wikiSquared

les wikis: les espaces de l'intelligence collective

It had to happen - a non tech-focused book on the collaborative potential of wikis.  This - from Editions-M2 in Paris and by Jerome Delecroix.  No information from the publisher when (or if) this will be translated from French to English.

Blurb below...

Publishing details:  Editions-m2, Paris FR
                             15 march 2005
                             ISBN  2-9520514-4-5
                             20 Euros

The collective intelligence spaces       

        The book
The wikis bring Internet to a new era, the era of generalized cooperation  and collective intelligence. What is a wiki ? What are their already numerous  uses ? What is this new Internet revolution ? You will know everything with this book which proposes the first 360 degrees vision of this phenomena by analyzing the causes of this successes, it's usage, it's future and at the same time, the techniques and ways to animate a wiki. First clue: the wikis are web sites, open to modification by all visitors, with no technical difficulty. Their multiples applications run from encyclopedias to corporate Intranets, from associations to teaching… On a wiki, the web surfer becomes the author of a common creation. Social links emerge, the relation to knowledge evolves toward a global capitalization of knowledge.
      

      

 

on a good day, you go to bed having lost your belief in some critical bit of conventional wisdom

And on a great day, you have to give up on multiple chunks of "what everyone KNOWS is right..."

This isn't about wikis, or blogs, or - really - any one technology.  It's about remembering that we are often so quick to take a straight edge to what's come before and plot out the most likely future.  It's about the often unspoken assumption that "yes, in the past others were - sadly - mistaken but THIS TIME, well, we're pretty confident we've *got it right.*"

Stewart Brand is one of the best thinkers around.  He's written a piece in the May issue of Technology Review.  It's an argument that makes us question conventional wisdom about population trajectories, about cities and hinterlands, about GMOs and about nuclear reactors. 

I'd argue there's a tie-in to the subject of wikisquared. 

Knowledge-Managment, Expertise management, Social Networking, Blogging (and that awful neologism, the blogosphere), Collabortion Studies ... are all 'stuck' in some kind of organisational neutral gear.  Maybe what's needed is a whole new way to think about how people work together.

Environmental Heresies
By Stewart Brand
TECHNOLOGY REVIEW:  May 2005

http://www.technologyreview.com/articles/05/05/issue/feature_earth.asp?p=1

---

Over the next ten years, I predict, the mainstream of the environmental movement will reverse its opinion and activism in four major areas: population growth, urbani­zation, genetically engineered organisms, and nuclear power.

Reversals of this sort have occurred before. Wildfire went from universal menace in mid-20th century to honored natural force and forestry tool now, from “Only you can prevent forest fires!” to let-burn policies and prescribed fires for understory management. The structure of such reversals reveals a hidden strength in the environmental movement and explains why it is likely to keep on growing in influence from decade to decade and perhaps century to century.

The success of the environmental movement is driven by two powerful forces—romanticism and science—that are often in opposition. The romantics identify with natural systems; the scientists study natural systems. The romantics are moralistic, rebellious against the perceived dominant power, and combative against any who appear to stray from the true path. They hate to admit mistakes or change direction. The scientists are ethicalistic, rebellious against any perceived dominant paradigm, and combative against each other. For them, admitting mistakes is what science is.

There are a great many more environmental romantics than there are scientists. That’s fortunate, since their inspiration means that most people in developed socie­ties see themselves as environmentalists. But it also means that scientific perceptions are always a minority view, easily ignored, suppressed, or demonized if they don’t fit the consensus story line.

Take population growth. ...

2005 International Symposium on Wikis - see you in San Diego...

could be a pretty interesting gathering
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CALL FOR SUBMISSIONS 2005 International Symposium on Wikis Oct 17-18, 2005, San Diego, California, U.S.A. Co-located with ACM OOPSLA 2005 In cooperation with ACM SIGWEB See http://www.wikisym.org

OVERVIEW

The 2005 International Symposium on Wikis brings together wiki researchers, implementers, and users for the first time. The goal of the symposium is to find a voice for the community. The symposium has a rigorously reviewed research paper track as well as plenty of space for practitioner reports, demonstrations, and discussions. We are honored to announce that Ward Cunningham, the inventor and host of the original WikiWikiWeb, will present the opening keynote talk at WikiSym 2005. Anyone who is involved in using, researching, or developing wikis is invited to WikiSym 2005!

We are seeking submissions for

• research papers
• practitioner reports
• demonstrations
• workshops
• panels

Research paper and practitioner report submissions are due

• April 29, 2005

Workshop, and panel submissions are due

• April 8, 2005

Demonstration submissions are due

• July 1, 2005

Topics of interest to the symposium include, but are not limited to:

• wikis as social software
• wiki user behavior, user dynamics
• wiki user experiences, usability
• wiki implementation experiences and technology
• wiki administration, processes, dealing with abuse
• wiki scalability, social and technical
• domain-specific/special-purpose wikis

SUBMISSION DETAILS

Research papers will be reviewed by the committee to meet rigorous academic standards of publication. Research papers are expected to advance the state of the art by describing substantiated new research or novel technical results or by reporting on significant experience or experimentation. They are reviewed both with respect to conceptual quality and clarity of presentation.

Accepted research papers will be provided as part of the conference proceedings. They will be put into the ACM Digital Library and can be referenced as papers that appeared in the Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis. At the symposium, the presenter will be given a 25min + 5min Q&A presentation slot. Research papers should not be longer than 10000 words and should meet the ACM SIG Proceedings Format, see http://www.acm.org/sigs/pubs/proceed/template.html.

Practitioner reports will be reviewed for suitability of presentation to the community. The primary evaluation criterion is the interest to the community. Practitioner reports will be provided as part of the companion to the conference proceedings handed out at the symposium and can be referenced as papers that appeared in the Companion to the Proceedings of the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis. Practitioner reports should not be longer than 6000 words and should meet the ACM SIG Proceedings Format.

Demonstration, workshop, and panel submissions will be reviewed for their interest to the community. Submit two pages of description of what you intend to do and how you meet this criterion. Please include a 100-word abstract and one-paragraph bios of all people relevant to the submission. Demonstrations will get 45min slots in a booth of their own, workshops will get a half-day and a room of their own, and panels will get a 90min slot at the symposium.

Please submit your papers or proposals in PDF format (or postscript, if you must) by the respective deadline to submissions@wikisym.org.

SYMPOSIUM LOGISTICS

The 2005 International Symposium on Wikis will be held at the Town and Country Resort & Convention Center, San Diego, California, on Oct 17 and 18, 2005. WikiSym 2005 will be co-located with the ACM OOPSLA 2005 conference, and participants may register for the symposium alone, or may jointly register for OOPSLA 2005.

If you have any questions, please contact Dirk Riehle through chair@wikisym.org.

SYMPOSIUM COMMITTEE

Dirk Riehle, Independent (chair)

Ward Cunningham, Microsoft
Mark Guzdial, Georgia Institute of Technology
Matthias Jugel, Fraunhofer FIRST
Helmut Leitner, HLS Software
James Noble, Victoria University of Wellington
David Ornstein, Microsoft
Sebastien Paquet, National Research Council of Canada
Stephan Schmidt, Fraunhofer FIRST
Sunir Shah, University of Toronto

BusinessWeek's Blog - yes - that's no typo

BsuinessWeek isn't exactly THE most button-down environment I can think of -- but, within the range between, say, the Government's General Accounting Office   _AND_  pasty faced, exercise-challenged telecom phreaks ... well, it's a whole lot closer to the former.  A whole lot.

All of which makes for a surprise in their announcement of a BusinessWeek blog as a venue for fast-breaking and only partially ready-for-prime-time business news.  I suspect it'll be worth dropping by on the occasional basis.  http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/blogspotting/

Now ... I'm waiting for Accenture or McKinsey to launch a series of wiki services...

Best Practices for rest of us

Best Practices is a term traffic-ed in by Big-N consultants and the well-heeled Big Companies that retain them.  It's a simple idea:  Look around for what's working -- be it  an approach for improving targeted marketing or the best ways to manage departmental expenses -- and hold it up for employees as a model.

There's a charming bit of verbal legerdemain involved here.  Armed with these two politically correct words, you can, in good conscience, "adopt" the Best Practices of the accepted industry leader.  It's an action that plays better than saying you've looked to your competitor to get better ideas on how to do things.

As with many powerful corporate efforts, it's a good idea marred by elitism.  Best Practices are typically discovered, distilled, and closely vetted before being handed out to the people who will benefit the most from such guidelines. 

In smaller organizations, a reasonable parallel is found in company guides - the 'how-to' summaries we all get and file ... somewhere.   More often, though, this important information is scattered in reports, memos and e-mails that we save for the "maybe someday" when we have the extra time to organize all this stuff.

This lack of accessibility is too bad, really.  Smaller companies -- even at the level of sole proprietorships -- could easily benefit from have a way to keep track of what works - and what doesn't.

And this is where wikis shine.

Imagine your small organization reckons there are about a dozen really important activities that could benefit from having a 'what-works-what-doesn't' repository.   You pull together the snippets of information and insight you already have and plop them into a company wiki.

So far, we're talking about a handful of hours of work.

Sooner or later, one of these dozen issues comes up and someone in your team, in your group, in your company, remembers there're suggestions on how to do 'this.'  And then the magic happens...

Your colleague looks at the suggestions.  If they help - then you've already gotten value from this online wiki-space.  If they DON'T, then your colleague does what wikis facilitate -- he or she scribbles in a comment about what REALLY worked in such-and-such a case. 

Another routine problem comes around.  This time one of your team members remembers something 'like this' in a trade journal from last week.  A URL link is added - and all of a sudden your on-the-cheap Best Practices wiki-space is gaining currency in the minds of your employees.

What's happening is a shift from The Lone Genius Will Tell Me How To Solve This idea to the broader idea that, SOMWHERE OUT THERE IS A PERSON WHO CAN GIVE ME ADVICE.  It's what makes Wikipedia a tremendously useful tool. 

And it's what can help your group do its job better. 

As the tagline goes:  in the world of wikis, everyone is smarter than any one.

when Google buys a wiki-company

By some statistic, some 3% of Americans read something from a blog every day.  No matter how you slice that number, it suggests there are several million people who appreciate the grass-roots nature of blog publishing. While I don't have a datapoint for how many people occasionally dip into blogs, I suspect those numbers are even more attention getting. 

It was a bit of attention not lost on senior management at Google.  Blogger was a rising star - people were starting to place blogging in their daily vocabulary -- and -- lo! -- Google became a purveyor of blogs. 

This is in contrast to wikis.  When I talk to people who are pretty tech-knowledgeable, I'm still surprised at how little mindshare wikis have garnered.

That's changing quickly. 

At some point a Big Company is going to get the idea that wiki users are an important market to tap.  It doesn't matter if it is IBM, or Microsoft, or Google.  What does matter (or at least, what I find most intriguing) is how they'll pull it off.

There's a school of thought in management consulting that can help us makes some guesses.   

Royal Dutch/Shell's Emeritus strategic planner, Kees van der Heijden, argues that companies moving in new directions need to be mindful of their central "business idea."  They need to be explicitly aware of the distinctive competencies that have helped create their competitive advantages in the marketplace.

For example, let's say your industry is linked to travel and transportation: how do you explain your company’s success and the stalling of others? If you’re a pharmaceutical company, what makes your success difficult to copy? If you’re involved with manufacturing, what knowledge do you possess, what consumer loyalty have you fostered, that makes commoditization of your product less likely?

In this case, if you're IBM, or Microsoft, or Google, what is the ‘special sauce’ that makes you different, unique, and inimitable?

And, to the central point, how does that cluster of distinctive competencies fit with distributing a set of tools that foster arguably non-hierarchical information sharing? 

I don't have an answer. I do, however, think it will be fascinating to watch the - inevitable - shake out of the wiki market.

tangient-dot-com and WIKISPACES

This is about as new as they get.  I've just been pinged about another no-cost wiki environment called wikispaces.  An interesting twist -- like YahooGroups, there are sidebar sponsors paying the bills...

While http://wikispaces.org requires you to register if you want to create your own wiki - you can do just about everything else as a visitor. 

As soon as I get a look 'round, I'll pass along some comments.

New PR tools: wikis and blogs

from:  Silicon Beat   (permalink: http://www.siliconbeat.com/cgi-bin/mt/mt-tb.cgi/259

New PR tools: wikis and blogs?

That blogs and other new media are having an effect on old media has been well documented. But another area of the media landscape -- public relations -- is grappling with the changes too.

Last week, Redwood City PR firm Eastwick Communications launched a program called eastwikkers intended to help companies devise strategies to combine new tools such as wikis into their PR efforts. That could include public blogs for company executives or internal wikis aimed at helping employees collborate more efficiently. Eastwick has partnered with Palo Alto wiki company Socialtext to offer its clients a private label wiki service called eastwiki.

The firm's first client is Intellisync, which is using a wiki to help coordinate communications among its internal marketing team, Eastwick and several agencies in Europe.

Giovanni Rodriguez, executive vice president of Eastwick, who is helping spearhead the effort, said he envisions many different uses for blogs and wikis. He said the firm might create private, online spaces for reporters, or for clients to connect with each other. Public spaces where competitors can come together to discuss issues that are common to them is another option.

"We could aggregate info about a topic into one space,'' he said. "We think it could provide visibility to the participants. But that's later, farther out.''

This is all new to the Eastwick team, and they are feeling their way though. But says Rodriguez, "We feel confident enough to throw resources at it."

Posted by Michael Bazeley on March 15, 2005 11:44 PM