I haven’t been blogging much lately largely due to an extremely busy schedule but that doesn’t mean I am not keeping watch on what is going on in the association and broader worlds around me. So while I hate to come back with a rant, this one is well deserved and probably long overdue. One thing that I spend a lot of time checking out everyday is ASAE’s listservs as I learn a lot and on occasion have the ability to share something that I know.

Admittedly listservs are pretty dated technology but nonetheless they are still somewhat effective to share and exhange information. My frustration from the beginning with ASAE’s listserv was the inability to easily reply to a post without getting barraged with an overabundance of “Out of Office” responses from those who are subscribed but away from the office.

Today was really a breaking point for me. I responded to Caron Mason’s post on a few Movable Type questions that she had because I had some decent answers for her. I spent a good deal of time providing a thoughtful answer and adding links that I thought she would find useful. Now this has nothing to do with Caron, just setting the stage for what happened next.

I hit the submit button knowing what was to come but hoping for the best. Well the best didn’t happen, instead I instantly received over 30 out of office responses (and many more to come I am sure) clogging my already overflowing email inbox. Come on ASAE give me and the other members a break. There has got to be a better technology available to serve a similar task. What I did was a good thing and part of the knowledge sharing and community building process that makes belonging to an association so great. Sure I could have responded directly to Caron, but that would have constrained the knowledge sharing effort and only benefited her when others may have had a similar question or more experience with the topic that they could have contributed.

Why is it that instead of a smooth process I got punished instead? Anybody else have as much of a problem with this as I do? Anybody come up with a way to deal with the crash of OOO replies? Anybody from ASAE listening and can give me some hope on this front? I love sharing what I know as I am sure that many other members do as well, but if all that I get in return in punished than there is no sense in participating.  Technology is supposed to work for us not against us. Let me know what you think.

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In Part 1 of this post I shared 12 Tips for Effectively Implementing Wikis in your organization. These tips included Form Following Function, Harnessing Peer Power, and Finding the Wiki Champion(s) in your Organization.

To continue the thread, here are 13 more tips that will help you to effectively implement wikis in your organization.

13. Reward activity

Create simple graphical reward badges for frequent contributions, moving a project to the wiki or any other activity that promotes adoption of the wiki. Badges should be placed on the user’s wiki page for everyone to see.

14. Create navigation pages to guide browsing across the wiki

Support for dynamic content is a must here, as the content will remain evergreen.

15. Encourage ownership and personalization

User pages are a great opportunity to experiment with features and gain familiarity with the wiki. Encourage users to personalize their own pages with widgets, badges (see tip 13),photos and feeds.

16. Use the wiki first

Most users already search the Internet but don’t know that the same facility exists inside the company. Whenever an opportunity arises, remind users to use the built-in wiki search first to find the information they are looking for before defaulting to other avenues.

17. A little latitude goes a long way.

Let users make mistakes; good wikis make it easy to reorganize content.

18. Integrate your wiki with in-house systems

Integrating the wiki with your AMS and other CMSs and allow users to create their own dashboards and mashups for daily activities.

19. Make the wiki part of the culture

Self-expression is important in teams and across organizations. Wikis are a perfect embodiment of self-expression that transcends organizational structure. Just make sure you know your culture and whether it will embrace a wiki or reject it before heading down that path.

20. One size does not fit all.

Wikis don’t work for all organizations. Your organizational culture needs to embrace the open exchange of knowledge and information in order for a wiki to succeed. Furthermore, single all-encompassing wikis seldom work in organizations. With wikis implemented at the organizational level, the concept of “spaces” or “projects” are almost always required.

21. Security is a must

Granular security with the ability to specify permissions—even at the page level—is often required for enterprise wikis.

22. Find support from those that stand to benefit the most.

Start with those who need it most. There is no single best practice on how a wiki should be rolled out within a large organization. However, it is often most effective to implement a wiki within those groups or departments that have immediate use for it. Forcing the wiki as a organization-wide mandate is usually not a good idea.

23. Let it go viral

As users within the organization send out wiki links or e-mail wiki pages, other users will get interested—or at least curious.

24. Know Thy Users

Depending on what wiki platform you choose to use, some require detailed configuration to use some of the more advanced features and functionality. Make sure you know what users want before rolling out your wiki and make sure that the functionality meshes well with the need.

25. It’s a numbers game.

The older the wiki, the more frequent the access. The greater the access the great number of lurkers. The greater the number of lurkers the more potential contributors. It all adds up.

Obviously this list is not all inclusive. What did I miss? What have you learned from your own Wiki implementation that others can benefit from?

References: eWeek - 25 Tips for a Better Wiki Deployment

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How often do you have to collaborate with others to think through a new or existing idea? Exploratree was designed to rapidly facilitate the idea iteration process. It’s essentially an interactive mind mapping tool with a few twists.

Using Flash as the engine, Exploratree allows users to create what they call “Thinking Guides” - tools or frameworks for thinking through an issue and considering different aspects or perspectives that can be useful for helping to develop thinking skills. You can use one of their 23 ready-made templates or simply work from a blank canvas to develop your own to add images, text, and shapes that help you develop and evolve your thoughts.

While the application was originally designed as part of the Enquiring Minds project - a three-year research and development program that is run by Futurelab and funded by Microsoft - working alongside teachers and students in two UK secondary schools the project to develop a distinctive approach to teaching and learning that takes the knowledge, ideas, interests and skills that students bring into schools more seriously and enables young people to take more responsibility for the content, processes, and outcomes of their learning, it is now available for more general use.

By using the power and functionality of the application you can create your document and then send it to a friend or group of friends for review/comment, or allow them to log-in to your Thinking Guide to edit and save changes.

I see a lot of relevance and applicability for this application, and others like it, in connecting distributed work teams and allowing them to rapidly iterate through ideas and projects they are working on/through. I can also see a lot of value in using it alone because it’s simplicity and ease of use allows a user to focus the creation or elaboration of an idea or brainstorm as opposed to being focused on the technology used to facilitate the ideation or brainstorming process. In other words it does what it’s supposed to without getting in your way.

If you are a visual thinking (like I am) who is looking for a light weight, web based tool that is feature rich but very easy to use for collaborating or brainstorming, I’d say that Exploratree is worth taking a look at. No download is required. You can try it without registering, or sign up to the service to get your work saved online, all for free. Exploratree: http://www.exploratree.org.uk

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