An interesting perspective on wiki use

17 Apr

Posted by Scott as learning, presentations, social media, wiki

After five months of trying (long story there), I finally managed to get to a session of Toronto Wiki Tuesdays. While I missed what sounded like a few interesting sessions in the past, the one I went to earlier this week was well worth sacrificing a few hours of my evening to attend.

This time around, the presenter was Keith Robinson, supervising editor at TV Ontario (TVO, the province’s public educational broadcaster). Robinson works on a daily public affairs show called The Agenda, and earlier this year the folks behind the show decided to do something a bit different: AgendaCamp.

Based on the BarCamp concept, AgendaCamp was designed to get out into five communities throughout Ontario to discuss various economic conerns with people in a free, unstructured, yet constructive way. To co-ordinate the sessions in each of the five cities, Robinson and his team decided to use a wiki.

They chose Deki because it offered a combination of ease of use, security, stability, scalability, and the ability to include content like video and blogs on the wiki itself.

More than just a wiki

What was interesting is that TVO didn’t rely just on the wiki to get the AgendaCamp participants involved. While people did record the proceedings on the wiki using laptops provided by TVO, other aspects of social media came into play. Participants shot video (which was later uploaded to YouTube) with flip cams, ideas and opinions were blogged on the wiki, and there were even Twitter feeds.

For many of the participants, this was the first time that they’d been exposed to or immersed in social media. Many were reluctant at first, but they quickly embraced it. As did the TVO production team. Robinson noted that as AgendaCamp progressed, the team found that they were using the wiki more and more for … well, for just about everything.

More community than technology

As one of Robinson’s colleagues (who was in attendance) said, they described things like the wiki and Twitter not as technology, but as tools for social amplification. People in the communities in which AgendaCamp visited could use those tools to get their thoughts and concerns to a wider audience — whether in those communities, or beyond.

The spirit of AgendaCamp was definitely one of community, online and off. AgendaCamp was about connections as much as ideas and opinions. Robinson pointed out that participants with widely differing viewpoints were able to interact — something that they probably wouldn’t normally do.

The problem of sustaining a community

The TVO team found, though, that the use of the wiki and the other social media tools dropped off after AgendaCamp finished. They definitely ran into the problem that many people trying to build online communities (both online and off) come up against: keeping the community engaged and active.

Robinson admitted that he’s still grappling with that problem, and how to widen the spread of the wiki at work. (I recommended that he check out Wikipatterns and the upcoming The Art of Community for some pointers.)

The audience

The session had a good turnout, too. According to Martin Cleaver, who organizes the event, Wiki Tuesdays started out with a handful of attendees. Tuesday’s session pulled in around 40 people.

To quote musician Robert Fripp: The perception of the audience is the interesting part. As a group, this audience was very interested in the subject matter, and asked a lot of intelligent questions.

It was also interesting to chat with various people both before and after Keith Robinson’s talk. We didn’t just discuss wikis, either — talk ranged from writing to technology to Linux to bad managers, and more.

Overall, it was a good learning opportunity (and if you spotted the TVO/OECA tie-in there, you’re as old as me or older!). It was also a gret excuse to get out and have a pint on a school night!