Wiki event

I don’t think anyone was expecting such a good turn out at last week's Wiki Wednesday technology event organized by David Terrar at GJ.  Normally, you get drop out.  I was expecting about 25.  We got drop in and around 40 people came.  If nothing else it demonstrates the interest in wiki’s.  Rightly so in my opinion, this is no brainier technology that is breaking down geographic restrictions on how people interact.

What is a wiki?  A wiki is a website that is as simple to edit as it is to read.  This makes a wiki a perfect online collaboration tool.  A wiki can be a complete repository of knowledge that evolves as a business grows.  Just think of all the emails that get lost in space, especially when the team changes over time.  The benefit of a wiki is that it can capture all the vital information to benefit new team members as they join. 

Clearly, it is not only businesses that can benefit.  A wiki can benefit any type of social interaction not least as a tool to raise awareness of social issues.

You can find out more details on the event and the next one at Microsoft on the events very own wiki.

Technorati Tags: small business medium sized business sme smb blogging accountants  sme-blog  technology

Philip Woodgate

Comments

[Dennis H]

Critically for professionals - a wiki maintains document versioning. You can always roll back to see how a document has been iterated, who has added context. You could even include a voting system so that as entries are modified, others get to decide how relevant and valuable the latest version really is to the community.

A tax library is an obvious example but there are many more eg policy management, HR procedures. Tie that to timed events for reviewing and you've got a near instant and pretty slick admin operation. Also, wiki is secure so you can use it for sensitive data. And, of course, most wikis are services.

So that means you can capture your consulting knowledge in these areas and offer as a service either freemium, premium or whatever combination you think works best. Goodbye tax tables on public websites, hello wiki.

Now - link that idea to spreadsheet inside the wiki and you could offer a self service tax estimator based on the latest rules which you apply programmatically to the spreadsheet - I bet someone's already done that inside the firm. If they haven't then they should have by now.

I really must stop putting ideas in people's heads. -:)