quarter-inch holes, not quarter-inch drills

quick summary: For whatever reason, online writing style is different - something between what we tap out in emails and what we expected in shopped-out 'print pieces.'  Using this persona and informal style makes what you're saying more accessible, to more people, and in ways that saves them time.

I've come pretty much full circle (well, maybe three-quarters of the circle) when it comes to wikis. 

And this marks an important point in this blog.

It wasn't that many years ago when I was grappling with understanding what wikis DID - purely from a functional perspective. "Oh, I see, anyone can scribble on them ... kinda like a chalkboard in a room." And when I finally *got* that, my next step was to see how these Wild Wild West environments would be useful to businesses.  And it was after that - that I decided that, yes indeed, wikis are important.

Time passes, the full blush of early enthusiasm wanes, and I find myself thinking, once again, that its what wikis do that's important -- not the fact that wikis exist as stand-alone technology tools.

So - truth is, I would like to be able to have threads of e-mail communications in a central place where senders, receivers, or invited passersby, could do 'wiki-ish' things.  I would like that same range of flexibility in my spreadsheets, in my presentation software, and in all that I produce in Word, Pages, or GoogleDocs. 

And I'd want more.  I'd want to be able to syndicate this stuff, to be able to tag it, to be able to sort it in many ways so that it could be more useful. 

In short, I want little, tiny bits of functionality that could be bundled or unbundled at will, and that would allow me to get on with my work without forcing me to be a closet geek. 

so?

I'll continue to write about wikis, but the scope of what I'll talk about has just increased.

Let's see where this takes us ...