Some Quick Tips to Grow Your Wiki

Has your company adopted using a Wiki or multiple Wikis for storing information, informal learning, etc.? Has it been successful in using it? This topic has been top of mind for me since returning from DevLearn08 and it is really an exciting development in how learning is changing. From formal to informal. From top down to bottom up. Peer led discussion, community grown insight. Very cool indeed!

Our company has been using a wiki for about two years now. It’s great. We store all kinds of archival data, proposals, bios, fun stuff, procedures and process stuff, handbooks, etc. It’s pretty good, really. We grew it organically and haven’t applied a lot of doctrine in the management of it.

However, it hasn’t been without it’s bumps. Getting people to use it as a primary info source, record, etc is not easy. People are used to a public folder in Outlook or a directory on a network share… but gradually this trend is fading. Beyond that, preventing empty pages or information currency problems (gardening old content and pages out) is always going to be an issue with wikis. Really though, the main issue is getting it filled up in the first place. Here are some tips I have come across in my experience in maintaining ours, reading up on Wiki Patterns and just talking to a few other people I know that manage a wiki. I am by no means an expert in this, but in a Wiki who is? I hope these tips help you, and if you have any other original ideas let me know, or join WikiPatterns and contribute!

Here they are:

1. Hold a Barn-raising! – I first heard this from Tony Karrer and have since read up on it at wiki patterns. With a small amount of planning, this could be really successful in creating a few dozen pages to get your site started. Ask your coworkers to come hungry armed with their laptops and their valuable emails and assorted PDFs and word docs they always forward on to coworkers about process, procedures and tips on how to do their jobs. Order some lunch and start editing! Soon your site will be singing with content. In a comfortable environment like this, WikiNoobs can be schooled on how to work in the system. A great side effect of this is that your pages will start to share a voice or common formatting style and that adds value and coherency to the site!
2. Have a lesser informed or rookie employee fill up some pages with scaffolded content. This content just needs to be ‘kinda’ close. Then, have that same worker send the link on to a superior or mentor for final edit. Showing your expertise can be a strong motivator for some, so by creating a basic framework for content, you are priming the pump and creating an incentive!
3. Go easy on the WikiFormatting! I like HTML. I’m used to it. Many editors are by now. WikiMarkup, or WikiText can be a bit tricky to get used to. It’s got all kinds of rules and things that can easy to implement if you haven’t spent a few years editing web pages already. But for a seasoned web designer, it can feel like training wheels. In this vein, too much focus on making things pretty can slow things down in the creation of a basic wiki’s content. I’m not sure if noticed this on the WikiPatterns site listed as an anti-pattern, but I have just really recently started digging in to this site, so it may be there.
4. Just make it a requirement. Every employee should at least be in charge of their own bio page, right? I would argue that they should not only be editing their profile/bio, but also maintaining a process page if the if they are project manager, contributing to a project’s case study if they were the designer or developer for it, you see where I am going. Simply make it a part of a project’s delivery phase and there you go. Easier said than done, right?
5. Use the Wiki’s ‘Special Pages’. MediaWiki has a “Special:Specialpages” page that lists dead-end pages, orphaned pages, basic stats, most linked to, least linked etc. These links and tools will help you, the editor, manager, etc keep your wiki fresh. Not to be overlooked!

So that’s it for now. I’m going to continue editing my Wiki, and reading Wiki Pattterns. I’m very interested how you are using your Wiki at your work, and hearing your success and trials. Let me know what you are doing with ‘em!

Episode 7: Ear Candy

Well it has been a little while. We took a week off for giving thanks, but we are back and ready to fill you ears with goodness. (…eww.)

Anyway, this week I share some of my favorite animation related podcasts. It is no secret to anybody who knows me that I love podcasts and I feel blessed that we are living in a very unique time where we have the opportunity to listen and learn from the legends who have worked in this field for decades and who’s sweat and blood have made it the art form that it is today. And we get to listen and learn for free none the less!

Nice New AS3 Code Library CasaLib, AS3 Version Release.

I blogged a few months ago about some great Actionscript open source or free code libraries that you should check out. In that list, I mentioned the great, somewhat outdated, but still useful Casa Framework for Actionscript 2. Well, let me repeat that endorsement, but with a big big reinforcement! The Framework has been renamed to CASA Lib and updated to Actionscript 3.

The redubbing is appropriate, as it’s not really an application dev framework like Gaia, but rather an association of packages and classes like the AS3Corelib. Simply put this library just help you get things done faster and easier. Mundane things like date operations, comparisons, display object alignment, etc are a simple method call away. Also, a great addition to the library is a destory() method to assist you with the rather buggy Flash Player 9 garbage collection.

I have downloaded the library and as soon as I have another Flash 9 project pop up, you can bet I’ll be using it. I mean, really the stuff in the util package is just by itself a very useful chunk of code.

Why do I like using these little libraries over just writing stuff from scratch? Well, I have a few reasons, but what really makes it so great in my opinion, is not because any developer couldn’t write these themselves (beleive me I have written all kinds of boring code in the past), but rather by standardizing on a set of packages and classes, you make your team so much more productive. No more debating the better way to do it, no more maintaining your own huge code repository, just simplicity. Really nice, if you ask me.

These bits and snips allow you and your team to focus on the creative parts of your apps and experiences. No one is really going to congratulate you on how awesome your email validation was on that sweet form you built, but they might just love the innovative menus or great integration of video, etc. You see what I mean.

When you think about things like that, and you have great code that is well documented and maintained, it just seems like a no brainer to me. Many congratulations to Aaron Clinger and Mike Creighton and the other contributors on the team. Thanks for your great contribution to the Flash platform community.

Updates Galore!

Hello all,

Well I haven’t been posting much lately so you know that means I have been working hard. Annabelle’s Bistro is coming along nicely. We have been creating animation tests left and right as well as working hard to get the set built. The latest podcast goes into some more detail about all of that.

For those of you who are podcast subscribers, last week you got a little treat in the form of concept designs and exclusive early model tests. Kyle and Katie put together a nice little PDF to show some of that off. The rest of you fear not! for I bring good tidings of great joy:

In addition, I have been giving the script a gentle massage…yet again… I think I have become so familiar with it at this point, I can probably recite the entire script from memory. Perhaps even sing it to the tune of Billy Joel’s We Didn’t Start the Fire.

This weeks podcast marks the triumphant return of my two co-hosts. We discuss our first impressions of Maya and how perseverance and hard work can help overcome the challenges that new 3D artists face. I think its going to be exciting to look back on this podcast at the end of the project just to see how far my students have come in a short amount of time.

A Love Letter to the World of Goo. Yay for Great Game Design!

I like me some video games.

I got my first game system when I was something like 5 or 6. It was an Atari 2600… since then I have pretty much always had a console of one sort or another. I still play them when I can, but most of the games these days just kind of leave me cold. I don’t like first person shooters, and can find playing online fun when it’s not in a round filled with 13 year olds. I do like RPGs (can’t wait for Diablo III), space shooters, RTS and a few other genres including sports games. However, mostly I play casual games on my iPhone these days or other similar format quick games. I really dig the play control possibilities on the phone, with Frenzic being a lot of fun to play recently. I also recently found 99 bricks online, that is a really fun twisted take on Tetris and absolutely worth checking out.

I have a Wii. Yeah, I know, not very hard core… but you know what, a lot of the games on the system are just fun! I just picked up the WiiWare title “World of Goo“. Pure awesomeness. Have you tried it out? If you don’t have a Wii, you can get it on your Mac, PC and I think even Linux… too cool.

Anyway, I have designed and built a few games over the years. Mostly Flash games, and little things like that, but I do appreciate fine game design. It is partially for this reason that World of Goo and I connected. There is just so much attention to detail in this game that it’s tough to overlook. The are, animation, sound, physics, everything. Amazing!

I was really happy to come across this video today about the same thing. This clip is a thorough dissection of the design and thought that went into the World of Goo. Watch and then be prepared to lose a few hours playing this addictive little puzzler.

Design Tour – World of Goo from David Rosen on Vimeo.

Seriously, just too much fun!

The House of Move turns three years old!

Three years ago today I gave birth to a beautiful baby blog. This year in particular has seen a lot of ups (quality of postings) and downs (quality of readership…I kid.) This tiny little blog has come a long way in such a short amount of time. Lets take a look back at the year that was:

It all started with…spam. Late December of ‘07, I was hit with a giant bomb of comment spam that effectively shut the site down. The times were grim. The “Under Maintenance” page was up for weeks. But suddenly, I got on the front page of Gizmodo and everything changed! Suddenly my site was getting new hits and I was re-invigorated to build something bigger and better than what had been for the last two years. I decided it was time for a change.

In March I unvealed the new look, and a new name: The House of Move. I had a new focus and a renewed dedication to the art of animation. This would prove to be the catalyst for my doing something I had been promising for years. I started working on my own animated short. Thus, I began my trepidatious trek into the unknown.

What will next year bring for the blog? The first half will be exciting for sure as the production of Annabelle’s Bistro starts winding up. Only time will tell if I have survived the film and am still alive to tell the tale on the 4th birthday of The House of Move. My thanks goes out to everyone who has supported me over the years and to everyone who has given me the inspiration needed to keep this little blog alive!

The new version of Doctum has been completely re-architected, using Adobe’s Flex and ActionScript 3 technologies. This advance increases Doctum’s flexibility for developing custom eLearning applications while maintaining the usability and intuitiveness of previous versions. In addition to the architecture change, the newest version of Doctum has several new features including:

Selectable course “Layouts” (for menus and navigation) Selectable course “Skins” (user interface appearance) Support for H.264 Video (including High Definition video) Multiple file uploads

The new version will be made widely available early 2009. We look forward to bringing to market a strong application that helps our clients build cost-effective learning in a rapid, collaborative environment.

Huge gallery of concept art!

The awesome LEGO guys over at Classic-Space.com have amassed a giant collection of Sci-fi themed concept art on flickr.

Check em out! Very inspirational!