Wikis at Work

Found via Big Dog Little Dog - It's information collaboration - discusses the use of Wikis within organizations. Some of the points it makes:

• Gartner predicts that by 2009 half of companies worldwide will be using wikis
• Examples of use
• Acronyms and industry terminology, best sales practices, case studies, client information, meeting minutes.
• As a human resources site, in some cases replacing the company intranet, providing data on benefits, policies, new-employee orientation material.
• As a social-networking site where, through personal pages, employees can learn about their colleagues - what schools, previous employers, and professional and outside interests they share.

Certainly, I've been finding that Wikis are a really great replacement for stuff that we've previously done as web pages or using Robo Info/Help. Just makes updates that much easier. The natural extension is to then allow SMEs or Learners/Workers to make updates.

He also pointed at - Most Business Tech Pros Wary About Web 2.0 Tools In Business - some interesting items:

• Motorola has 3,900 active blogs, 3,300 separate wikis, 3,600 "project workspaces"
• More than half of companies don't use blogs at all, and 41% don't use wikis, our research finds. More than 20% make these tools available, but they're not widely used.
• Procter & Gamble is running an internal marketing campaign with the tagline "connect, converse, accelerate" as it rolls out real-time communications, a collaborative content portal, and desktop search.

One thing that's been interesting the past few years is that Desktop Search is only now taking off inside corporations. In fact, it's probably Vista's biggest benefit.