Here are my notes from the Gilbane Enterprise Wiki CEO/CTO Panel this afternoon (Poor Internet access in the hotel prevented me from live-blogging). The panel featured leaders of several wiki companies discussing their perspectives on how the wiki is changing communication and knowledge construction in organizations:

Traction Software

• view a wiki as something built, evolved, serviced over time
• combine with the conversation that takes place on a blog
• Example: 400 people working on 37 different projects – Integrated Justice Information Systems Institute

CustomerVision – Cindy Rockwell, CEO

• Communication Gap – one side traditional information/knowledge management; other end: email O’Reilly predicts that content management systems are moving to wiki. McKinsey quarterly report says there’s a lot of intellectual knowledge in people’s heads. Companies haven’t put much effort into gathering and documenting this knowledge.
• Jupiter Research says 30% web site decision makers in companies looking to adopt wiki or replace current wiki – still in early adoption. What can it do? What tool us best? Beyond enthusiast market but not far beyond. Companies recognize need to reduce email flow and the fact that every employee has tacit knowledge they can contribute. People aren’t going to put (crap) on the company wiki – they increasingly want to be seen as experts or highly knowledgeable in what they know.
• As the wiki matures, it has great flexibility to be as open or closed as needed.

Factors influencing the wiki market:

• Microsoft wading into the wiki waters – this means that larger (and legacy) companies are getting into the wiki
• MySpace – the next generation of workers are already fluent in these new tools, and they will increasingly push adoption
• Jot acquisition by Google – the wiki is recognized

Example: Communication Data Services needed to gather and share tacit knowledge from longtime employees to newly hired employees.

Socialtext – Matthew Mahoney, VP

• Enterprise Wikis: The next 12 Months
• Socialtext makes range of wiki tools from open source, hosted, application, and appliance
• daily project communication
• 95% of IT supports business processes
• 60-80% of time is exceptions-to-process
• innovation happens with productive friction
• 90% of collaboration in email
• 75% of knowledge assets in email

What is driving use of wiki? “Wikipedia Inside” – getting everything you need to know about products, customers, etc, can be organized in a wiki. This can be the “great hall” wiki that everyone has access to. Wikis are then used for different projects, and the membership of each can be controlled.

Example: Symantec & Veritas merger – used a wiki to understand all about the other company and help in planning integration of the two firms.

How does this apply to education? Students who will work in companies large and small will need to be fluent in use of social collaboration tools, and the wiki is at the center of this. Universities can use wikis to support “business processes” in a multitude of places – from admissions to alumni relations to academic departments. Faculty can use wikis to organize, develop, and conduct courses – all in one “place” on the wiki. They can also use wikis to organize the work and intellectual output of their research labs, which can lead to better, closer collaboration between individual researchers working on different project, and can ultimately accelerate the progress of research.