The document discusses using a wiki-based intranet to improve organizational efficiency. It describes how wikis can help reduce email usage, facilitate knowledge sharing and collaboration between employees. Implementing a wiki requires selecting software, addressing issues like participation levels and security, and promoting wiki usage through training and executive support. Overall, a well-implemented wiki intranet has the potential to streamline processes and enhance productivity.

1. Improving Organizational Efficiency
with Wiki-based Intranets
Create Knowledge, Use Knowledge, Enlarge Knowledge
Thomas Siegers March 31, 2009
Songfuli Co., Ltd.
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2. About
Hosted by
American Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan
European Chamber of Commerce in Taiwan
This presentation is publicly available at:
http://www.slideshare.net/thomasjs
This presentation is published under the
Creative Commons Attribution Share Alike License.
For more information, see http://creativecommons.org/about/licenses/
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3. Agenda
 General about Wiki
 Organizational Aspects
 Infrastructure and Concepts
 Usage
 Live Demo
 Examples
 Workshop 17 April 2009
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4. Challenge and Opportunity
 Measures to ride out the economic crisis
retrench, cut cost, intensify sales, stabilize cash position
 Opportunities to improve during the economic crisis
- concentrate on improvement of internal structures
- clear organizational backlogs
- create positive atmosphere
 Internal project to improve organizational efficiency
- simplify processing of routine tasks
- systematically generate knowledge
- document workflows, specifications. etc.
- stimulate collaboration between colleagues
- leverage unused potential inside work force
 Preparation for the time after the economic crisis
- have a system in place when there is little time to create one
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5. What is a Wiki?
 Collection of web pages
 Authors can read, write and edit pages
 Formatting by simple markup language
 Previous versions are stored and can be compared
 Internet web application running in an browser
 Navigation same as world wide web
 Best known from Wikipedia
 Hawaiian word for “fast”
 Developed in 1994 by Ward Cunningham (WikiWikiWeb)
“The simplest online database that could possibly work.”
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6. A New Hype?
 Forrester Research, Sept. 2007
Only 3 percent of 1,017 North American and European
enterprise decision makers said they were planning a large-
scale, strategic wiki implementation in the next 12 months.
 Gartner, March 2008
More than half of 360 US-based IT organizations surveyed
indicated that they use wikis and blogs.
 Society for Information Management - Advanced Practices
Council, Nov. 2008
By 2009, at least 50 percent of organizations will use wikis as
important work collaboration tools.
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7. For what can I use a Wiki?
 Collaboration
 Documentation
 Knowledge Base
 Intranet
 Website
 Blog, CMS*
 Look what PBwiki says.
http://pbwiki.com/ (wiki hosting service)
 Presentation
http://meyerweb.com/eric/tools/s5/s5-intro.html
*) content management system
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8. Who uses a Wiki?
 SAP
 Nokia
 Motorola
and even...
 Siemens Mobile
CIA – Intellipedia
 British Telecom
“The joke about Wikipedia is
 Lufthansa Cargo it doesn't work in theory,
it only works in practice.”
 IBM Lotus software
 Swiss Federal Achives
 University of Cambridge
 Zweites Deutsches Fernsehen
Source: http://twiki.org/cgi-bin/view/Main/TWikiInstallation
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9. How many Wiki pages are there?
 www.wikipedia.org
the world's open encyclopedia
2 731 000+ articles in English
863 000+ articles in German
763 000+ articles in French
 www.wikispaces.com
Wiki hosting service
1,800,000+ members, 750,000+ wikis
 www.wikidot.com
Wiki farm
281,275 people, 2,950,742 pages
 www.wowwiki.com
largest wiki on www.wikia.com
70,500+ articles on the computer game World of Warcraft
Figures of Feb. 2009
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10. Why Wiki?
 Knowledge Economy
Various observers describe today's global economy as one in
transition to a quot;knowledge economyquot;, as an extension of an
quot;information societyquot;.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knowledge_economy
 Peter Drucker
The Age of Discontinuity (1969)
Guidelines to Our Changing Society
Chapter 12: Knowledge Economy
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12. Why Wiki?
Web 2.0 → User Generated Content
Wiki → Concept and Platform,
which comes closest to the idea of the Web 2.0
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13. Agenda
➢ Organizational Aspects
Infrastructure and Concepts
Usage
13

14. 10 Reasons for a corporate Wiki
1. Reduction of e-mail
2. Up-to-date content
3. Organic structure
4. Efficiency tools
5. Flexibility
6. Usability
7. Transparency
8. Security
9. Saving resources
10. Cost savings
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15. Reduction of E-Mail cont'd
 Expenditure of time and work
Studies show that up to 25% of working time is used for
reading, answering, processing e-mails.
 Relevance
copy to “everyone” for info – one or few are doing the work
 Efficiency
unstructured, not shareable, scattered
 Documentation
unsuitable as document manager
 Spam
tens of billions of spam mails every day
 Conclusion
Use other tools whenever possible.
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16. Participation Inequality
90-9-1 Rule
All large-scale, multi-user communities and online social
networks that rely on users to contribute content or build
services share one property: most users don't participate
very much.
90% of users only read or observe, but don't contribute.
●
9% of users contribute from time to time, but other priorities
●
dominate their time.
1% of users participate a lot and account for most
●
contributions.
Jakob Nielsen - Participation Inequality: Encouraging More Users to Contribute (October 9, 2006)
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17. Participation inside Organizations
Inside organizations participation is different than in online
communities on the Internet.
Existing structures in organizations help influence people to
become more active contributors.
For example, if most members of a team use the wiki for
meeting minutes, they will encourage those few, who still use
e-mail, to use the wiki too.
Experience shows that about 60% of the work force
participates.
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18. Excursion: Web 2.0
 Time Magazine 2006
Person of the Year
 Contributors to Web 2.0
 Wikipedia, YouTube,
MySpace, Facebook, etc.
 Web 2.0
 everyone can participate
 everyone can create content
 communication
 collaboration
 information sharing
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19. 10 Tips for implementing a Wiki
1. Grassroots is best.
2. Throw out the rule book!
3. Populate it and they’ll come.
4. Don’t mistake your wiki for Wikipedia.
5. Put some content exclusively on the wiki.
6. Don’t rush it. People will need time to get used to the wiki.
7. Build trust. Don’t excessively manage it.
8. People will find new ways to do old things with the wiki.
9. Prompt people to use the wiki.
10. Watch out for obstacles.
Creative Commons License - Future Changes by Stewart Mader
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20. 7 Measures after Implementation
1. Integrate the wiki as one of several important tools in an
organization's IT collaboration architecture.
2. Understand, monitor and enforce the wiki “rules of
conduct”.
3. Use the wiki for collaborative knowledge creation across
people not previously connected.
4. Assign a champion to each wiki to observe contributions.
5. Convince people to edit others' work.
6. Embed small software programs into the wiki that
structure repetitive behavior.
7. Understand wikis are best used in work cultures that
encourage collaboration.
Society for Information Management - Advanced Practices Council, Nov. 2008
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21. 5 more ways to keep a Wiki going
1. Use the wiki for everyday work activities – agendas,
minutes, daily tasks and short term projects.
2. Keep the wiki as open as possible.
3. Use traditional IT tools everyone is familiar with to
combine with the wiki, like include links to wiki pages in
e-mail messages.
4. Publish other topics than work related on the wiki, e.g.
internal sport events.
5. Get the attention of senior mangers. Add sales figures and
other business reports to the wiki.
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22. Agenda
Organizational Aspects
➢ Infrastructure and Concepts
Usage
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23. Wiki Hosting Services
dozens of wiki hosting services for use
 also called wiki farm
 free or commercial
 financed by advertisements
 www.wikia.com
 www.wetpaint.com
 pbwiki.com
 www.wikispaces.com
 www.wikidot.com
 http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence/hosted/
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24. Wiki Software Engines
dozens if not hundreds of wiki engines available
 MediaWiki
the engine that drives Wikipedia and many other sites
 DokuWiki, PmWiki
all purpose, for small to medium size companies
 Twiki, Foswiki
suitable for enterprises of large and any size
 Confluence
commercial wiki for corporate environments
 TikiWiki
intranet with CMS, wiki, groupware
 WikyBlog
hybrid of wiki and blog
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25. Wiki vs. Blog
Wiki Blog
 articles created by many  post created by one
 articles revised by many  post commented by many
 page oriented  thread oriented
 documentation  communication
 linking  tagging
Wikis and blogs can complement each other.
Hybrid software solutions available – WikyBlog.
www.wikyblog.com
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26. Extensions
 Templates
give a Wiki different design and layout
http://www.dokuwiki.org/Template
 Plugins
extend the functionality of a Wiki
http://www.dokuwiki.org/plugins
 Typical productivity tools:
notifications, subscriptions, discussion, tasks list, charts, calendar, gallery, multimedia
 Integration with other services:
Google, Flickr, YouTube, Digg, Amazon
 Special: railway timetable
http://dokuwiki.ich-bin-am-wandern-gewesen.de/doku.php?id=playground:bahnde
 Wiki as CMS and/or Blog
CMS: http://bandy24.de/ | http://www.how2do-video.de/ | http://www.bos-laden.de/
Blog: http://www.opennebula.org/doku.php?id=blog | http://www.carpe.com/doku.php/en/blog
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27. Integration
 User authentication against directories or databases
LDAP, AD, MySQL
 Bridge to/from other web applications
CMS: Joomla, Drupal
 Wiki syntax in blogs and forums
WordPress, phpBB
 Suite of applications
Wiki, blog, forum, photo gallery, news aggregator
 Synchronization with desktop applications
desktop note taking
 Links to files and folders on file server
standard syntax for links with UNC*
*) Uniform Naming Convention
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28. Migration
How to get existing data into the Wiki?
 Manually copy, paste, reformat 
 Automatic conversion
promising approach: environment to convert Word files
- *.doc → *.html → *.txt (→ *.sql)
- OpenOffice as conversion engine
- software, Java, Perl, Linux, Apache, (MySQL,) PHP
- Wiki engine with plugin
- some programming and manual tweaking 
 Converters from/to other Wiki engines
 Import/Export from/to HTML, PDF, help files (.chm)
 Macros for Word, Excel and OpenOffice
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29. Working the Wiki Way
 File server vs. Wiki
folder namespace
file page
n/a link
 First create links, then pages
create a link to a page that does not exist, then create the page
create namespaces and pages by searching or entering a URL
 Links to Anything
to pages and media in the same Wiki
pages to other Wikis (InterWiki)
external pages on the Internet
folders and files on the file server
 Semantic editing
markup multiple level headlines to structure a page
table of contents is created automatically
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30. Namespaces
 Wikipedia
pages in flat namespace
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Animal
exceptions
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Animals
 Intranet
multiple levels of namespaces
last item of expression is the page
Category:Animals:Mammals:Elephant
 URL Mapping
internal URL
http://intranet/doku.php?id=animals:mammals:elephant
friendly URL
http://intranet/animals/mammals/elephant
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31. Security
 Wikipedia
open wiki, no access restriction to edit articles
registration required to create articles
IP address recorded
no ACL1 in MediaWiki
 Intranet
restricted access
Wiki engine with ACL required
permissions inherited in hierarchical namespace
 Internet
hosted in Internet → encrypted access/content
access from Internet → firewall infrastructure (DMZ2)
1) access control list
2) demilitarized zone (secure internal network)
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32. Synchronization
 Scenario
- Wiki as an intranet inside internal network
- teleworker takes Wiki on laptop to customer
- teleworker wants to save changes back to Wiki
 Solutions
- synchronization tools on client and server
- revision control system (CVS, SVN)*
- plugin
*) Concurrent Versions System, Subversion
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33. Productivity
 Notifications
e-mail when something is new or changed
caution: another e-mail flood
 Subscriptions
RSS feeds to individual namespaces and pages
 Discussions
comments to and discussions about articles
 Acronyms
assign and use codes for employees, phrases, etc.
 Task Lists
according to the GTD principle (Getting Things Done)
 Combinations
e.g. task list with discussion
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34. Agenda
Organizational Aspects
Infrastructure and Concepts
➢ Usage
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35. Wiki Syntax
 Simplified markup language
 Limited access to HTML and CCS
JavaScript, PHP, macros, scripts, variables
 More and more wikis support WYSIWYG1
 Every engine has its own syntax2.
 Link3
...more information about [[Wiki]], read...
...more information about Wiki, read...
 Formatting3
this is '''bold''' and this ''italic''
this is bold and this italic
1) What You See Is What You Get
2) common syntax www.wikicreole.org
3) examples here in MediaWiki syntax
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36. Advanced Wiki Syntax
 Links
internal link with label [[namespace:page|label]]
external link [[http://www.domain.com/page]]
interwiki [[go>wiki]]
file server [[serversharefolderfile]]
image right aligned {{ namespace:image.jpg}}
 Table
^ header 1 ^ header 2 ^ header 3 ^
| cell 11 | cell 12 | cell 13 |
| cell 21 | cell 22 | cell 23 |
 Expressions of plugins
tags {{tag>minutes meeting}}
tag cloud ~~TAGCLOUD~~
discussion ~~DISCUSSION~~
menu {{indexmenu>songfuli#1|js#kde.png}}
task list {{tasks>songfuli:administration:tasks:list}}
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37. Markup Language vs. Visual Editing
 LaTeX
document markup language in use for over 25 years
 Simplification
SGML → HTML → Wiki
 Semantic Editing
Computers “understand” content and can do useful things.
 Wiki syntax
Typical wiki and advanced wiki expressions cannot be entered
and displayed as wysiwyg in all wiki engines.
 Logical vs. Visual
Due to ubiquity of office programs most computer users are
more comfortable with visual than logical document production.
*) Standard Generalized Markup Language
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38. Why Wiki Works
 Cunningham & Cunningham, Inc.
Here you can rely on encountering playful minds. Putting up a wiki page is like

tossing a ball of yarn into a basket of kittens.
Any information can be altered or deleted by anyone. Wiki pages represent

consensus because it's much easier to delete insults and remove Wiki spam than
indulge them. What remains generates new ideas by the interactive integration of
multiple points of view.
Anyone can play. This sounds like a recipe for low signal - Wiki gets hit by the great

unwashed as often as any other site - but from fertilizer come flowers. Only good
players have a desire to keep playing.
Wiki doesn't work in real time. People take time to think, sometimes days or weeks,

before they follow up some edit. So what people write is often well-considered.
Wiki participants are, by nature, a pedantic, ornery, and unreasonable bunch. So

there's a camaraderie here we seldom see outside of our professional contacts.
Excerpt from http://c2.com/cgi/wiki?WhyWikiWorks
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39. Humor
 Uncyclopedia
The content-free encyclopedia
http://uncyclopedia.wikia.com
subprojects: UnBooks, UnNews, …
> 50 languages: http://ansaikuropedia.org
 Encyclopedia Dramatica
Slogan: “In lulz we trust.”
http://www.encyclopediadramatica.com
 Stupidedia, Kamelopedia
German
http://www.stupidedia.org
http://kamelopedia.mormo.org
Note: lulz ← LOL ← laughing out load
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40. Q&A
Thomas Siegers
Songfuli Co., Ltd.
Taipei, Taiwan
松福禮股份有限公司
http://www.songfuli.com
thomas.siegers@songfuli.com
http://www.slideshare.net/thomasjs
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