Working the wiki way

We’re sorry, this feature is currently unavailable. We’re working to restore it. Please try again later.

Advertisement

This was published 17 years ago

Working the wiki way

By CYNTHIA KARENA

Sean Killeen works the wiki way.

Like many modern executives Mr Killeen - the head of global product management at Australian hearing implant maker Cochlear - gets hundreds of emails a day, half of which are destined for the Deleted Items folder, unread and unanswered.

But there is one email he searches for early every morning: the summary of changes to the in-house wiki.

Wiki (Hawaiian for "quick") is well known as the technology behind the online encyclopedia Wikipedia. But it is also becoming a serious corporate tool.

Mr Killeen's email tells him all the changes to product plans, and summarises other online wiki discussions that have taken place the previous day at the office.

Advertisement

It's like an instant snapshot of the work in progress and the "headspace" of his company's workers. The "joy of wiki" - and its deceptively simple power - lies in the fact that anyone can edit these pages, to comment on or improve each other's work, at any time.

"I have a dozen or so watching briefs of about 50 wiki pages," Mr Killeen says. "When pages are changed within a wiki system, I get notified. That's useful, as I don't have to be in the (discussion) loop but can still be on top of it. I get a digest of changes in one email, so I don't have to read 10. One email with all the changes is better than trying to follow 50 or so email threads."

Wikis are a more sophisticated version of the corporate intranet and are helping organisations to make the most of their collective expertise to keep their information up-to-date and relevant.

"Today I uploaded the marketing specs for a new product in development," Mr Killeen says. "I created the content and distributed it for review and comment. Wikis allow everyone to tap into the current discussion and comment. The information is public, and on display. It helps sharpen what people write, as it is a big audience rather than just their department reading their ideas."

Before wikis, staff used the phone, email, and Lotus Notes TeamRoom, and some parts of the business, such as finance, still do, says Mr Killeen. "The problem with Lotus is that it's slow and cumbersome to use. There's no easy navigation system, you have to know the hierarchy of information. With wikis, you can find information easily." (See breakout, page 2.)

Victor Rodrigues, the software design and development manager at Cochlear, started to use open-source wikis about 3 1/2 years ago because he needed instant feedback for software releases to his development group. "But open-source wikis were only meant for developers to share information; you couldn't format content or do anything fancy such as create tables," he says.

So Cochlear moved from open source and started using Australian software company Atlassian's Confluence wiki. "The best thing is that there is no need to have experience in web editing; it's like using a word processor online."

But no matter how easy they are to use, sometimes people are intimidated by wikis, says Brad Kasell, IBM's Asia-Pacific program manager of emerging technologies. "Wikis are a different publishing model. It's such a radical concept, editing web pages. Editing a web page makes people uncomfortable compared to editing or annotating a word document. A web page is there for all the world to see."

IBM started using wikis internally a couple of years ago when blogging became popular, setting up BlogCentral, an internal IBM blog site for registered IBM users, and WikiCentral, the first point of call for anyone within IBM who is interested in setting up a wiki page.

"Blogs are typically established on an individual basis, although there are a few team blogs (with multiple authors). Wikis, on the other hand, are typically set up for teams to share information or around a specific project or event.

"There are now about 5000 to 10,000 blogs . . . and about 20,000 wikis used as a collaborative tool to develop (many) projects," says Mr Kasell.

People within a project used to pass around word documents and spreadsheets attached to emails for editing and comments, using change tracking and version naming to identify edits. The more people involved, the worse it was, he says.

Now IBM uses a variety of wiki platforms internally and with customers - some of which are open source and others that are proprietary (both IBM and non-IBM). Their latest Lotus Domino and Lotus QuickPlace offerings have blog and wiki capabilities.

A couple of months ago, IBM used wikis to manage its Australian Open project, where it put information about the tennis event into the online virtual community Second Life. People working in Melbourne, Atlanta and New York used wikis to complete the project, says Mr Kasell.

"Wikis are good for project management, for to do's, status reports, creating an issues log - you're always up to date. There's no collating reports from everyone at the end of the week for an update. Wikis have version-control built in, so there is a history of changes."

So what are the challenges? "The free-form structure (lends itself to) different designs, so it requires consistency within the team," says Mr Kasell. Also, while editable content is enabling, it can be dangerous. "Who's governing this process? In IBM, you identify yourself and restrict pages to read and modify."

But if there are mistakes in a wiki system, whether open to the public such as Wikipedia, or private such as IBM, then usually the ever-vigilant online community will pick up errors.

One new application of wikis is creating what are known as mash-ups, (named after hip-hop mixes of two or more songs) where people can easily combine information from different services to build their own web pages, typically by dragging and dropping dedicated items of information on to a page. For example, you could include the weather for Melbourne or New York, or the latest stock tips.

Situational applications, where the mix of information is needed immediately but only for a short time, are another application, says Mr Kasell. For example, profiling people at immigration checkpoints - "you only want that information for five minutes, after that the mix of data is irrelevant.

"You can build web pages to do that, but not in five minutes. You can on a wiki. You can drag and drop in a browser."

IBM has developed the QED - Quick and Easy Design - wiki for people to create their own mash-ups. The QEDwiki is targeted at people who want to make web applications without the aid of professional programmers. It uses Ajax scripting and a wiki on a server to collect and share information, such as RSS and Atom feeds that directly link into another website.

IBM is working with organisations within Australia in retail, telecommunications, travel, government, banking and financial services to evaluate and use wiki technology in their business activities and for use by their customers, says Mr Kasell. For example, bank customers with money to invest may look at products banks have to offer, and use external online databases and other investment plans.

"The bank sends customers the website address. (In the past), they would send a document with the information. Now information is on the wiki and the customer can also bring other information that will influence their decision. The customer can make a mash-up of the bank's and other databases, and can choose, say, Yahoo! or Google finance. They can do their own 'what-if' scenarios."

NASA uses wikis to encourage innovation among software developers. Its World Wind development project is an open-source alternative to Google Earth's 3-D geography browser, and is developed by NASA staff and open-source community developers around the world.

Using Atlassian software, the wiki websites have to-do lists and comments by people who have gone down that track before. It also has discussion pages and forums.

The project "couldn't possibly function as a world-class development operation" without wikis, says NASA World Wind project manager Patrick Hogan. "It allows us to intelligently manage the exchange of otherwise completely unmanageable amounts of information - 212 articles, 420 users and 427 files. Visibility supports the ability to prioritise things and, hopefully, inspire accomplishment."

Daniel Baker, a physicist in England, writes documentation and guides for World Wind, including the different ways you can view planets, how to view datasets and how to use pages not produced by NASA.

The add-on pages started out as a list he made on the forums, with the normal discussion threads. Someone convinced Mr Baker to move it over to the wiki. "This turned out to be a great move. Now anyone can add to the list, or edit the created pages with more information or corrections. This was impossible on the forum.

"We are currently working on adding categories to make finding a particular type of add-on easier," says Mr Baker. For example, "educational add-ons can be stored in an education section. With the use of multiple categories we don't need to have two copies of the same page if it needed to be in the education and geology section."

He says useful pages can be created quickly, and peer review keeps them accurate and relevant.

A US-based web content management software company, Vignette, has its R&D based in Sydney and developed its Vignette Collaboration software, which supports blogs and wikis, and also includes document sharing and discussion groups. Providing security and access in projects is an important consideration for its customers, who are in the US, western Europe and Australia, and include companies such as Optus, Sun Microsystems and Bank of America.

Security-wise, "we do wikis differently", says product manager Bertrand de Coatpont. "We have restricted access, because sometimes project teams just want collaboration with a small number of people.

"Our customers may want to create a set of pages describing project terminologies, or pages to track their competitors. People can add information and comments about competitors launching products. We find customers like the simplicity of creating online content, and they can create links from one site to another."

Brisbane-based software developers Ephox use wikis for internal communications such as developing products, policies, procedures, plans, a staff directory, and general brainstorming.

Ephox has 20 staff, half in the US and half in Australia, and most of them use information from the wiki at least once a day.

"We started to use wikis as a replacement for the intranet," says Damien Fitzpatrick, Ephox's product manager in the Brisbane office. "The engineers used it for product development and discussion. It's successful because you can easily edit a web page and there is a permanent record of concrete discussions, particularly with international teams with different time zones."

It is also useful for marketing campaigns, where the executive committee develops strategies and puts them up as a wiki for comment, he says. "Management can see any comments and changes and see if the ideas are any good or not, without having endless meetings.

"There is more visibility, so more people can be involved. If one of the engineers has an idea, then he can say 'I used to work for that company, here's a couple of hints and tips'."

The main benefit of using wikis for Ephox is improved staff productivity, says Andrew Roberts, its US-based chief executive officer. There is "much less internal email traffic, better collaboration and communication between our offices. More of our systems and procedures are documented and easily accessible."

Earlier this year, Ephox took out Best in Showcase at IBM Lotusphere in the US "on the back of our EditLive! integration with IBM Workplace Web Content Management, and the fact that EditLive! is the first online editor available with Word-like track changes support," says Mr Fitzpatrick.

But as content evolves, it must be kept tidy, he says. "You need a wiki "gardener", a person who runs a report to find old, abandoned pages and then cleans them up."

"But we aren't concerned about sabotage or stupid comments. There is social policing within wikis. People wouldn't go to Flinders Street Station and shout expletives at the top of their lungs, and they wouldn't do it on a wiki, either."

A relative of the Next editor works for Atlassian.

NEXT SPEAK

· Wiki: Server software that lets users easily create and edit web pages. American Ward Cunningham invented the first wiki, called WikiWikiWeb, in 1995. Wiki is the Hawaiian word for quick (wiki wiki means double time).

· Mash-up: A "remix" of existing online data into a new web page.

· Ajax: Shorthand for Asynchronous JavaScript and XML. Web page designers use Ajax techniques to exchange small amounts of data with the server behind the scenes, so entire web pages don't need to be reloaded/refreshed - improving interactivity, speed, and usability.

· Web feed: A data format used for serving frequently updated content.

· RSS & Atom feeds: A family of web-feed formats. A web publisher can post a link to the RSS or Atom feed of another website so users can read the distributed content on their site.

LINKS

Most Viewed in Technology

Loading