More worldwide praise for 21 Days of Wiki Adoption -
this time from Germany, New Zealand, and the US:

Felix Harling from Germany wrote about the series and the Wikipatterns book on his blog EinfachSchnellKlar (Easy-Fast-Clear):

Stewart Mader has written wikipatterns, a book that was very well received by the enterprise 2.0 and knowledge management community. Those who don’t want to buy the book (or don’t have an online access to the book e.g. thanks to the SAP SkillSoft partnership) may have a look at the Wikipatterns website or at Stewart’s blog: he is currently publishing a “21 days of wiki adoption” video serial.

Scott Abel wrote about the series on his blog The Content Wrangler, and specifically discussed Day 18: WikiCharter – community ‘house rules’.

A WikiCharter is a set of guidelines to ensure productive interaction between members of your wiki community. Here are five guidelines from the Sony Ericsson Developer World wiki provided by wiki evangelist, Stewart Mader, author of the book, Wikipatterns: A Practical Guide to Improving Productivity and Collaboration in Your Organization.

Marshall Kirkpatrick wrote about the series on the blog ReadWriteWeb, where he is a Lead Author:

…here is wiki consultant Stewart Mader’s great short video series 21 Days of Wiki Adoption.

Mike Riversdale from New Zealand wrote about the series on his blog MiramarMike.co.nz – Generating agile organisations:

Stewart Mader has been running a fascinating (and must see) podcast of how to encourage wiki uptake within your organisation…

Mark Oehlert linked to the series on his blog e-Clippings (Learning as Art).

Thanks Felix, Scott, Marshall, Mike, and Mark!

Euan Semple was interviewed this morning on BBC Breakfast about a proposal by the British Government to try and ban certain email addresses from social networks like Facebook, MySpace, and Bebo in an effort to protect children from online predators. Here’s the video:

When the guest sitting next to Euan – Annie Mullins, the chair of the Home Office Task Force on Child Protection and the Internet – was challenged on whether a government program to encourage these sites to try and block potential predators could actually work (since even though the government has a database of information on child predators, anyone can anonymously sign up for a free email address on sites like Yahoo and Google) she responded that she “learned about this only yesterday, and this is news to us.”

It seems to me one should go on national TV having thoroughly read the proposal one is being interviewed about, no?

Fortunately, Euan’s response was much more informed. When asked about whether the government should be involved in something like this, he responded:

Part of the problem is people expecting the government to sort it out for them and to manage the situation for them…The challenge is to come up with regulations that make sense and that people can have confidence in. And one of the challenges is that the institutions that are trying to come up with these regulations don’t always understand the environment they’re trying to regulate.

One of the hosts referred the Internet as a “sort of unregulated, wild wild west.” – Euan had an excellent backhanded response to this:

One of the things I’m concerned about is that the Internet is portrayed as a scary place; parents are wary of it. Partly through the media they get conditioned to think it’s a scary place…

This is an ongoing problem in the mainstream media, and even more surprising considering the massive investments major media outlets have made in their online presences. When the BBC itself has an immense presence on the Internet, one should think that the TV hosts would do well to sound like they’re in 2008 – not 1998.

As for government involvement in online safety. It’s a good idea in principle, but people within government need to educate themselves about the tools they’re trying to regulate. Otherwise they really have no business pushing proposals that sound good, but require a lot of time and money and don’t address the issue in a meaningful way. That’s just feel-good politics.

On Monday, I posted a reader poll asking how you use wikis. As of last night, 127 of you responded, and here’s what you had to say:

There were three respondents who chose “Other”, and here are their specific responses: Managing classroom information, garbage trash, and audits. Now, I can’t really say much about garbage trash, but I can comment on the other two “other” uses:

Managing classroom information is an excellent wiki use. In fact, I got started using wikis doing something very similar – building a wiki-based science curriculum.

Using a wiki for audits is a great use too – besides having all your information easily accessible in one place, the revision history the wiki maintains for every page is very audit-friendly since it shows a complete trail of who contributed information, when they did so, and what was added, changed and removed.

Jeffrey Keefer (Twitter) commented on the post and asked about a poll for education uses. That’s coming next week! He also asked for more information on some of the uses I included in the poll, like project management. Watch for that next week too.

Rachel Happe has a great list of Social Media Metrics. If you’re looking for ways to measure the impact of social media tools in your organization, Rachel’s list will have you thinking about:

Activity Metrics like: comments & trackbacks, number of contributors, time spent on site, and most active contributors

Survey Metrics like: quality and speed of issue resolution, and referral likelihood

ROI Measurements like: Number of new product ideas, % of ideas from customers/prospects/community, and Revenue/Adoption rate of new products from community vs. traditional sources

Got more? Email her at rhappe [at] idc.com

Ben Martin on social media use in organizations:

Here’s the dire assessment: Your association is becoming more irrelevant by the moment if it isn’t participating in the conversation made possible by social media. Signs of the paradigm shift are all around us and quite obvious. Association leaders who don’t recognize the signs are either uninformed or unconscious.

I believe this very strongly, and I think it’s one of the most critical cultural changes that will determine which organizations thrive and which ones lose relevance.

Bill Ives echoes this point in his summary of J.P. Rangaswami’s presentation at the FASTForward ’08 conference. Rengaswami talked of the “new polarization” in organizations, or how the customer gains control.

The fights have traditionally been within the IT departments. Now they have moved outside.

The first polarization is expertise. People of his and my generation believe experience is necessary for real innovation. We need to stop rejecting youth.

The second is participation. Now people can participate in much more than possible. He gave as an example, the numerous donations in small amounts that Obama has raised for the US primary campaign through the web on his way to a record month for total contributions ever.

The third dimension is time. He quoted Rupert Murdoch that fast is the new good. Now we have stuff in Beta all the time. JP said that IT has to get over these three concepts to succeed. Now the users have already breached the IT wall and running around inside the fort. It is too late to keep them out.

Comment I just posted on today’s New York Times article about Wikipedia:

I have a reasonable amount of faith in Wikipedia articles. As with any source, it’s important to check the accuracy of anything you read to see if more than one other source can corroborate it.

It’s important to keep in mind that what you’re reading here about Wikipedia is a world away from wikis that are used in countless organizations around the world as a way to reduce email, collaborate more efficiently, organize knowledge, improve the response time of call centers, and provide a place for students and researchers to collaborate.

Wikipedia, or an encyclopedia built using a wiki, is but one example of how a wiki can be used, and some of the problems associated with a completely open wiki with a loosely tied community do not carry over into other wiki uses where an established community uses the tool to further its shared purpose.

Stewart Mader
Grow Your Wiki: http://www.ikiw.org

— Stewart, San Francisco, CA

Allan Alter reports on the Ziff Davis Enterprise 2008 Collaboration Survey:

• 14.8 percent increase in collaboration software spending this year.
• Wikis were the 4th most used collaboration tool without IT support.
• Employees 18-30 are fastest to adopt new tools, but employees 31-49 were slightly more effective at finding the most useful ones.

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]

Shel Israel recently wrote about what he perceives as two camps with very different views of how social media can be used by organizations:

Camp #1

…those who understand that social media is something new and different from traditional marketing. It is not about putting messages into foreheads. It is about the enormous wisdom and efficiency to be gained simply by having conversations with customers, prospects, employees and partners. [Read more]