Eighth in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

In order to shift from the culture of individual work to the culture of collaborative work, it is obvious that the issue of trust is crucial: trust is linked not only with the Wiki spirit but it is a very important requirement of creativity and so of the orientation to innovation.

To be considered a credible expert is important such as to be sure to have reliable expert’s opinions; the feeling that you are appreciate inside your team and more in general in your community is an incentive to be active and “creative”.

Related WIOWA Questions:

8.a Time allocation (support to effectiveness)

In your online profile, do you have the possibility to write about your further expertises or personal projects?

8.b Teaming (organizational services)

When there are meetings, have you the same documentation of other participants?

8.c Openness to Ideas (knowledge and collaborative support)

Do you think that your ideas and, in general, your work, get the right acknowledgment from your Organization?

8.d Decision Making Agility (communication and socialization)

Do you consider reliable the insights coming from the whole community?

Sixth in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

A common element between Wiki philosophy and innovation successful case histories, is the partial or total absence of structure or, saying better, of hierarchy. The possibility, in fact, to contribute in the same way, indifferently at which level you are involved in the organization, is one of the first steps towards the reduction of barriers to collaboration, participation and involvement in the organizational life.

Peering is to intend in the two ways of organizational commitment: from both the perspective, the access to common information and the possibility to contribute to corporate knowledge.

Related WIOWA Questions:

6.a Supporting people (support to effectiveness)

Is everybody able to update useful information like telephone numbers or scheduled meetings?

6.b Resource Allocation (organizational services)

Is everybody able to book meeting room or, in general, common resources?

6.c Flexibility on process design (knowledge/collaborative support)

Is everybody able to recombine documents and then publish it?

6.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Is everybody free to publish (in the intranet or wiki) information useful for your colleagues?

Fifth in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

The social networking aspect is the starting point of a company sensible to Enterprise 2.0 – then Wiki – solutions. Introducing this concept in a workplace context is possible to change in a radical and effective way the previous organizational culture.

The first step to stimulate social networking is to allow the creation of personal spaces – if possible with an internal blog – and then to produce a staff list in order to let people know who their colleagues are and which are personal skills that they own. In this way there will be a simpler identification of experts.

Related WIOWA Questions:

5.a Flexibility on process design (support to effectiveness)

Is it easy to identify an expert in the whole community?

5.b Teaming (organizational services)

Are members of teams able to know all the competences and expertises of co-workers?

5.c Decision Making (knowledge and collaborative support)

When the group has to take a decision, it is usual to ask opinion to experts inside the whole community?

5.d Openness to Ideas (communication and socialization)

Are individuals insights visible to the whole community?

The WikiSym 2008 Call for Papers is available now. WikiSym will be held 8-10 September in Porto, Portugal!

WikiFest – 6:00 talks

WikiFest is a new addition this year. It’s devoted to helping you start and grow a successful wiki, and I’ve structured it Pecha Kucha style which means max 6 minutes and 20 slides – get to the point, do it fast, and hear from as many people as possible! [Read more]

Fourth in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

The true collaboration occurs when people have the possibility to co-work on the same sub-task, activating a mechanism of new knowledge creation. Collaboration is not so obvious if is not clearly supported: the risk is to exchange this “together” learning process with a simple cooperation process, producing not new knowledge but only a simple addition of individual regress knowledge.

In this sense, collaboration has to be helped in order to avoid isolation in job and supported with a compatible scheduling of daily activities. Is also important to create “collaboration bridges” across teams and groups, involving people to participate in each other’s activities or involve experts on other areas to collaborate together.

Related WIOWA Questions:

4.a Support to People (support to effectiveness)

Do you know which people are involved in your same projects?

4.b Teaming (organizational services)

In your team, are individuals plans often compatible with the group activity?

4.c Collaboration (knowledge and collaborative support)

Is it usual to participate to other group projects?

4.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Is it usual to discuss with others about their work, solving problems together?

Third in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

Sharing is linked with the concept of a democratic access – and then utilization – to all kinds of resources, from physical tools to data and, even better, to ideas and individuals’ insights.

The possibility of sharing improves an effective distribution of common resources (meeting room, projector, corporate car…). In a more general acceptation of the term, the availability to ideas or previous solutions useful for different use is an advantage that make co-creation of new knowledge and a healthy circulation of knowledge possible.

Related WIOWA Questions:

3.a Resources Allocation (support to effectiveness)

Are the common resources accessible to all and can these be booked in an autonomous way?

3.b Openness to ideas (organizational service)

Is it possible to access or find results and insights inside and outside the community?

3.c Collaboration (knowledge and collaborative support)

Is it usual to implement others’ work or co-create documents?

3.d Communication (communication and socialization)

Is the real time circulation of ideas among the community supported?

Second in a series by guest author Vincenzo Cammarata.

A flexible workplace is characterized by the capability of individuals to manage not only their work, time or resources, but also the possibility to influence and operate in an active way inside the community (from team to organizational level) and for these reasons to be part of the operational process.

Flexibility influences the way of allocating time creating moments for personal insights development; it gives the possibility to own a picture of the whole process in order to decide the way to set personal objectives. Exploiting one of the main Wiki functionalities, it permits as well to handle other contents and the possibility to be active – following personal expertise – in different teams (community of practice).

Related WIOWA Questions:

2.a Time Allocation (support to effectiveness)

Are you free to dedicate a percentage of your time to your own projects?

2.b Decision Making Agility (organizational services)

Is it possible to get information about the whole project work progress and direction?

2.c Flexibility on Process Design (knowledge/collaborative support)

Is it possible to re-configure and handle others’ contributions?

2.d Teaming (communication and socialization)

Are you active in different teams?

16 months after acquiring JotSpot, Google relaunched it tonight as Google Sites:

Creating a site together is as easy as editing a document, and you always control who has access, whether it’s just yourself, your team, or your whole organization. You can even publish Sites to the world.

People can work together on a Site to add…new free-form content.

What they’ve left out of the description is just as telling as what they included, and what they left out is any reference to the word wiki. There’s a pattern on Wikipatterns.com that suggests not using the word wiki when first introducing people to the tool. This helps avoid Wikiphobia, or misunderstanding by people who

• Don’t know what a wiki is and are generally afraid of new tools
• Automatically assume any wiki is like Wikipedia

Google may be taking a similar approach here, and sticking with “Sites” since it’s a more known term at first, and the collaborative nature becomes apparent when people use it.

James Dellow asks this question in his review of the Wikipatterns book. Based on his experience, he suggests that the patterns can indeed be applied to other collaborative tools beyond wikis:

The book is structured well and steps naturally from explaining the value and use cases of wikis into the adoption process. In terms of adoption, Mader offers 11 steps to a successful wiki pilot… that’s right, these are tips just to get the pilot right! In fact, its refreshing to find someone suggesting that adopting a wiki in an organisation can take a lot more effort than simply plugging a wiki into your corporate LAN.

…my recommendation is that Wiki Patterns is worth a look regardless of the collaborative technologies you are using… there are a set of “patterns” in well written format here that can be applied to a variety of collaborative technologies. Overall, Wikipatterns get a thumbs up from me for anyone involved with collaboration technologies, not just wikis.

Kirk Zurell wrote today to tell me about Suffr, a module that allows, in effect, collaborative system administration using a wiki. Here’s how he describes it:

Users can compose recipes of changes to system configuration, and then sign off on them; when enough users approve, the wiki (through this module) implements the changes. Wiki users could democratically accomplish potentially any sysadmin tasks, including administering their own web server or applications, mail/news server, VOIP PBX, or peripherals. They can (and may have to!) even restart or shutdown the machine by majority vote. [Read more]