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.

1

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

apps

• Much of the problem stemmed from important knowledge being

trapped

• Various private and shared drives

• Old email threads

• But mostly, people’s brains

KLMNO

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/

http://www.flickr.com/photos/aok/2190318934/in/photostream/





• 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?

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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

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


What is a wiki?

Communication

“Platform”

• Visible to all

• Persistent

AUTHOR

READER

EDITOR

READER

READER

EDITOR

AUTHOR

Not a

“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

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IT Workspace Wiki

It’s like our own Wikipedia.

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Linking vs. Tagging

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Linking vs. Tagging

Linking connects

individual pages•“Hand Made”• Static

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Linking vs. Tagging

Linking connects


Tagging creates

groups of related

pages•“Machine Made”• Dynamic

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dave burke

http://workspace.washpost.com

What are tags?

• Keywords related to an

object (e.g., photo, wiki

page)

• Tags categorize objects

on the fly

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



KLMNO

dave burke


Tagging example: photos on Flickr.com

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

http://bit.ly/St5A1

http://bit.ly/St5A1



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dave burke


Relating photos with tags



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dave burke


Relating photos with tags

“Evan”

“Christmas”



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Tagging works similarly on the wiki

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

http://bit.ly/puuZn

http://bit.ly/puuZn

KLMNO

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

New

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

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?

43

Dave Burke

[email protected]

http://slideshare.net/daveburke

mailto:[email protected]




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