5 posts tagged “wikis”
A colleague recently asked me how her clients can integrate social media and web 2.0 into their organisations in order to more effectively work on collaborative projects across mobile workforces. What tools help close geographical borders within organisations? Are there easier ways to communicate other than back-and-forth email, telephone and IM that helps employees share work internally? I figured I would address these questions in a public forum.
As we all know and have heard time and time again, the use of web 2.0 tools in the enterprise is becoming more important and increasingly evident. It facilitates an environment where workers are less constrained by geographic borders, allowing them to communicate and collaborate across dispersed workforces (whether it be different offices, states, countries with relative ease).
There are particular tools that give employees have access to content that helps them be more productive in their job function. Tools such as wikis are helping organisations promote and share talent, IP, experience, case studies, learnings and so forth.
I would make the suggestion for organisations wishing to foster a culture of sharing and collaboration that they take a plunge by implementing an internal Wiki. A wiki is a site that allows you to create, edit and share content easily with one another. A great example is Wikipedia. Wikipedia is an online encyclopaedia created and edited by citizen journalists (you and me).
An internal wiki would allow employees to manage work documents efficiently. Allows one to create, edit and link documents that they’re working on. This allows you to track a history of changes to documents and the people that made particular changes. It's a much more efficient and user-friendly system - and is definitely easier than storing down multiple versions of the same document.
This about the documents that you have saved to your work folders. I guarantee if you're anything like me that you have versions titled .final, .FINALFINAL, .v2, .v3, .v3LK_edits and the list goes on. Every Tom, Dick and Harry adds their flavour to a press release (for example) and all of a sudden you are stretched to figure out which is the 'REAL' final document.
From my knowledge as well, a company intranet can be hosted on a wiki - although I look to my blogging community to back me up or knock me down on this one.
Another fabulous Web 2.0 tool is RSS or 'Real Simple Syndication'. I would have to say that this is one of the most underestimated tools to date. It complements other Web 2.0 tools. For example, using an internal wiki, all employees would be able to subscribe to an RSS feed - which is basically a web feeds. This means if changes are made to the wiki, the new content would be sent directly to the employee (can be in the form of an email update) with a link and possibly even a summary of the content changes. This enables employees to decide whether they want to click through to the site. This means that employees do not have to manually log on to the wiki every so often to check whether amends to internal documents have made been made.
I’d like to build a list of wiki software that exists in Australia (and costs). If anyone has any insight, I invite you to share them with me.
A really interesting IDC study, titled "The Hyperconnected: Here They Come" was released this month which talks about the exploding "culture of connectivity" and the implications that hyper-connectivity has on the enterprise and business practices.
Whilst on a fact finding mission, another interesting point that I came across is that the global mobile workforce continues to grow unabated - IDC expects the global mobile worker population to increase from 758.6 million in 2006 to more than 1 billion in 2011, representing just over 30 percent of the worldwide workforce. [see more details here]
The thing that really struck a chord with me is that we are becoming a generation addicted to connectivity. We are seeing our younger colleagues enter the workforce as 'digital natives' (an idea widely discussed by Peter Sheahan) - they only understand communication via IM, email, text messaging, social networking and so forth. This is the 'conventional' that they seek and the 'unconventional' that the rest of us are all so keen to adopt. Today, we are spending more time connected and switched on in both our personal and work lives - so much so that we are now seeing a blurring between the two.
More and more people are starting to leverage Web 2.0 tools in business (a term coined Enterprise 2.0) such as shared wikis, IM and social networks in order to better facilitate information sharing and collaboration between workers and provide a competitive edge to those businesses that embrace it.
I think we will see Enterprise 2.0 increasingly extend beyond the office as wireless technologies such as in-built 3G, WiFi and WiMAX become faster and more efficient for business users to access personal internet on-the-go, and as mobile devices become sleeker and lighter for users to carry with them.
The IDC study predicts that "hyperconnected business users will likely rise to 40 percent in five years". Another five years down the track, I am sure we will see a substantial increase on this figure. Application and web developers, mobile device/ notebook manufacturers and telecommunications providers will need to cater towards making this hyper-connected experience for users a more seamless one.
Watch this space!
A really interesting thing happened recently. According to an article I was reading on Arstechnica, Warren Hills Regional School in New Jersey has banned students from using Wikipedia as an information source and reference point for assignments and projects. The school has stepped beyond a simple ban and gone so far as to block the site from the PCs in the school. I am sure that this is merely one case of many more that are out there, or many more to come.
Just to give you a bit of background, a wiki is a website or similar online resource which allows users to include and edit content collectively. (please note to appeal to everyone out there reading this, I actually referred to the Wikipedia as the starting point to create my definition). In the case of Wikipedia, anyone who has an internet connection and a PC/ notebook/ mobile internet device can log onto the site and make edits to existing entries. Does this make it a fountain of knowledge, given that we have the ability to tap into the creativity of people around the globe, or does it make it a breeding ground for innaccuracy and misleading content?
I have to perhaps agree that it may be a fair call to ban referencing Wikipedia at primary and tertiary level education but surely those that are implementing the bans could have take some value from the site for educational purposes. The education board should have used Wikipedia as a case study and task to students to collaborate, execute some solid research and improve the site by contributing accurate content to it. Or reverse it, they should have provided the students with links to incorrect entries on the site and made the students conduct their own research and provide a well-researched paper on the topic along with a list of recommendations to changing the current entries.
Wikipedia was never meant to be a source of expert opinion and accurate content, nor was it ever promoted to be. It is merely a launch pad to get people thinking and engaged in a topic so they can then move on and execute a project once they have a general understanding after using the site.
I attended a Dow Jones expert series briefing earlier today that covered off the latest phenomenons in Web 2.0, including tools such as wikis. The conversations were around collaborating on projects via email versus collaborating using wikis.
Wikis can be extremely useful in business today. More people are collaborating on different projects. To give you a real life example, in our company, a lot of cross-pollination happens across the floor with different agencies teaming up for project work. At the moment, more work is conducted via email, but threads can be long, tedious and attached documents can get lost. People have to keep tabs on what versions have been created, who has the latest updates, did they get saved down to a central system somewhere that everyone can easily access, did someone mistakingly get dropped off the email trail where it was dire for them to be included but no one has noticed.
Where we could benefit with wikis, as could other corporations, is that different working groups can be created where everyone has access to a wiki (or a central page), having the ability to read, create and edit. Using this tool means that everyone can remain in the loop and the wealth of knowledge sits in one central repository that you can always trackback and make reference to. This seems to be a more sensible way of conducting group work.
So in summary:
- Don't reference Wikipedia as a primary source of information when conduction research. Rather use it as a quick hit of information to give you a better understanding of what you are dealing with
- If you do refer to Wikipedia and you notice something is not right (and you know this from your own thorough research) make a point to edit the entry. Every proper 2c counts
- Get started on wikis and stop with the over reliance of email!
I was mucking around on the net and came across a blog called PronetAdvertising. The author had a really simple way of explaining the difference between Public Relations, Marketing, Advertising and Branding.
For any of you out there that struggle with extremely long and complicated definitions of each of the focuses or are still just unclear as to what exactly it is that those on the dark side to you do, then the following simple images are probably the easiest way for you to interpret it for yourself. I don't think the disciplines have been simplified in this way before so I wanted to share it with you.
These images are also hosted on Ads of The World.
I think the new social media tools that exist such as YouTube, MySpace, online video sites, blogging, wikis etc..., if used correctly, will give those in the Marketing and Public Relations industries the opportunity to move closer towards the branding discipline - where emerging technologies are providing agencies with the ability to form online communities over common interests for their clients, big companies will not need to flog how great they are through their PR agencies because instead consumers will be talking about their brands and not their intermediary agencies, opening direct dialogue between the consumer and the company will enhance the credibility/ reputation of the companies - all of which will hopefully result in the public talking amongst themselves about the brands.
I believe this is what will help build better brands and what will make true impact on the clients bottom dollar!
Working in the pervasive media landscape today makes me wonder many things. How was PR practiced in the days of no email? Was fax a decent alternative to email? Did people have a lot of face-to-face contact with journalists? How were media lists compiled? How did PR practitioners keep up to date with the latest media movements? Oh my, did people actually hand-write instead of type? Anyway, I am sure you get it - but the list of questions goes on and on.
A lot has changed over the years and it's interesting to reflect as I am still a newbie in PR years (3 years studying and 2 years working). The PR industry has had to embrace a lot of new technologies and tools over the years. Think of email and the World Wide Web in the earlier days and now think of online social networks, blogs, wikis, podcasts, video conferencing. There was a mass uptake in the earlier and we are gaining some traction with regards to the latter.
The technologies become more advanced, however, our approach to them essentially remain the same. If we do not embrace the ever-changing media and PR landscape, I think we will struggle to remain afloat as effective PR pracitioners.
Imagine your boss had not bought computers for all employees when email boom became a craze. You probably would not be in a job if that was the case, or at least there is no way you could battle it out with your competition when the other side increase their productivity 100 fold.
I think we will see the same situation arise today. In order for PR companies to be successful, they will need to embrace and adopt the new way of PR thinking - which largely includes considering digital strategies and approaches when trying to answer clients communications issues.
I think we will see some rapid uptake on new social media - especially in relation to client business.
Watch this space!!
