Friday, February 15, 2008

m³: Silver Bullet Wiki?

Martin has interesting observations (and rants) on Wikis as tools for building/negotiating an agenda for a meeting.

m3s online Pamphlet :: y2008 : m02 : Silver Bullet Wiki:

Instead of emailing a meeting agenda, put it on a wiki page and email people a link to that page. If changes need to be made, anyone on your team can do so and everyone will have immediate access to the same, up-to-date version
[...]
And how does that differ from a Word file on a fileshare, a Sharepoint place, an Exchange shared folder or a Lotus Quicker?
A fool with a tool is still a fool. If people are not used to working on ONE copy of a document – no matter what technology – they will still end up with several versions of the document. Either by printing it to PDF, copying into the calendar-entry, etc.
[some typos corrected]

But Martin, why so strict ?
I'd understand "wiki" as a pars-pro-toto for all of the options you suggested.
I strictly oppose to the Word file (or ODT file for that matter;-)) on a whatever server.

Cool would be:
  1. A "document" (not word) on a server -> then you get the single copy property.
  2. directly editable through web and an API -> allows for easy and direct access from all possible tools
  3. obviously you want the author/editor of a change/addition/suggestion to the agenda visible and identifiable
  4. And then you'd want both an RSS/Atom feed from that document as well as an iCal/webcal/caldav access to this document. (And others: you might want to generate your PDF directory out of it for archival and print).
  5. It should of course carry the whole event/appointment data as well.
That's what I'd want to see... If that's then implemented in Exchange, SharePoint, Domino/Notes or on a Wiki - I couldn't care less.

BUZZER

Wrong, sorry. I do care.
By my nature I'd prefer the Wiki or Notes approach over any Exchange/SharePoint approach... not so much religiously, but they tend to guarantee more open access - meaning both users, and APIs.

3 comments:

Roman said...

forgot to mention the link to the original posting by Stewart Mader

m3 - Martin Leyrer said...

Roman, RSS for me would be crucial. That is one thing I miss in the meia wiki installations I am currently working with. RSS support in there is rudimental.

Regarding your wishlist:
I have seen something similar to this at last years Lotusphere. IBM presented a solution, where you edited a ODT-File though a browser. Several people could work on one file at the same time, locking would occure on the paragraph level. Imagine a Wiki on steroids. Very cool.

Roman said...

@martin: sounds great.