Future Changes

Do you spend too much time in meetings and answering email?

Just flew from Sydney to New York. Spending 20 hours at 35,000 feet gave me a chance to reflect on how rapidly the world is changing. It’s nothing short of amazing that I can get on a plane in Sydney and be pretty well guaranteed to arrive halfway around the world at a defined time that lets me keep up with whatever I’m doing next.

Its equally amzing that with a wiki, I can work with my mates in Australia, colleagues in Europe, and collaborators in the US – all without trading tons of emails and spending hours in meetings. Instead, I email only when necessary (say, to let someone know the address of a wiki space or page I’ve set up for a project).

When we do have a meeting, it’s short and focused on discussing something that truly needs to be discussed in person, rather than a long series of updates that people can just as well get by watching the wiki pages where we’re collaborating.

And that makes my work amazing. As amazing as that ability to reliably fly halfway around the world. Whoever thought a technology tool would be that amazing?

I do, and I hope you do too. If you’re already using a wiki, excellent! If not, give it a try, and I think you’ll see how immediately useful it is, and how quickly it transforms how you think about – and do – work.



Wikipatterns book: a practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization Future Changes is Stewart Mader. He wrote the book on wiki adoption, and he has led or advised enterprise-wide wiki deployments in Fortune 500 companies, universities, nonprofits, small and medium size companies.

Advisory Services include: adoption strategy and timeframe, vendor/product analysis, content structure and templates, roles and permissions, data migration, and workshops. Linda Ziffrin of Valley View Ventures handles bookings. Contact to discuss your needs.
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Wikipatterns book: a practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization Wikipatterns
A practical guide to improving productivity and collaboration in your organization.
Buy the book
Using Wiki in Education wiki book Using Wiki in Education
10 case studies from education show how to collaboratively build curriculum, guide students' teamwork, and manage research projects.
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Your Wiki Isn’t Wikipedia: How to Use It for Technical Communication Your Wiki Isn’t Wikipedia (PDF download)
How to use a wiki for technical communication and project management. Published in the January, 2009 issue of Intercom, the magazine of the Society for Technical Communication.
5 Effective Wiki Uses and How Companies Benefit From Them 5 Effective Wiki Uses (PDF download)
Five ways your business can benefit from using a wiki. Published in the August, 2008 issue of Website Magazine.

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