Speaking at Confluence Community Day

Next week, Oct 29 I am attending the Confluence Community Day 2009 in Frankfurt. The organizers have done interviews with all of the speakers, including me. And because my interview is in german language I wanted to give the english-speaking community a short summary of what I’ve promised to speak about in the track “success factors of implementing wikis in organizations” (yes, some ideas are dear to me, and blogging repeatedly about them is the name of the game – Jörg Kantel is right, this is OK, there are re-re-screenings on TV too).

Well then, the Confluence community day is aimed at people generally interested in wikis, especially people who are looking for better ways to implement them, better ways to support adoption and better ways to make wikis a success. Thus I will start by defining and showing the “playing field” in which we find ourselves in the introduction of wikis, and illustrate the particular relevance and importance of the infrastructure fields in implementation. My goal is that in the end we’ll all have a more comprehensive approach to the implementation process and a better understanding of what is really important.

Dirk also asked me about my expectations about the future of wikis, and the underlying trends. Here’s the gist of what I’ve said:

I expect both a higher market adoption – particularly with SMBs – and more intensive usage of wikis. Case studies and the documented benefits attract both imitators and innovators to wikis […]

Succeeding with a wiki is no given or naturally – it’s adoption must be actively promoted, and it’s a good idea to do this together with specialized consultants (this was a hint, right …).

And on the trends that will affect the use of wikis:

First and foremost, I am watching the wiki space from a broader perspective, i.e. Enterprise 2.0 – in addition to current trends such as Twitter or social networking, wikis are virtually a constant: They are a mature and controlled technology, and its anchorage in the organizational map is understood quite well. Thus we’re able to proceed to work flexibly and creatively with the tools …

It’s the discussing time what is making these kind of meetups so important – needless to say that I also did put on my marketing and community manager hat and invited everyone to the upcoming E20SUMMIT and the WikiCamp at the CeBIT 2010.