Corporate Wikis

Recently I read a couple of blog posts by Ann All, a blogger at ITBusinessEdge, an aggregator of Business IT news and research, regarding corporate wikis and implied that wikis are "where work gets done".  That comment came from an interview Ann had done earlier with Aaron Fulkerson, co-founder and CEO of software provider MindTouch, where he stated that "A blog can disseminate information to a wider audience, but to get work done, you go to a wiki, where you collaborate, iterate, pull information from disparate sources and then hammer something into acationable information".

Image from jjarron

In her post, she also explained that MindTouch is by no means the only company that is using wikis successfully, Cisco's collaboration platform uses wikis heavily, and even the military is using wikis to enhance communication. In a recent Mashable article it listed four benefits of a wiki:

• The ability to gather and present information, so "one person can add an idea while others refine it and add their expertise"
• Ability to track changes, a must for any corporate communication
• Ability to archive information
• and finally, their ease of use.  

Ann also has another post about how to use wikis in your company, which really sparked my interest because my office has a great need to an information repository.  We currently use shared network locations, but the problem with that is that in order for it to be effective everyone has to use the same naming convention put their file in the correct folder, etc. In my previous jobs we have used wikis extensively as a company handbook, knowledge base and document repository all rolled into one.  As I read her list of suggested way to use wikis many of the ways I just mentioned were included.