‘KEY TAKE AWAY’: In less than 4 minutes. See what a wiki is all about. There are many more usages of a wiki than shown, but this is one of the simplest and memorable explanations that is a must see.
James Key Lim
What is a wiki? – Lee Lefever at Common does his magic with another simple video
Published June 2, 2007 Uncategorized 5 Comments5 Responses to “What is a wiki? – Lee Lefever at Common does his magic with another simple video”
- 1 Trackback on June 9, 2007 at 1:15 pm
Great little video! I forwarded it to my tech. planning group (ok, so they’re a little behind in the adoption of online tools!). I’ve set up a wetpaint wiki & that’s ultra easy with some great options to add widgets like slideshows, IM and tables.
We’re using wiki’s in two radically different ways: 1) behind the scenes as a collaboration tool like in the video and 2) as a website type of situation but not allowing the public to alter it. The advantage is that it’s very easy for us to make changes whenever without complicated editing.
Thank you for sharing your real world experiences with wikis Connie. Have you seen any down sides to using wikis?
We are in the process of adding an outward facing wiki in a corporate setting to supplement the product forum. So, yes, James, the drawbacks have to be considered to do it wisely.
My biggest concern is usability. I’ve worked with 3 types of wiki’s: 1) Wetpaint.com that is so easy & fast! (but there are ad’s because it’s free) 2) pbwiki which I really like because it’s friendly 3) and the one my sister is using as a closed one for our website (which I’ve broken while editing it on a couple of occasions – that is very frustrating).
So, for our corporate setting, we’re looking at a number of things: usability – people won’t use it if it’s not easy to add info, videos & images to (that’s my #1 concern); if it breaks – tech won’t like it & no one has time to keep fixing it plus customers will get tired of it being down; where it will be hosted; guessing the amt of space needed (we hope it grows fast! the product is used for tech illustrations & the users are big into their graphics so we want to provide a platform for them to share their work). And it would be nice for them to be able to add video type tutorials of workflows.
btw – putting the video on our blog broke it, so I had to link our traffic thru your blog to watch it. Thanks in advance! (I didn’t think you would mind *smile*).
Thank you so much for sharing Connie.
This is exactly the kind of information that can help others. I agree that usability is a top priority. I too have been exploring wikis that have can be user friendly and able to utilize video and images. I found one that I like so far. It’s called Confluence (http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/).
Unfortunately, it isn’t free for multiple users (they have a personal version that is free), but it’s also not that expensive as a hosted service.
More than happy to have you point here!
Have a great weekend!