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Adoption & WYSIWYG Editors
So the argument that adoption hinges on the existence of a WYSIWYG editor is flawed - wiki markup can be easily explained and adding some coaching efforts to an implementation project doesn’t hurt, explaining the rationale behind wiki usage etc. I have had decent successes with 15 minute short introductions, followed by “train the (peer) trainer” coachings, after all editing wiki markup editing is neither programming nor rocket science.
People, for whatever reason, expect their wiki to work like Word or at least Outlook. This may be, as the comments suggest, a nice way of saying 'not interested', but I think that in the corporate world, where applications try to be all things to all people (see above graphic), that jamming a bunch of stuff into an application may in fact help adoption. It is well documented that people only use 10% of Word, but perhaps it is just more comforting to see this level of functionality. Instead of comparing wikis (or other WYSIWYG editors) to Word, perhaps it is time to start to compare them to Outlook. After all, isn't this the method of collaboration that we are trying to replace?How Wikis Change Sales and Marketing
From Selling Power Magazine (featuring moi!)
Every sales leader knows that if they could harness the collective intelligence of their people, performance would rise dramatically. The Wiki model of shared writing and editing is slowly entering the world of selling. Wikis are rewriting the rules of team selling and collaboration. Wiki-empowered sales organizations find that productivity increases, teamwork improves, and email information requests drop by up to 50 percent. One company that used Wiki software from Socialtext.com found that salespeople can instantly find the information they need by using the integrated search and tagging functions. Gartner recently ranked Socialtext as the most visionary vendor in the Team Collaboration and Social Software market. A number of companies are applying the Wiki collaboration model to interact with their clients. For example, Salesforce.com created a site called Ideas.salesforce.com that allows customers to share ideas that can improve their business. George Hu, CMO of Salesforce.com says, “We expose our customers feedback to our entire community so that our customers, our partners, and everyone can see it. We use customer feedback as a roadmap for driving our product improvement process. Anyone who visits the site can promote any of the 5,000 ideas contained on the site to increase the idea ranking. A separate site called Apex Wiki allows Salesforce.com partners to quickly learn how to collaborate and create custom applications on the Salesforce.com platform. Many companies are reaching out to their customers to co-create and collaborate in their quest to gain a better bottom line. Dustin Armstrong, EVP of Tenacity Corporation, who adopted a program called BizWiki said, his sharing of ideas helps us support our customers better and grow our business faster. The beauty of the Wiki model is that it has great appeal to people who have little technology savvy. For example, people who want to monitor new developments on a corporate Wiki can opt in to receive an email or instant message when new content becomes available. Enterprise Wikis like Socialtext, Confluence, Brainkeeper, or MindTouch are different from Wikipedia. The emphasis is on collaboration, not publishing; there is no threat of vandalism; and the common goal is to share knowledge. Scott Schnaars, a senior manager at Yahoo! uses an Enterprise Wiki to plan, manage, and execute new product launches across the globe. Schnaars says, ”It is a great way to get a consistent message out to the global sales force.”
