Talking Wikis With Ward Cunningham
I met Ward Cunningham last week at AboutUs. It’s kind of a thrill to meet the man who developed the first wiki.
My first experiences with wikis came in 2003 when I discovered Socialtext. I needed a way to develop a community and information source for a webcast I was planning. I wanted to provide people with a resource that could go with the webcast and the IRC channel. We used the wiki with the webcast. We had people keeping the wiki updated for the event with summaries of the different sessions we did during the webcasts. Socialtext set up the wiki with different categories. More than 10,000 people registered within a month. It was one of my most exciting moments in building community around a topic.
Ward also remarked how well wikis and events work together.
He said that he has participated in workshops that used wikis to keep track of discussions. At the beginning of a workshop, a wiki is created. Time is scheduled during the workshop for the wiki to be updated. People take turns updating the wiki. The updates are then discussed by the workshop participants. The updated wik serves to move the conversation forward. The wikis act as discussion points to enrich the group.
Fun to hear someone like Ward discuss the ways wikis can be used.
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