InnovationCreation

I just finished listening to several podcasts on wiki use. The first is from Jimmy Wales, the founder of Wikipedia, speaking at the Mass Technology Leadership Council in early 2006.

He provided some very good insight into the social and community aspect of Wikipedia. One of the interesting observations he shared is that of reputation versus community. In some social networking systems on the web there are reputation scores for people that participate, Digg.com and Slashdot provide some form of this. However, Jimmy said people do not walk around offices and hall ways with badges displaying single scores representing their reputation. Dialog and communication among people can not be boiled down to a single representation. This is where he believes Wikipedia works with their talk/discussion pages.

Podcast MP3 link

The second podcast is Ross Mayfield's conversation on wikis with Jon Udell on Aug 4th, 2006. Ross is the CEO of Socialtext, a commercial provider of wiki software.

Ross provided some insightful info on commercial use of wikis; There is a need for quick setup of secured private wikis. He said this is against the "norm" of wikis (private/secured) yet in business there is a need. Socialtext has put this type of functionality in their product. Additionally, Ross announced that the Socialtext software platform is going open source. This will provide innovation to the enhancement and development of the software by the wide wiki community.

Podcast MP3 link

Lastly, there is lots on news/info from Wikimania 2006, which just concluded Aug 6th. Much still to absorb from this gathering.

Update: Good Wikipedia metrics talked about by Jimmy Wales at Wikimania 2006. The Wales introduction is a bit long, skip to 5 min and 20 seconds into audio.

Podcast MP3 link

And there was humor on wikis presented in Jimmy Wales' opening talk: Stephen Colbert Analyzes Wikipedia and gives us a new word Wikiality, YouTube video link and just audio, the first 2 minutes.



Image from Ross Mayfield, CEO Socialtext.

• Where are you as a company?

Quote pulled from Socialtext site

• WYSIWYG coming to wikis: Example in Wikimedia.