Friday, February 11, 2005

Wiki World

Making the Case for a Wiki "The wiki was rather aptly described by Ward Cunningham as 'the simplest online database that could possibly work'...Generally speaking, a golden rule of successful software deployment is, 'get to know your audience'. There are any number of approaches to this goal; from the approach advocated in The Inmates Are Running the Asylum [9], thinking yourself into the user's perspective in a manner reminiscent of method acting, to Lucy Suchman's pioneering approach to ethnography in the office environment. These vary in efficacy, but it is very worthwhile attempting to fit time for such analysis, investigation, or roleplay into the early stages of any technology deployment. Knowing your audience, in computer-mediated communication, means gaining an understanding of the target community. Be warned: with only rare exceptions, if you cannot imagine your target group conversing comfortably together under normal circumstances, the chances are fairly slim that they will imagine they can either … much less online."

Seems to miss a lot of the corporate Wiki usage - like requirements gathering. A problem can be MS Office format filters - where only Word, Excel and Powerpoint are valid file types to express ideas in.

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