Open Spaces

50 (!) people showed up at the last London Wiki Wednesday that Sean and I hosted at BearingPoint’s offices in London. The sign-up sheet gave us a little bit of a scare because we didn’t expect more than 25-30 people, but in the end it was a great success. Check out what happened. The format of the event has slightly evolved over the last couple of months. The early ones were marked by a series of speed presentations on various topics (software demos, website demos, business pitches, project experiences etc.). Last evening we had a couple of longer discussions. I think that this might be the way to go forward as it really raised the bar in terms of depth and value of the discussions.

One of the key topics discussed was the security and contribution model of Wikis. Wikis have been popping up all over the place because of the inherent need of online collaborative authoring. A Wiki is a place for open collaboration with many users contributing content or making changes to existing content. However, out of my experience in deploying Wikis in corporations, this notion of open Wikis for the enterprise requires some extra thoughts. For MIKE2.0, the open source Enterprise Information Management methodology, we have developed and having been discussing for quite a while now four alternative release models:

1. Open Model (minimal protection only against vandalism)
2. Hierarchy Model (a governance body controls the changes and release cycles to the core content)
3. Federated Model (domain leads ‘own’ their sections of the content)
4. Branch Model (create an alternative page when a protected core page is edited)

The discussion during the event got heated when we suggested that Enterprise 2.0 requires control of content beyond what we have seen in familiar web Wiki communities. Adopting anything else than an open model brought up the question whether this would diminish the value of using Wiki technology altogether and whether alternative technologies (like content management systems) wouldn’t be better suited. The discussion moved on to specific examples from the corporate world (HR policies, employee handbooks etc.) where Wiki technologies are a great enabler for online collaborative authoring but where access controls (read for many, write only for a select group) needed to be in place.

MIKE2.0 is currently set up with the hierarchy model. We believe that in order for MIKE2.0 to be successfully adopted by organisations to run large scale Enterprise Information Management projects, there needs to be a certain level of trust that the underlying methodology is not going to change every other week. We will establish a governance body selected from a community of active contributors and experts that is meritocracy based. We will continue to monitor how effective it is and whether we need to adapt it.

Anyone considering to deploy Enterprise 2.0 technologies (be it Wikis, blogs, forums, IM etc.) needs to give extra thought on what can be gained by adding extra layers of security on top of basic requirements and what will be lost in regards to contributions, community and culture. This requires a case by case decision based on experience and based on the culture that exists within your corporation.