Building your own Wikipedia-inside

By Jeff Brainard | February 28, 2008, 10:42 am | 0 Comments

CIO Magazine recently published an extensive article on how to build your own Wikipedia. The article provides step-by-step details on how to employ wikis as a valuable business tool to organize content assets, communicate about business processes and manage the collective know-how of an organization. For a business wiki to succeed “a clear focus is essential” and “the wiki’s structure sets the tone for its future use, and thus its value.” The article also stresses the need for having an active gardener to help prune the wiki over time to help maintain the structure, as well as encourage active converations.

As CIO Magazine points out, it’s important to select the right wiki technology platform and vendor-partner to meet your requirements. For example, Socialtext is highlighted for helping “companies structure, deploy and maintain their wikis” and leveraging the experiences gained from its clients, like Boston College, Epitaph Records and IKEA. Ultimately, for a wiki to succeed, people have to use them and a key step is promoting and publicizing the wiki. “Make everyone who might benefit from using the wiki aware that it’s available to them. Executives should mention it in their communication with the company, whether that’s via email or newsletter, or at company meetings.” Read more.

In other news, a recent Ragan Report article discussed how long-time Socialtext customer, Eastwick Communications, is using wikis to “make great progress in reducing confusing email traffic and in providing a common location and platform for maintaining important client and agency-related documents.” For example, a few months ago Eastwick used its ‘Eastwiki’ as the central communications tool for the ‘Going Green’ event it was managing for Fujitsu. By using the wiki, paper and printing costs were reduced, plus the average event-specific email traffic was cut by 40 percent. The environmental and cost benefits of using the wiki have been felt agency-wide at Eastwick, since “the tool has reduced the agency’s use of paper by about 15 percent.” Read more.