This is from guest author Camille Goksever, an independent Wiki consultant for Chevron, and is the second in a series about enterprise wiki use at Chevron. Be sure to read her first post.

Camille will be speaking about her work at Chevron at the WikiFest Symposium, part of WikiSym 2008 in September.

Creating Mozarts out of elephants wasn’t one of the scenarios I had played out in my head going into this wiki endeavor.  Okay, frankly, the only scenario in my mind involved people moving their fingers furiously in direct contact with a keyboard. 

I had assumed typing out one’s knowledge on a given topic would come naturally to most.  I took for granted my comfort for writing, and projected it onto the wiki team.  Try not to make the same mistake.  Most people hate to write.  I can see now why Stewart dubbed them “Barn Raising” sessions.  Though I can’t imagine building a barn (I had a hard enough time with the shed kit I got from Home Depot), there is the analogous “D’oh, this is really hard” feeling once you get started.

The core wiki team of thirteen grew to about twenty after the first two Barn Raising sessions. Some of the new members were recruited, but a few actually came asking to participate.  I thought that was pretty cool.  However, with such a large group, scheduling a hour-and-a-half Barn Raising session became impossible.  The only option was to schedule the sessions over lunch and provide the grub for free.  This did wonders for attendance!  Never underestimate the power of a free lunch.  Feed them, they will come.

The third Barn Raising session was when I started to see the first seeds of real collaboration.  After stomachs were full, and work began, those who had participated in previous sessions showed the new team members the ins and outs of the wiki tool, such as linking, file uploads, history, etc.  By the end of the session lots of conversations were happening.  People would ask questions from across the room; two or three various people would respond, while the person asking would type the information in the wiki.  Information was being shared freely and collaboratively.  A community began to form.

The wiki was to be officially launched on July 1st, and it was now April.  There were 130 pages created, and only 62 of them had content.  It was time to step on the accelerator and get the Mozart-thing going.  The sessions were only being held every other week.  And forget about getting people to work on the wiki at their desk.  I didn’t want to become the wiki monster (that I had jokingly been dubbed) to make that happen.  The wiki simply needed more fingers tapping it to life.  We went from twenty…to thirty five…then ultimately to fifty members.

By the end of May we grew to 190 pages.  120 pages had a decent amount of content, but a lot needed help.  And there were still topics that needed to be covered, thus more pages that needed creating.  Keeping everyone motivated to give up an hour and a half once a week to work on the wiki became a struggle, even with free lunches.  Within the course of two months I found my inner Tony Robbins.  It may seem cheezy, but the motivational speaking and keeping MY OWN enthusiasm high really went a long way.  Especially with the elephants.  I did a lot of one-on-one cheerleading in those sessions, and in return the wiki got a lot of great content.  It was really important to keep things fun too, which helped in keeping motivation up. 

My boss had the idea of coming up with a wiki slogan and having tshirts printed.  One particularly talented team member came up with a host of slogans.  Here are a few of my favorites:

Oh Wiki you’re so fine
You’re so fine you blow my mind
Oh Wiki
Oh Wiki

My Wiki isn’t icky

Wiki? You can’t handle the Wiki.

The team decided on “Wanna see my wiki?”.  But once we went to the corporate tshirt maker, the slogan was deemed as, uh…”risque and inappropriate”.  So we had to change it to “Do you wiki?”  We were bummed, but we had some good laughs.  Fortunately, my bosses truly rock, and support everything about the wiki, even when it pushes the envelope a little beyond their comfort zones.

My initial concerns of getting the elephants on board and playing like Mozart were tempered towards the final Barn Raising sessions.  Amazingly enough, the elephants just needed a boost in confidence.  This may seem trivial from where you’re sitting.  But think about it…having a person literally by your side, cheering you on to achieve a goal captures your heart and drives your spirit to accomplish that objective.  Hearing the words “You can do this”, is all it takes (most of the time) to overcome your personal road blocks.

I have such endearing respect for the elephants.  They have wisdom beyond my years.  They are humble, they are diginified, and face it…they truly are the main attraction at any given show.

Little did I know, however, that deploying the wiki to the entire Designs Engineering team would turn into a three ring circus.

To be continued.