Jason Fried of 37signals spoke last Friday at SXSW Interactive about the lessons he’s learned from building the successful, Chicago-based software company. All 14 lessons are priceless, but #9 stands out the most for me:

Lesson 9: Follow the Chefs
Jason called chefs the smartest business professionals. He explained this is because they are aware that you become famous and successful by giving knowledge away. For example, chefs have cooking shows and write cook books. Yet it doesn’t stop their restaurants from being successful. In fact, he claimed they are probably more successful because of their sharing.

Day 16 of 21 Days of Wiki Adoption focuses on what to do when people are reluctant to share their knowledge on a wiki, and in that video I suggest that you encourage people to start by sharing a little, and see what they get in return. They’ll get more recognition, heightened interest in their work, and new opportunities that would never have been possible before.

That’s precisely what happens when chefs share their recipes in cookbooks and techniques in their shows. More people go to their restaurants, buy their cookbooks, copy their techniques, and – perhaps most important of all – influence their friends to do the same.

You have the same opportunity with your own knowledge and the power of your organization’s social tools, like a wiki.

Just found this excellent paper by Laurence Parry from the 2006 Wikimania conference. It focuses on starting and building a community wiki, and a lot of his ideas, tips, and advice also apply to wiki use in organizations:

…why would you want to build such a wiki in the first place, and why would such wikis be successful? The answers are simple: the wiki provides (in most cases) a persistent storage for community history, while at the same time the community provides a ready pool of eager, knowledgeable contributors for the wiki.

Like the community Parry talks about, your organization has a pool of knowledgeable contributors whose knowledge should be captured on a wiki, both for their collaborative benefit, and for the greater benefit of capturing your organization’s institutional knowledge. Some people may be more eager than others, so it’s a matter of demonstrating the wiki’s value and encouraging them to participate.

Using Wiki in Education, the book, is now available as a downloadable PDF and Paperback at Lulu.com!

The PDF is available for $19, the same price as online access at Wikiineducation.com, and now there’s an all new option:

Paperback
Take it with you, keep it on your desk next to Wikipatterns, or give it to a friend. Whether you’re using a wiki in your teaching, research, committee work, curriculum planning, or writing a grant proposal, Using Wiki in Education offers advice and examples for making the most of your wiki use. The paperback is available for $24.95.

If you’ve already purchased access to Using Wiki in Education, simply log in to Wikiineducation.com to download a free PDF copy of the full book.

A “Science Fair” is a great way for people using wikis to get together – regardless of what they work on – and share how they work:

How can you use incenties and recognition to grow wiki use? Here are 3 ways – gifts, recognition from leadership, & employee evaluations:

More worldwide praise for 21 Days of Wiki Adoption –
this time from Romania, the Netherlands, and the US:

Sara Bocaneanu, who blogs about knowledge management in Romania, writes:

My favorite point so far?

Don’t have a pilot wiki with just early adopters… People remain skeptical even if the early adopters are gushing. If, instead, you use a mixed group with some regular users and some skeptics, people will pay attention to what they’re saying! [Read more]

Dennis McDonald explores this question in two posts. The first focuses on the external: customer communities, marketing and communication.

The second looks at how social media can be used on the inside – to communicate more frequently, quell potential misunderstandings, and minimize fear and uncertainty.

…thinking of social media strictly as harmony-inducing “tools” run out of corporate HR to help calm employee fears would severely underestimate the role that social media might play.

Once you get wiki use started, be firm and make sure people don’t drift back to earlier means of collaboration:

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.