building community inside the enterprise

Community building inside the enterprise

Moving toward wiki adoption at The Washington Post

By Dave Burke. Presented at USDA Graduate School in June, 2008.

IT Workspace

• Our case study

• What’s a wiki

• Two key concepts: linking

and tagging

• Lessons learned so far

Washington Post IT Unit

• About 200 people

• Supports operations of the newspaper and some operations at other

Washington Post Company affiliates.

• Publishing systems

• Advertising systems

• Syndication

• Accounting

• Production

• Infrastructure

My Team: Web Solutions

• 14 people

• Design, build, and manage web

applications to support The

Washington Post

• These include. . .

Background - Web Solutions

• Back to 2005, we’ve been working on how to better support our

• Much of the problem stemmed from important knowledge being

trapped

• Various private and shared drives

• Old email threads

• But mostly, people’s brains

dave burke

Risk of wetware-based knowledge storage

Technical Architect His boss

For instance, on most Saturdays. . .

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aok/2190318934 http://www.flickr.com/photos/mikelo/614958266/

• 2006-2007: The stakes for application support were getting higher

• SOA was making troubleshooting more complex

• A large SAP integration was making it more business critical

• We needed a better process, and a better tool

• We tried a wiki

• Results from our 60-day pilot

• Wiki works as a platform

• But the product we chose didn’t cut it

• Special markup language

• Users were anonymous

• Attachments/Images were difficult to handle

• We kept using it

Document Repository Study project

• WYSIWYG Editor - no markup

language

• Named users and single signon

• Full-text search, including

attachments

• Email, RSS integration

• Tagging for dynamic

organization and blogs

What is a wiki?

A collection of web pages

Every page is editableJust click, type, and save.

Every page has a nameLink by page name; no HTML

required.

Source: Ross Mayfield. http://www.slideshare.net/ross/new-paradigms-for-using-computers

What is a wiki?

Communication

“Platform”

• Visible to all

• Persistent

AUTHOR

READER

EDITOR

READER

EDITOR

AUTHOR

“Channel”(e.g., e-mail, IM)

AUTHOR READER

• Visible only to participants

• Transient

What is a wiki?

•Wikis build group memory (or at

least a better chance at it)

• Simplifies collaboration (everyone

works on the same document)

• Accuracy through (identified) peer

review

• Every page revision is saved

• Roll-back changes with a clickSource: Ross Mayfield. http://www.slideshare.net/ross/new-paradigms-for-using-computers

What is a wiki?

IT Workspace Wiki

It’s like our own Wikipedia.

Linking vs. Tagging

Linking connects

individual pages•“Hand Made”• Static

Linking vs. Tagging

Linking connects

Tagging creates

groups of related

pages•“Machine Made”• Dynamic

dave burke

http://workspace.washpost.com

What are tags?

• Keywords related to an

object (e.g., photo, wiki

• Tags categorize objects

on the fly

Source: http://www.flickr.com/photos/cambodia4kidsorg/260004685/in/set-72157594311446988/

dave burke

Tagging example: photos on Flickr.com

View this video slide: http://bit.ly/St5A1

dave burke

Relating photos with tags

dave burke

Relating photos with tags

“Evan”

“Christmas”

Tagging works similarly on the wiki

View this video slide: http://bit.ly/puuZn

Linking vs. Tagging

Linking connects

Tagging creates

groups of related

pages•“Machine Made”• Dynamic

“IT’s News”

“System”“WebLogic”

Tags are keywords

Lessons learned so far

• 90% of wiki success is half mental

• Mindset shift - Sharing by default

• Current: "I only know of three people who need this information, so I'll email it

to them."

• New and Better: "I only know of three people who need this information, so I'll

publish it on the workspace for them, and any others I don't know about."

• Best: “The workspace is my default tool for collaboration and communication,

because it's easy, and it gives me maximum value for my time. I only use

email when I really need privacy.”

• Publishing Anxiety

• A belief that the workspace is more official makes people

think their work needs to be polished and 100% accurate,

which leads to them doing nothing.

• Current: "I'm happy to answer questions in the hallway and by

email, but writing something 'official' is a bigger deal."

• New and Better: “I understand that the IT Workspace is a living

document. I can contribute information I’m only ‘pretty sure’ about,

and note it as such, just like I would in email.”

• Organize-as-you-go model takes getting used to

Traditional

1. Write

2. Edit

3. Publish

1. Write

2. Publish

3. Edit

(repeat)

#1 Question about the wiki so far:

“Put this info on the wiki? Okay. . . where?”

Information Architecture Challenges

• Tag ambiguity

Information Architecture Challenges

• Overcome some tag ambiguity by declaring a tag for a particular topic

Lack of structure scares some people

• It helps to provide an overall structure to start

Emergence doesn’t scale down to enterprise levels

http://www.useit.com/alertbox/participation_inequality.html

Wikipedia IT Workspace

1.67 Billion 150

1.5 Billion 135

167 Million 15

http://www.searchenginejournal.com/google-sends-167-billion-users-to-wikipedia-per-month/5084/

Wikipedia IT Workspace

1.67 Billion 150

1.5 Billion 135

167 Million 15

Key roles in wiki success

Managers

Gardeners

Why use the wiki?

• Support self-service

• Fewer late-night (or mid-day) support calls

• Easier access to the information you need to support your systems

• Less occupational spam

• Wiki pages and blogs allow you freedom to choose what info you receive

• Keep your skillset current

That’s it.

Questions?

Dave Burke

dave@daveburke.com

http://slideshare.net/daveburke

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