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:

Sandy Kemsley summarizes Andrew McAfee’s and Don Tapscott’s presentations at the FASTForward ’08 conference earlier this week. McAfee, who coined the term “Enterprise 2.0” and is therefore eligible to use it , looked at the state of tools and technologies, how to foster adoption, and cultural necessities for success. Here are a few selected points, with my comments in italics:

1. Tools are intuitive and easy to use — a key to acceptance of the technology, but something that’s also difficult to achieve. Building a quality tool isn’t easy, but it is worth it. Truly good tools will stand the test of time and be flexible enough to adapt to changing needs.
2. Tools are egalitarian and freeform, Freeform is critical. Specific workflows and procedures inherently limit the range of uses of a tool, and the wider the range of uses, the more people will use it.
3. Borders seem appropriate to users, so that it’s obvious how far specific information should be shared, and how easy it is to find other people and information. Whenever you add something new to your wiki, think about whether it needs to be secured or can be shared. You’ll give others a wealth of information about what you do that will help build interaction and cut down on low-level work, like responding to emails requesting information.
4. Patient and dedicated evangelists exist: those spending their time popularizing the tools and techniques because they believe that they can make a difference. Hear, hear. In every organization I’ve worked for, I have done this. I know you are too, and your work is critical to the future of your organization.
5. Effort has official and unofficial support from the top: both funding and blessings from senior levels to allow evangelists and others to work their magic, but also a mindset that that enterprise is serious about being engaged in the initiatives, such as executive-level blogging. This is the essential balance that supports growth of wikis. Day to day growth needs to be pushed by grassroots buzz, and long term acceptance comes from the confidence of knowing that people in senior leadership are being shown the value and encouraging growth.
6. Slack exists in the workweek; recognizing this gives people the latitude to blog or create wiki content within the organization rather than appear to be busy when they’re not. Do you have slack in your workweek? Well, there you go – perfect time to work on next week’s meeting agenda on the wiki, or help edit and refine project documents with someone else on your team.
7. Top management accepts lateralization, which facilitates public content being created by any level within an organization as well as its customers and partners, not just through a sanitized corporate communications process. It’s like a Niagara Falls of free, high-quality, high-value PR. Who wouldn’t want that?
8. There are lots of young people. This one isn’t so much an indictment of older people, but an indication of how well an organization is doing with its use of social media. People my age are going to work for the organizations that demonstrate they get it, so if an organization has a lot of young people, it must be doing something right.

You can still start or grow a wiki in your organization.

Gartner has published a press release advising businesses to start planning for cost cutting and prepare two budgets: one that takes into account the current economic situation, and one that identifies potential further cost cuts should the need arise.

This is where the low-cost, resource-conscious, simplicity, and freeform nature of Enterprise 2.0 tools like wikis and blogs really shines.

Large, traditional enteprise software projects with six- or seven-figure budgets are often the ones that run into trouble during an economic downturn.

But you can spend in the neighborhood of $5,000 on a wiki (pocket change, even in an uncertain economy), run a pilot, and help groups get started and find the best uses for their needs.

Do this now, stick with it, and by the time the economy is roaring again, you’ll be running an efficient, agile organization that can take advantage of that strength to surge ahead.

This video is excellent. Betsy, a student of my friend Vicki Davis in Georgia, asked students and teachers to describe wikis, blogs, and Web 2.0. Guess who know what the tools were, and gave the best explanations of their uses?

(via Milt Haynes)

Is someone in your organization afraid to share knowledge on the wiki? Here’s how to help:

David Orchard just led this session, which was very well attended! The discussion focused largely on wikis in the enterprise, and how to successfully grow use.

I just created a page for the session on the NV08 Wiki: Enterprise Social

Share your wiki adoption tips! Even if you’re not here at Northern Voice, share some – people will still benefit from them, and I’m sure they’ll appreciate it!

Your team can use a wiki to collaboratively write, edit, and assemble documentation. If you publish it electronically, consider letting your audience contribute to the wiki and help build the documentation:

That’s what Martin Koser wants to know, and he’s looking for your ideas:

What’s your opinion on this, and what are your ideas? We’re prepared to honor the best and most comprehensive contribution – KongressMedia has sponsored a VIP-ticket to the March 4 Enterprise 2.0 SUMMIT, which we’ll happily send out to the winner in this contest of ideas.

Issue 16.01 of Wired Magazine includes an interview with Trent Reznor by contributing editor Frank Rose. The transcript of that interview offers a glimpse into Reznor’s use of a wiki to write the back story of the whole concept for Year Zero, the studio album and accompanying alternate reality game (ARG) released in 2007:

Reznor: …I gave them my Wiki that I’d written, Rob [Sheridan, creative partner and art director for NIN] and I had written — that had all the whole background of Year Zero. And it was —

Rose: You had already sort of put that online or —

Here, he explains that the wiki wasn’t a public site, but an internal tool the two used to assemble and explore ideas: [Read more]

Anne Gentle will be sharing her expertise on using wikis to build user centric, user-maintained technical documentation at a talk in San Antonio this evening: A Technical Writer’s Role in Web 2.0 — Wiki-fy Your Doc Set.

On 20 February, the Central Texas DITA User Group will hold the next in its series of panels on wiki use. The first panel was held in January and featured speakers from Sun, IBM, Quadralay WebWorks and OLPC.

This month, the panel features: Lisa Dyer from Lombardi Software, Michele Guthrie from Cisco and Alan J. Porter from Quadralay WebWorks.