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Thomas SiegersSongfuli Co., Ltd.

March 31, 2009

Improving Organizational Efficiencywith Wiki-based Intranets

Create Knowledge, Use Knowledge, Enlarge Knowledge

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About

This presentation is publicly available at:http://www.slideshare.net/thomasjs

Hosted by

American Chamber of Commerce in TaiwanEuropean Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan

This presentation is published under theCreative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/

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General about Wiki Organizational Aspects Infrastructure and Concepts Usage

Live Demo Examples

Workshop 17 April 2009

Agenda

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Challenge and Opportunity

Measures to ride out the economic crisisretrench, cut cost, intensify sales, stabilize cash position

Opportunities to improve during the economic crisis- concentrate on improvement of internal structures- clear organizational backlogs- create positive atmosphere

Internal project to improve organizational efficiency- simplify processing of routine tasks- systematically generate knowledge- document workflows, specifications. etc.- stimulate collaboration between colleagues- leverage unused potential inside work force

Preparation for the time after the economic crisis- have a system in place when there is little time to create one

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What is a Wiki?

Collection of web pages Authors can read, write and edit pages Formatting by simple markup language Previous versions are stored and can be compared Internet web application running in an browser Navigation same as world wide web Best known from Wikipedia Hawaiian word for “fast” Developed in 1994 by Ward Cunningham (WikiWikiWeb)

“The simplest online database that could possibly work.”

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A New Hype?

Forrester Research, Sept. 2007Only 3 percent of 1,017 North American and European enterprise decision makers said they were planning a large-scale, strategic wiki implementation in the next 12 months.

Gartner, March 2008More than half of 360 US-based IT organizations surveyed indicated that they use wikis and blogs.

Society for Information Management - Advanced Practices Council, Nov. 2008By 2009, at least 50 percent of organizations will use wikis as important work collaboration tools.

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For what can I use a Wiki?

Collaboration Documentation Knowledge Base Intranet Website Blog, CMS* Look what PBwiki says.

http://pbwiki.com/ (wiki hosting service)

Presentationhttp://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html

*) content management system

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Who uses a Wiki?

SAP Nokia Motorola Siemens Mobile British Telecom Lufthansa Cargo IBM Lotus software Swiss Federal Achives University of Cambridge Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen

Source: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiInstallation

and even...

CIA – Intellipedia“The joke about Wikipedia isit doesn't work in theory,it only works in practice.”

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How many Wiki pages are there?

www.wikipedia.orgthe world's open encyclopedia2 731 000+ articles in English863 000+ articles in German763 000+ articles in French

www.wikispaces.comWiki hosting service1,800,000+ members, 750,000+ wikis

www.wikidot.comWiki farm281,275 people, 2,950,742 pages

www.wowwiki.comlargest wiki on www.wikia.com70,500+ articles on the computer game World of Warcraft

Figures of Feb. 2009

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Why Wiki?

Knowledge EconomyVarious observers describe today's global economy as one in transition to a "knowledge economy", as an extension of an "information society".http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economy

Peter DruckerThe Age of Discontinuity (1969)Guidelines to Our Changing SocietyChapter 12: Knowledge Economy

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Why Wiki?

Information

Communication

Collaboration

Action

Knowledge

Contentment

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Why Wiki?

Web 2.0 → User Generated Content

Wiki → Concept and Platform,which comes closest to the idea of the Web 2.0

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Agenda

➢ Organizational Aspects

Infrastructure and Concepts

Usage

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10 Reasons for a corporate Wiki

1. Reduction of e-mail2. Up-to-date content3. Organic structure4. Efficiency tools5. Flexibility6. Usability7. Transparency8. Security9. Saving resources10. Cost savings

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Reduction of E-Mail cont'd

Expenditure of time and workStudies show that up to 25% of working time is used for reading, answering, processing e-mails.

Relevancecopy to “everyone” for info – one or few are doing the work

Efficiencyunstructured, not shareable, scattered

Documentationunsuitable as document manager

Spamtens of billions of spam mails every day

ConclusionUse other tools whenever possible.

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Participation Inequality

90-9-1 RuleAll large-scale, multi-user communities and online social networks that rely on users to contribute content or build services share one property: most users don't participate very much.● 90% of users only read or observe, but don't contribute.● 9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities

dominate their time.● 1% of users participate a lot and account for most

contributions.

Jakob Nielsen - Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute (October 9, 2006)

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Participation inside Organizations

Inside organizations participation is different than in online communities on the Internet.Existing structures in organizations help influence people to become more active contributors.For example, if most members of a team use the wiki for meeting minutes, they will encourage those few, who still use e-mail, to use the wiki too.Experience shows that about 60% of the work force participates.

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Excursion: Web 2.0

Time Magazine 2006 Person of the Year

Contributors to Web 2.0 Wikipedia, YouTube,

MySpace, Facebook, etc. Web 2.0

everyone can participate

everyone can create content

communication

collaboration

information sharing

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10 Tips for implementing a Wiki

1. Grassroots is best.2. Throw out the rule book!3. Populate it and they’ll come.4. Don’t mistake your wiki for Wikipedia.5. Put some content exclusively on the wiki.6. Don’t rush it. People will need time to get used to the wiki.7. Build trust. Don’t excessively manage it.8. People will find new ways to do old things with the wiki.9. Prompt people to use the wiki.10. Watch out for obstacles.

Creative Commons License - Future Changes by Stewart Mader

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7 Measures after Implementation

1. Integrate the wiki as one of several important tools in an organization's IT collaboration architecture.

2. Understand, monitor and enforce the wiki “rules of conduct”.

3. Use the wiki for collaborative knowledge creation across people not previously connected.

4. Assign a champion to each wiki to observe contributions.5. Convince people to edit others' work.6. Embed small software programs into the wiki that

structure repetitive behavior.7. Understand wikis are best used in work cultures that

encourage collaboration.Society for Information Management - Advanced Practices Council, Nov. 2008

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5 more ways to keep a Wiki going

1. Use the wiki for everyday work activities – agendas, minutes, daily tasks and short term projects.

2. Keep the wiki as open as possible.3. Use traditional IT tools everyone is familiar with to

combine with the wiki, like include links to wiki pages ine-mail messages.

4. Publish other topics than work related on the wiki, e.g. internal sport events.

5. Get the attention of senior mangers. Add sales figures and other business reports to the wiki.

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Agenda

Organizational Aspects

➢ Infrastructure and Concepts

Usage

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Wiki Hosting Services

dozens of wiki hosting services for use also called wiki farm free or commercial financed by advertisements www.wikia.com www.wetpaint.com pbwiki.com www.wikispaces.com www.wikidot.com http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/hosted/

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Wiki Software Engines

dozens if not hundreds of wiki engines available MediaWiki

the engine that drives Wikipedia and many other sites

DokuWiki, PmWikiall purpose, for small to medium size companies

Twiki, Foswikisuitable for enterprises of large and any size

Confluencecommercial wiki for corporate environments

TikiWikiintranet with CMS, wiki, groupware

WikyBloghybrid of wiki and blog

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Wiki vs. Blog

Wiki articles created by many articles revised by many page oriented documentation linking

Blog post created by one post commented by many thread oriented communication tagging

Wikis and blogs can complement each other.Hybrid software solutions available – WikyBlog.www.wikyblog.com

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Extensions

Templatesgive a Wiki different design and layouthttp://www.dokuwiki.org/Template

Pluginsextend the functionality of a Wikihttp://www.dokuwiki.org/plugins Typical productivity tools:

notifications, subscriptions, discussion, tasks list, charts, calendar, gallery, multimedia

Integration with other services:Google, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Amazon

Special: railway timetablehttp://dokuwiki.ich-bin-am-wandern-gewesen.de/doku.php?id=playground:bahnde

Wiki as CMS and/or BlogCMS: http://bandy24.de/ | http://www.how2do-video.de/ | http://www.bos-laden.de/Blog: http://www.opennebula.org/doku.php?id=blog | http://www.carpe.com/doku.php/en/blog

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Integration

User authentication against directories or databasesLDAP, AD, MySQL

Bridge to/from other web applicationsCMS: Joomla, Drupal

Wiki syntax in blogs and forumsWordPress, phpBB

Suite of applicationsWiki, blog, forum, photo gallery, news aggregator

Synchronization with desktop applicationsdesktop note taking

Links to files and folders on file serverstandard syntax for links with UNC*

*) Uniform Naming Convention

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Migration

How to get existing data into the Wiki? Manually copy, paste, reformat

Automatic conversionpromising approach: environment to convert Word files- *.doc → *.html → *.txt (→ *.sql)- OpenOffice as conversion engine- software, Java, Perl, Linux, Apache, (MySQL,) PHP- Wiki engine with plugin- some programming and manual tweaking

Converters from/to other Wiki engines Import/Export from/to HTML, PDF, help files (.chm) Macros for Word, Excel and OpenOffice

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Working the Wiki Way

File server vs. Wikifolder namespacefile pagen/a link

First create links, then pagescreate a link to a page that does not exist, then create the pagecreate namespaces and pages by searching or entering a URL

Links to Anythingto pages and media in the same Wikipages to other Wikis (InterWiki)external pages on the Internetfolders and files on the file server

Semantic editingmarkup multiple level headlines to structure a pagetable of contents is created automatically

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Namespaces

Wikipediapages in flat namespacehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animalexceptionshttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animals

Intranetmultiple levels of namespaceslast item of expression is the pageCategory:Animals:Mammals:Elephant

URL Mappinginternal URLhttp://intranet/doku.php?id=animals:mammals:elephantfriendly URLhttp://intranet/animals/mammals/elephant

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Security

Wikipediaopen wiki, no access restriction to edit articlesregistration required to create articlesIP address recordedno ACL1 in MediaWiki

Intranetrestricted accessWiki engine with ACL requiredpermissions inherited in hierarchical namespace

Internethosted in Internet → encrypted access/contentaccess from Internet → firewall infrastructure (DMZ2)

1) access control list2) demilitarized zone (secure internal network)

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Synchronization

Scenario- Wiki as an intranet inside internal network- teleworker takes Wiki on laptop to customer- teleworker wants to save changes back to Wiki

Solutions- synchronization tools on client and server- revision control system (CVS, SVN)*- plugin

*) Concurrent Versions System, Subversion

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Productivity

Notificationse-mail when something is new or changedcaution: another e-mail flood

SubscriptionsRSS feeds to individual namespaces and pages

Discussionscomments to and discussions about articles

Acronymsassign and use codes for employees, phrases, etc.

Task Listsaccording to the GTD principle (Getting Things Done)

Combinationse.g. task list with discussion

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Agenda

Organizational Aspects

Infrastructure and Concepts

➢ Usage

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Wiki Syntax

Simplified markup language Limited access to HTML and CCS

JavaScript, PHP, macros, scripts, variables

More and more wikis support WYSIWYG1

Every engine has its own syntax2. Link3

...more information about [[Wiki]], read...

...more information about Wiki, read...

Formatting3

this is '''bold''' and this ''italic''this is bold and this italic

1) What You See Is What You Get2) common syntax www.wikicreole.org 3) examples here in MediaWiki syntax

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Advanced Wiki Syntax

Linksinternal link with label [[namespace:page|label]]external link [[http://www.domain.com/page]]interwiki [[go>wiki]]file server [[\\server\share\folder\file]]image right aligned {{ namespace:image.jpg}}

Table^ header 1 ^ header 2 ^ header 3 ^| cell 11 | cell 12 | cell 13 || cell 21 | cell 22 | cell 23 |

Expressions of pluginstags {{tag>minutes meeting}}tag cloud ~~TAGCLOUD~~discussion ~~DISCUSSION~~menu {{indexmenu>songfuli#1|js#kde.png}}task list {{tasks>songfuli:administration:tasks:list}}

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Markup Language vs. Visual Editing

LaTeXdocument markup language in use for over 25 years

SimplificationSGML → HTML → Wiki

Semantic EditingComputers “understand” content and can do useful things.

Wiki syntaxTypical wiki and advanced wiki expressions cannot be entered and displayed as wysiwyg in all wiki engines.

Logical vs. VisualDue to ubiquity of office programs most computer users are more comfortable with visual than logical document production.

*) Standard Generalized Markup Language

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Why Wiki Works

Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc. Here you can rely on encountering playful minds. Putting up a wiki page is like

tossing a ball of yarn into a basket of kittens.

Any information can be altered or deleted by anyone. Wiki pages represent consensus because it's much easier to delete insults and remove Wiki spam than indulge them. What remains generates new ideas by the interactive integration of multiple points of view.

Anyone can play. This sounds like a recipe for low signal - Wiki gets hit by the great unwashed as often as any other site - but from fertilizer come flowers. Only good players have a desire to keep playing.

Wiki doesn't work in real time. People take time to think, sometimes days or weeks, before they follow up some edit. So what people write is often well-considered.

Wiki participants are, by nature, a pedantic, ornery, and unreasonable bunch. So there's a camaraderie here we seldom see outside of our professional contacts.

Excerpt from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks

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Humor

UncyclopediaThe content-free encyclopediahttp://uncyclopedia.wikia.comsubprojects: UnBooks, UnNews, …> 50 languages: http://ansaikuropedia.org

Encyclopedia DramaticaSlogan: “In lulz we trust.”http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com

Stupidedia, KamelopediaGermanhttp://www.stupidedia.orghttp://kamelopedia.mormo.org

Note: lulz ← LOL ← laughing out load

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Q & A

Thomas SiegersSongfuli Co., Ltd.

Taipei, Taiwan松福禮股份有限公司

http://www.songfuli.comthomas.siegers@songfuli.com

http://www.slideshare.net/thomasjs