Wiki at Work

Earlier I blogged we were trying a Wiki for a group Knowledge Base. It's been a huge success. The big thing I found is that Wiki is also perfect for team documentation. The ability to link to files or upload files means existing documentation is easy to keep and more importantly, it's easily centralized.

The keys were to figure it out first, then tell everyone about it, then YOU use it, then patiently advocate it to all you teammates. Well I should back up, I first made the case to my manager about needing something for our unique fixes and documentation. Install and setup was relatively easy, just keep at it. Then it was eat your own dogfood time. I put up some documentation and a few VMware fixes I always reference. Create a new page template. Tell your team about it, and reference it. When fixes I put up were useful in fixing problems, I would include the link to it when I emailed out the service was fixed. Not only does this get them using the Wiki, it also gives your on-call support staff the confidence to troubleshoot and fix your systems without paging you late night or on the weekends.

I've been lucky. I work with a great team that are not afraid to try new things. So far they love it, and see how it can be very useful. The success of my Wiki has inspired others to give it a shot. I've had 3 other teams ask me how I got mine going, and I've been asked to create a website we can use to keep everyone up to date in case email is down. So now I'm becoming the team "web guy" which isn't a bad thing. Now I have to dig into Apache, PHP, and MySQL. Fun stuff!

When IT attacks!

One project I'm starting is to create a team knowledge base. I've been looking around for a free solution and I'm going to give Twiki a try. Not sure if it's going to do exactly what I want, but the fun is in seeing if it will.

Should MS worry just a bit?

As I sit here and test and tweak Google's latest offerings, I wonder if Microsoft should sit up and take notice. No, I don't think Docs & Spreadsheets is going to knock off Office. Microsoft Office is a corporate mainstay, and I don't see that changing. Corporations aren't going to risk data security by storing their docs with Google. When a vector for lawsuits or IP infringement is present, the lawyers won't let them. However, home users may not have such worries. Especially when creating content that they were going to publish anyway. So what if some 'leet hacker sees and exposes to the world my 3 failed drafts of my latest blog post?

So why should MS be a bit worried? Well, MS products gained widespread popularity because of their workplace dominance. This is what drove the home acceptance. However, much to the chagrin of MS a big chunk of home OS and Office use was pirated. They never did too much about it because it helped keep the corporate fees rolling in. Sharing data was only realistically possible when the systems were the same back in those bad old days. Now we have the web and OS neutral web apps. And now here is Google with email, Blogger, Picasa, Calendar, and Docs & Spreadsheets. All on the web and available anywhere, all OS agnostic. Now the home user doesn't need Microsoft near as much. You can feel free to try Apple, dabble in Linux and still have a world of connectivity and productivity available to you. Couple that with Microsoft adding more and more intrusive anti-piracy measures and suddenly there should be a seed of doubt in Microsoft's dominance.

Google is showing they are out to woo the home user with convenience and any talk of a Google OS should be put to bed. Why chain yourself to an OS when you can leverage the web and run anywhere? Let home users and online content creators choose the OS that suits them and be there to provide them a consistent web app experience. It will be a gradual change, but it's a step to an open computing world. This time with few data sharing and communication issues.