What industry do you work in?

jamesmatheson		Management of Companies and Enterprises (55)

lphuberdeau		Other Services (except Public Administration) (81)

martincleaver		Information (51)

valeurdusage		Agriculture, Forestry, Fishing and Hunting (11)
Which industry are most of your clients in?

jamesmatheson		Not Specified (00)

martincleaver		Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services (54)

valeurdusage		Not Specified (00)
In which country do you live?

jamesmatheson		Australia (AU)

lphuberdeau		Canada (CA)

martincleaver		Canada (CA)
Whereabouts in your country do you live?

jamesmatheson		Sydney

lphuberdeau		Montreal

martincleaver		Toronto

valeurdusage		Villeparisis (France)
"Wiki" means many things to many people. In 20-50 words, describe what you think a wiki is.

jamesmatheson		In the simplest terms, wiki software is social software that allows people to work together.

martincleaver		Technically its a writeable intranet, but sociologically it's a reflection of culture: an ever-morphing description of goings-on, commitments and underlying values. Strategically it can help a company become more innovative, but only if cultural

valeurdusage		It's about sharing common practices, in order to share and structure and feed a shared space with useful information. It's also a great tool for communities that need to work both within a project and across boundaries.
What year did you start working on a wiki and what was the project?

jamesmatheson		I started working with wikis when managing a complex industrial automation project in 2000. Initially I used TWiki as a way to improve project documentation.

lphuberdeau		3-4 years ago

martincleaver		In 2001, while I was working for Arthur Andersen. Andersen had a knowledge base for "sharing" but you'd only share after you'd finished using content.I wanted a way for us to share knowledge during projects, as that keeps both parties engaged in conversation.

valeurdusage		In 2003 as i was attending ITC courses, i found myself in need to remotly share information with my classmates with a wiki. Then in 2005, i participated to the hyperlinking project of the french version of the "European Constitution Treaty". It's been two years i work on a daily basis with wikis.
What wiki-related services do you offer?

jamesmatheson		I cover the full range of services that are required for establishing a successful wiki in an organisation.

lphuberdeau		Additional feature development, meta-data related

martincleaver		It varies tremendously, because I have two backgrounds: IT and Business. From a business perspective I help organizations understand the industry strategy side: why they need the technology and how it can be used to accelerate partnering. From a technology side I help it all happen: selecting the right wiki for the job, working with IT for integration. In addition I help foster adoption through training and cultural measures.

valeurdusage		First explaining what it's all about (concepts and paradigms a wiki relies on, and what the stakes are). Then study users needs, choose (and maybe tune) a solution that will fit them. And last but not least, going along with the users as they seed the wiki and foster participation (that is pointing at relevant issues).
What's the most appealing characteristic of a wiki compared to other social media tools?

jamesmatheson		Wikis are easy to use and they give many benefits. In my experience, wikis improve documentation and make projects work faster and more efficiently.

martincleaver		The fact that collectively we reframe and reuse existing content. There's already too much in the world to read, wikis help you recycle existing content.

valeurdusage		How to sum up... in short : one and only one information (reliable and up-to-date) so you can forget about the email mess. Wikis also help have tacit knowledge emerge and get documented. It reveals "hot" issues and is also a reflexive tool for the community. It helps build a community/project memory. And it implements the Read/Write Web powerful concept... Is that enough ?
What's the future of wikis: how might it evolve and what's the impact going to be?

jamesmatheson		Wikis will become essential infrastructure to most organisations. By 2012, they will be as ubiquitous as email and people won't be able to imagine how they got anything done without them.

martincleaver		I think we are seeing reuse everywhere. It's moving from reuse of content to reuse of functionality. There's going to be much use cross-organizationally and that's going to enable much better partnering to drive innovation and revenue growth.

valeurdusage		I guess we'll see lot's of facilitating features implemented, like "inplace" edition or semantic Wysiwyg, and maybe later on tools for visualization (best global vision of hyperdocuments). But the real impact would be social, in terms of the relationship people establish in regard of the way they work together. Wiki's a paradigm and it's slowly but surely spreading around.
?>