The popularity of wikis has grown tremendously over the past few years. Television, video games, and even companies are beginning to get on this communication bandwagon. Are you and your company aboard?
Leveraging a wiki within a company provides an outlet for:
- Important, time-sensitive announcements
- Updated project time lines
- Collaboration around brainstorming/problem solving
- Discussion boards
So we want to know, does your company take advantage of a corporate wiki for detailed, internal communication? What were the advantages/disadvantages of doing so? Tell us about your experience in the comments.
Also, as a thought starter if you have not considered using a corporate wiki, take a look at an article from Business Week March 2007, Corporate Wikis Go Viral, spotlighting the success two companies have had leveraging the collaborative communication a wiki provides. In the two years since the article published, with the advancements in both the technology and the understanding of the technology, is it time your group/company start its own wiki?
We’re an enterprise wiki vendor so we use our wiki HEAVILY throughout our 200-person organization. Perhaps the greatest advantage of an enterprise wiki is that it fosters a culture of participation. I like to refer to this as an “opt-in” culture where employees seek out and subscribe to content and conversations of interest within the wiki. Contrast this to an email culture where employees spend their entire day responding to unsolicited emails that may or may not be of interest to them. Employees in an opt-in culture are more engaged, more interested and more productive.
Bill – really appreciate the thoughts. From new technology initiatives to opinions on creative, looping partners in at the early stages and providing a forum for them to have a voice goes a long way in the success of any initiative, whether suggestions were used or not. The identification of an “opt-in” culture hits on this point, and really is at (or should be at) the core of any corporate communication initiative.