… from almost two decades ago. A found this gem amongst a bunch of old photos I saved by digitizing them. This was a rookie consultant’s SAP knowledge base. Search wasn’t quite as powerful as it is on SDN, Wikipedia or just about any Knowledge Management tool today. Oh, and it was quite local: you either had to right binder with you or not. SAP Consultants typically bought big heavy pilot cases trying to carry at least 3 binders for Client visits. If they lucked out, the correct three …

It was quite a good workout though.

Today’s equivalent: a laptop? Perhaps an iPhone?

Tags: Knowledge Management, sap, SAPedia, SDN

The 80/20 rule is out (so last century), 90:9:1 is in: the rule of participation in public communities, social networks, wikis:

• 90% of users are lurkers (i.e., 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: it can seem as if they don’t have lives because they often post just minutes after whatever event they’re commenting on occurs.

90:9:1 is a pretty good fit for most public wikis, starting with Wikipedia. In business, Ben Gardner observed very different numbers: 50:25:x (he does not specify “x”). The interesting number here is 25, or it’s relationship to 50, meaning:

When the same question was asked about our corporate wiki ~50% of those present had used it but about ~50% of those had edited it.

Active participation in a corporate environment is much higher than in the public domain - this is not really a surprise, since the corporate wiki is used by people of real identities and reputations, and most importantly, shared objectives. This is also why Prof. Andrew McAfee hasn’t seen vandalism - a plague of public wikis - in the corporate world at all.

I suspect that 25% can go a lot higher, depending on the purpose of the wiki. When after the initial “grassroots movement” management fully embraces the wiki not as an optional, after-the-fact knowledge-sharing tool, but the primary facility to conduct work, it becomes the fabric of everyday business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture information. When the wiki is the primary work / collaboration platform, participation is no longer optional. Not when the answer to almost any question is “it’s on the wiki.”

Update (6/15/08): Now we have pretty good terms to describe the above, instead of my clumsy explanation. See the discussion on In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow wikis by Michael Idinopulos and Ross Mayfield.

My earlier posts on this subject:

• Wired Wiki, Numbskulls and Collaboration in Business
• Wikis are Not Knowledge Management Tools

(hat tip: Stewart Mader)

Tags: 90:90:1, Collaboration, enterprise 2.0, enterprise wiki, KM, Knowledge Management, wiki, wiki adoption, wikis

No, this is not an anti-wiki pitch, that would be highly unlikely coming from me. But I am continually amazed how we tend to focus on features while missing the people factor. Knowledge Management is a prime example. KM projects typically do not fail due to software issues, but for human reasons: lack of input, or GIGO. Yet here’s an excerpt from a white paper by enterprise wiki vendor MindTouch::

“Wikis provide a flexible alternative to the rigidity of conventional

knowledge management software.

Why wikis work for knowledge management

Based on the features described above, wikis are a powerful replacement for conventional

knowledge management software, because they make knowledge easier to

capture, find and consume:

a. Capturing information: The information is there. Somewhere. Maybe on

a PC, maybe in a file attached to an email, maybe in someone’s head

undocumented. With a wiki, all documents are stored in one central

repository, and files are uploaded rather than attached to emails. Therefore

information is more likely to be captured, stored and made available for reuse.

b. Finding information: When a user has to search a network file server,

he or she must know exactly where to look. A wiki lets a user search

contextually. In addition, because the structure is not required to be linear—

as with KM software—cross-linking of pages helps users not only find

information, but find relevant information.

c. Consuming information: In addition to finding information more easily with

a wiki, a user finds that information in context, meaning the information

is in a location that gives the user some background and perspective relative

to the data. That enables the user to more quickly comprehend the meaning,

significance and relevance of that piece of information. “

All of the above is true - yet it misses the Big Picture. The real story is not about a better tool, but being able to work differently. When wikis are truly embraced in the enterprise, they don’t just make KM easier; they put it out of it’s misery. Yes, that’s right, the wiki is the end of Knowledge Management as we know it: the after-the-fact collection, organization and redistribution of knowledge objects.

The wiki becomes the primary platform to conduct work, the fabric of everyday business, where people create, collaborate, and in the process capture information. While not a Knowledge Management tool, the wiki resolves the KM-problem as a by-product.

Update (6/15/08): Now we have pretty good terms to describe the above, instead of my clumsy explanation. See the discussion on In-the-Flow and Above-the-Flow wikis by Michael Idinopulos and Ross Mayfield.

Ross Mayfield talks about similar ideas in Manage Knowledgement (MK):

“Turns out, users resisted and the algorithms didn’t match reality. With MK, through blogs and wikis, the principle activity is sharing, driven by social incentives. Contribution is simple and unstructured, isn’t a side activity and there is permission to participate. Intelligence is provided by participants, both through the act of sharing and simply leaving behind breadcrumbs of attention.”

Update (5/1): What Happened to Knowledge Management? - by Stewart Mader

Tags: atlassian, brainkeeper, Collaboration, confluence, Enterprise Software, enterprise wiki, Jotspot, KM, Knowledge Management, Manage Knowledgement, mindtouch, socialtext, wiki, wikis

Atlassian,the Sydney- and San Francisco-based software company, maker of enterprise wiki Confluence (and more) has just acquired a single sign-on solution company, Minneapolis-based Authentisoft. Single sign-on is something we all need whether behind a corporate firewall or on the Web. Without it, there are only bad and worse solutions:

• try to remember the myriad userid /password combinations we have for different systems - bad
• have some “algorithm” built in our passwords - bad
• write down all login info - really bad
• use the same userid / pw combo across all systems - really, really baaaad

I could go on… we need single sign-on. It’s that simple. I believe this make Atlassian the first “wiki-company” to offer 3 products in their portfolio. See Mike’s post on further plans.

Now, for the “sign-in” part: in an amazing coincidence, I was just reading the above announcement when I received the email from Cynapse, revealing their “flagship product”, cyn.in (pronounced “sign-in”). Yes, as in sign-in. In the very second I read the sign-on announcement. Isn’t this scary?

Anyway, cyn.in promises to be a web based service that enables the enterprise to build, collaborate, manage and publish: knowledge, documents, media and files, all within hosted sub-systems. It intends to apply the effectivity of Web 2.0 and the SaaS model, to deliver an information management, publishing and collaboration platform. Applications of cyn.in include Knowledge Management, Content Broadcast and Publishing, Collaborative Workspaces, Secure Online File Storage & Versioning, etc.

As I am reading it I can’t help but think those are the things I also do on a wiki … but I don’t think it’s a wiki… I don’t know what it really is though, at this point all you can do on the site is register for notifications and watch a a short tour.

Tags: acquisition, atlassian, authentisoft, Collaboration, confluence, cyn.in, cynapse, Knowledge Management, online storage, single sign-in, single sign-on, wiki, wikis