That’s from Scott Nesbitt, in his summary of my talk at DocTrain West on Thursday:

It seemed like I was stalking Stewart Mader during the conference. But Mader told me that he was happy to see many of the same faces in all of his sessions. It showed that he had something interesting to say, and that attendees wanted to hear it.

In every presentation I give, I tell a story about how wiki use has helped me do something that’s:

1. Successful – People want to know how to do something well. I want to you see that if I’m successful with something, you can be successful too!
2. Useful – I want to show you exactly how I did it, so you can replicate it as quickly and easily as possible. That makes you successful, and completes the cycle when you pass along the knowledge to someone else so they can be successful too.

Here’s an example. Scott put together a good summary of my talk on using a wiki to:

• Organize everything in one place so we could see the entire project – the sum of its parts – not just the parts themselves chaotically flying back and forth over email.
• Streamline publishing workflow and reduce reliance on email and documents that can easily get lost, confused with older versions, and are difficult to use.
• Inform everyone about the progress of the project, so that editors don’t have to worry about whether the manuscript is progressing on time, or actively ask authors for updates. Instead they can passively check the wiki as often as they like.
• Get feedback from editors both as chapters are completed and while they’re in progress. The latter speeds up the overall process because it’s easier to incorporate feedback in-the-flow as opposed to after the fact.

Here’s his summary:

This time around, he talked about how he wrote his book WikiPatterns using a wiki, and the workflow that he and this editors followed to produce the book.

Mader started out by saying that the workflow he used could be used for both print and online document publishing. And, from Mader’s experience, using a wiki streamlined and improved the publishing process from end to end.

Mader’s key point was that with a wiki, you can focus on context and content, and not have to worry about whether or not you properly marked up a section of a manuscript using a potentially complex Word template. As well, Mader’s editors were able to keep up with his progress. They didn’t have to stay up at night wondering whether or not he was writing; progress was there for all to see.

On top of that, having the information in a wiki makes it portable. Mader mentioned that no matter where he was he could work on a chapter as long as there was an Internet connection. And if his laptop died or was stolen, then he wouldn’t lose much information. Aaron and I will be talking about that point in the near future.

The writing and review process — from proposal to finished manuscript — was faster with the wiki than using a word processor.

Want to improve how you work and realize these benefits every day? Let’s start a conversation and see if my services can help.