more things, thereby expanding their knowledge base even further. So simple, yet so true.

You can't assume that your bosses know how much you know. And you can't keep all your knowledge (no matter how hard earned) to yourself, so that anyone in the company who wants to learn about 'your' topic needs to go to you. It's to YOUR ADVANTAGE to share. Your bosses will see for themselves when looking in the wiki how much you know, and your colleagues can search in your wiki pages for answers to their questions. this will put you in a better light with your bosses and free up your time to expand your base and grow within the organization. It's a win for the company and a win for you.

Don't fear the wiki. Take the leap.

Getting Started with Wikis?

I was recently interviewed for an Outlook Series, and I had the opportunity to discuss the background of wikis, as well as ways enterprise wikis can drive business productivity.

Take a listen. Then, let me know what you think.

Salesforce + Wiki = Better Salesforce

Have you ever noticed that there are no enterprise wikis on the Salesforce AppExchange?! That is, there weren't, until last week. But to me, it seems like a perfect match. And now, SamePage is part of the Force.com AppExchange on Salesforce.com.

Here are some things Salesforce CRM customers can do with a SamePage application:
- Collaborate and share knowledge and information online with customers, leads and prospects
- Easily import leads and contacts from Salesforce into the enterprise wiki
- Involve business associates in the collaboration process
- Use a ‘single sign on’ mechanism – users that log into Salesforce are seamlessly transported into their SamePage wiki
- Benefit from wiki, blog, forum, discussion board bundle by having a centralized destination for all Enterprise 2.0 collaborative activity












“The Force.com AppExchange offers an abundance of cloud computing applications that complement and expand the value of Salesforce CRM,” said Kendall Collins, chief marketing officer at salesforce.com. “Customers can use eTouch SamePage as a cost-effective and innovative enterprise wiki product that facilitates knowledge management and collaboration with both internal and external audiences.”

Social Media is Good for Business

People who use the Internet for personal reasons at work are about 9 percent more productive that those who do not, according to a recent University of Melbourne study that I read about on ReadWriteWeb.

According to the study of 300 workers, 70% of people who use the Internet at work engage in Workplace Internet leisure browsing (WILB) a term coined by study author Dr. Brent Coker.

People who do surf the Internet for fun at work - within a reasonable limit of less than 20% of their total time in the office - are more productive by about 9% than those who don't," said Dr. Coker. It helps to sharpen workers' concentration

Lest anyone think the study is suggesting a lot of internet surfing at work, the survey did report the obvious. Coker said those who behave with Internet addiction tendencies will have a lower productivity than those without.

Is this useless information? Or should companies take some of it to heart?

There are plenty of companies out there that block employees’ access to Facebook, MySpace and other social sites. Certainly, unblocking these sites is not going to solve productivity issues.

However, as more companies integrate enterprise 2.0 and social media solutions into the workplace, it may behoove them to bear these study results in mind. Certain tools, such as enterprise wikis for online collaboration and knowledge management, can allow employees to incorporate a bit of their personality and self-expression within the confines of a ‘corporate’ environment. So during their WILB time, employees can interact online with colleagues, share news and information, and give their brains a little rest before they start working again more productively.

More and more enterprise tools are incorporating social-media elements. Maybe these engineers have known this whole time!

Hear the full audio interview or watch an interview with Dr. Brent Coker.

A GOOD Kind of Socializing at Word

Web sites, tech magazines, even mainstream papers are all writing about social media xyz. To say it's a hot topic is a great understatement. For example, the landscape of blogging has expanded, and the discourse in the comments can often be as valuable as the original blog post. Also, Facebook, Twitter and similar sites are becoming more valuable to companies, as people realize how to maximize their use for business purposes.

All of these 'social' tools help create a more comfortable online discussion; they help to make things more friendly and personal. That makes people feel they have more at stake. And I think that's a key reason why social features are increasingly finding their place in enterprise tools.

Last week, we announced the release of SamePage version 4.1 that incorporates social elements and allows users to personalize their wiki experience and profiles. SamePage is an enterprise wiki, yes. Adding social elements can help to foster better, more comfortable relationships among colleagues.

Some of the social features of SamePage version 4.1 are:

• An integrated social directory with rich user profiles and people search that facilitates people-centric collaboration.
• User-created profiles to provide a well-rounded view to other users and become a source for a collaborative social directory.
• People search functionality.
• Page ratings
• Twitter-like status updates, e.g. What are you doing now?
• Display of the most recent wiki activities
• On-premise customers can also customize the user-profile for their instance, hiding SamePage attributes that may not be relevant within their specific organization.

You can read more about it: http://www.etouch.net/products/collaboration/features_social_directory.html.
Or try it free for 30 days.

It's THE wave of the future.