October 4, 12:46 pm
Knowledge management the wiki way
Just got off the phone with a client concerned about his employees retaining information they’ve been taught. “Some of the training I have my people attend is very expensive,” he said. “I’d like to find a way to keep more of that information from evaporating three days after someone comes back from a training session or a conference.”
The solution he’s going to follow up on is to create a wiki. The most famous wiki, of course, is Wikipedia, so if you’ve used Wikipedia, consider how a wiki could be phenomenally practical for businesses:
You have a record/database of information in a searchable,
easily-accessible, readily-editable format.
The really cool thing? You can create them for free. A few of the more popular sites for wiki’s are wikispaces.com and wetpaint.com.
A few examples of how they could be used:
- Capture the knowledge of seasoned experts so everyone can tap their brains anytime, anyplace.
- Keep new product info updated and accessible to sales reps in the field.
- Have people in remote locations collaborate on projects — saving THOUSANDS in travel expenses – without having to access data buried in email.
- Have people dialog on how they’re applying things they’ve learned at various workshops and training sessions.
So long as people have Internet access, there are very few reasons NOT to use wiki’s. Learn about more wiki sites and even do a compare/contrast of which ones best meet your needs at wikimatrix.org.
By the way, I’d be interested in any unique applications you’ve found for them — Feel free to add any comments about how you’re using them.
Filed in Work, Business, Training, Selling, Internet, Workplace, Meetings, Corporate Culture, E-Learning
This is good stuff Dan. Thanks for talking about wiki’s. It’s been on my radar screen to use wiki’s as part of Treasure Valley Consultants’ Network. A couple ways I thought about using this tools was to use them as a way to recap our meetings and the topics discussed or create a sort of local consultant’s resource hub with tools and best practices as a central theme.
Another tool that is somewhat similar is a “lens” that is the brainchild of Seth Godin at Squidoo.com.
Dan -
I actually find that blogs are better fit for retaining information from conferences and training sessions. I have been live blogging from the conferences I attend. It is a great way for me to capture my notes and makes it easy to share my notes with the rest of my group.
The posts/notes can be rough and full of typos, but they are better captured than a sheet of information.
Here are my examples:
Boston KM Forum
http://kmspace.blogspot.com/search/label/KM%20Forum%20Boston
ILTA:
http://kmspace.blogspot.com/search/label/ILTA%2007
Enterprise 2.0:
http://kmspace.blogspot.com/search/label/Enterprise%202.0%20Conference