10 Best Reasons To Use A Wiki

This video on YouTube provides “a look at 10 reasons how a wiki can connect teams within companies, helping them get more done, together.” (Description from YouTube)

Get the best people on the right tasks and produce better overall results by letting everyone contribute.

Break down information silos between teams, departments, and individuals – it’s crowd-sourcing for your organization.

#2 Anyone Can Contribute

Anyone can put content online, quickly and securely – just click ‘Edit’ and start typing.

A rich content editor does the work for you with Autocomplete, Autoformatting, Autoconvert, and shortcuts for everything.

#3 Connect People and Content

Bringing the right people into the work and discussions taking place in Confluence is easy.

Share content in seconds and @mention teammates in any page, blog post, or comment.

#4 Capture Knowledge, Forever

Capture the tacit knowledge of your co-workers, often trapped in email, in Confluence where it’s never lost.

Instant and familiar, engage everyone and encourage collaboration with Quick Comments and Likes.

#5 Discover What’s Popular

Confluence makes sure you won’t miss another important conversation again.

With a live ‘Popular’ content stream and weekly email summaries you’ll never lose touch of what’s trending in your company.

#6 Find Content, Fast

Quick Navigation and Search makes sure you find what you’re looking for, fast.

Start typing and watch Confluence suggest pages, blogs, files, and people.

#7 Keep Private Parts, Private

Confluence meets the demands of the enterprise environment by keeping your content safe and secure.

Permissions at the Global, Space, and Page level give you the flexibility to decide exactly who can view and edit content.

#8 Connect to Microsoft

Combine powerful free-form content creation and collaboration with the document management and workflow strengths of SharePoint and Office.

Get up-and-running quickly with out-of-the-box integration with Active Directory for user management and authentication.

#9 Easy to Customize & Brand

Create customized designs and brand Confluence to match your corporate style.

Expand your audience with complete branding, advanced design tools, drag-and-drop layouts, navigation, and drafts.

#10 Extend with Add-ons

Customize Confluence with themes, application connectors, content importers, and more.

Browse the Atlassian Plugin Exchange and find add-ons that extend functionality and connect Confluence to other enterprise tools.

Source: Atlassian Get your own wiki

Piloting Our Collaborations Platform. John Zeus demonstrates the integration of Smartboard, Enterprise Wiki, Distance Learning Strategy via Webinar at a local YMCA.

Notes

Our Collaboration Platform provides an easy and secure, web-based, content creation and management platform designed to be used anywhere, any time. The system empowers contributors to create attractive documents with rich content including images, links, media and more. With Instant publishing out goes the single gatekeeper and in grows a thriving collaborative community. Each workspace has its own designated editor(s) and its own security settings. Fine-grained, flexible permission schemes guarantee that only the right people can view, contribute or publish content. Our Platform allows stakeholders to manage day-to-day operations by enabling users to track, organize and manage their activities, while providing one central location to manage intellectual assets. The solution includes social collaboration tools with wiki’s, blogs and an informational dashboard that displays what team members are working on and contributing to. As a result, team members can easily find relevant content, communicate with experts, look at past or similar projects, and keep on top of any relevant content changes.

The idea is that there can exist a simple, easy-to-navigate and easy-to-participate in, on-line portal that gives a wide variety of audiences (Youth, Administrators, Funders, Partners, Facilitators, etc.) the opportunity to view, share, create or find information related to their particular “level” of interest.

Our platform organizes these disparate groups into logical communities of interest, and provides “snapshot” views of happenings across a host of activities; including Internships, Essential Skills Development, news, events and much more. Users will have the ability to create new content, establish a simple profile, and engage in collaborative discussions or “sharing.”

• For the busy CEO or manager? Our ‘community of practice’ serves as a “collaborative news portal”—giving thumbnails and snapshots of activity across the the organizations spectrum. (a single website to use…to know “what’s going on” without having to become mired in the details)
• For the Administrator or Facilitator? Our ‘network of networks’ is a way to connect and collaborate with other department  locations and personnel—and to share success stories and deeper program information by utilizing links to deeper information housed on the wiki and other sources.
• For Youth and program participants?  With ‘shared leadership’ ‘knowledge production and transfer’  we serve as a sort of social network revolving specifically around the organizations programs, activities and success stories nationwide.  As members we definitely see that we are not alone in our endeavours!

This is my favourite wiki introduction video. I find it works great in learning webinars when coaching an organization on user adoption or fostering communities of practice.
View it to stimulate discussion and make sure to debrief the opportunities of using wikis instead of email.

• Wikis In Plain English – on YouTube