“Grow Your Wiki” Grows into Specialist Consultancy
Today, I’m taking the wraps off something I’ve been working on for a long time.
Grow Your Wiki is growing – into a specialist consultancy focused on organizational wiki adoption.
This is as much a launch of something new, as the continuation of something I’ve been doing for a long time. I built my first wiki in 2003, for science curriculum, and building The Science of Spectroscopy showed me the amazing capability of a wiki to bring information to life, and get people more deeply involved in its creation, growth, and use.
Since then, I’ve been working with organizations to introduce wikis for internal collaboration, knowledge sharing, and project management. I’ve done it both as a full-time job, at Emerson College and Brown University, and as a consultant for a number of other organizations.
In late 2006, I joined Atlassian (makers of the Confluence wiki) as their Wiki Evangelist, and have continued to evangelize the benefits of wiki use in an organizational context at conferences, on blogs, and in my latest book Wikipatterns. I’ve also continued to work with a broad range of organizations on their wiki adoption efforts.
In the past several months, I’ve been fielding more and more questions from organizations that want to know how to get wiki adoption going the right way. I believe that to make wiki adoption successful and fully realize its benefits, they really need a good plan for managed growth that takes into account their size, history of enterprise software use (or misuse!), ensures people get the most out of their wiki use, and helps minimize performance and efficiency issues related to too-rapid growth.
So, I’m launching this new venture to focus all my energy on helping organizations get the most out of their investment in wikis as a collaboration, knowledge sharing, project & meeting management, and communication platform.
To that end, I’ll be leaving the full-time employ of Atlassian as of this Friday, August 15th. I’ll continue to work part-time on some special projects for the company until the end of September.
If you’re looking to grow wiki use in your organization, I’d love to help you plan a strategy for managed growth. You can use the contact form to get in touch, and I’ll get back to you within two business days.
Andreas Gohr says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Great. All the best for your new business. You might want to list yourself at the WikiMatrix consultant market place: wikimatrix.org/consultants.
Bill Roberts says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Best of luck with your new venture – and I hope you’ll be continuing with this blog! You’re doing a great job for all of us working in the wiki space in raising awareness of how useful the wiki approach can be.
Tim Schlotfeldt says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Great! I wish you a lot fun with your new venture.
-Tim
Daniel J. Pritchett says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Great to hear it, Stewart! I enjoy your blog and your guest spots on Wikinomics. Can you steer me to some public communities that focus on wikis and enterprise 2.0 issues so that I can supplement my blog reading? I enjoy reading independent thinkers but I’d really like to see some rapid-fire back and forth in a forum-type environment.
Thanks!
Richard Fahey says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Best of luck with the new venture. I feel there is a huge amount of educating required in this area as wikis – in my opinion – are still not being given the recognition and investment they deserve.
Anne Gentle says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Congratulations on making the leap! I love that your services include “Advising Hours” – feels so warm and collegiate somehow, that you’re a teacher first and foremost. Wonderful stuff you’re doing here with the blog and guest blogging and it’s just plain inspirational – keep up the good work.
Ben Yates says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Hey, congratulations!
Dee says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Congratulations Stewart! Glad to know you will be keeping up your blog and conference presentations. There really is a lot of hesitation still about adoption… “lead a horse to water” and all that. When the “tipping point” comes it will be due in large part to your efforts.
Anthony Rethans says:
Aug 12th, 2008
Stewart,
Congratulations on taking the plunge!
There’s a huge need for ongoing education and you’ll do a great job addressing it.
Brett Jackson says:
Aug 13th, 2008
Stewart
Congrats on the new chapter!!
All the best with what I know will be a wonderful success!!
the world needs you!
Cheers
Brett
Camille Goksever says:
Aug 13th, 2008
Stewart,
Organizations need you. This is wonderful news! You’ll be doing a great service to many.
Warm regards,
Camille
MMartin says:
Aug 15th, 2008
Hi Stewart. I wish you the best for this new step
Lisa Dyer says:
Aug 20th, 2008
Congratulations, Stewart! Great move – hope you generate a lot of happy customers:)
- lisa
Jon Silvers says:
Aug 22nd, 2008
Stewart, we all wish you the best with your business. We’re sorry to see you leave at the same time, but honestly I can’t imagine a better career path. The list of accomplishments in your tenure at Atlassian was impressive and frequently exceeded our (my) expectations. Undoubtedly, your clients will have a similar experience.
Martin Seibert says:
Aug 24th, 2008
All the best wishes from //SEIBERT/MEDIA GmbH (Germany) for you.