What does DITA have to do with wiki use at IBM, Sun, OLPC, and WebWorks?
Anne Gentle wrote to tell me that she and a panel of wiki users from the likes of IBM, Sun, the OLPC Project, and Quadralay WebWorks discussed DITA and wikis last night at the Central Texas DITA users group. (DITA is a popular set of XML schematics for technical documentation.) Here’s what she wrote about IBM’s wiki use:
Chris Almond from IBM, has a great case study of work he’s doing to bring RedBook content into internal wikis. He’s actually using DITA as an intermediate “storage” holding place for content before putting it into a wiki so that IBM consultants around the world can edit and discuss the RedBook content. RedBooks are sort of “solution cookbooks” for very specific technical configurations with multiple products that solve certain business and customer problems, they’re a very popular resource for IBM.
- Here’s IBM’s public Redbooks wiki: RedWiki. (BlueWiki, which Chris discussed on the panel, is internal.)
- Webworks Wiki – Ben Allums of WebWorks described it as a “garage” for projects – very apt reference for a high tech company!
- Floss Manuals
- Sun OpenDS Wiki – used a source of user and developer documentation for Open Directory Service.
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Chris Almond says:
Jan 24th, 2008
Stewart – thanks for the mention. My presentation for this meeting is on SlideShare now:
http://www.slideshare.net/almondjoy/redbooks-wiki-central-texas-dita-ug-presentation/
Cheers – Chris
Stewart Mader says:
Jan 29th, 2008
Chris,
Thanks for the link! I especially like the slides on patterns and community engagement. The Entrainment pattern looks similar to what I call the Magnet pattern – get a critical mass of content on the wiki, and establish it as the place to go.
Also that quote you have on trust: “I trust RedBooks. I do not trust wikis.” sounds like it’s from someone who associates wikis with Wikipedia and its unique issues. The key there is really to do exactly what you’re doing – use the wiki internally first to gain success and experience, then look for ways to engage the external community.
Cheers,
Stewart