Does anyone here have a wiki in their office? If so, I'd love to hear about how big your firm is and how its been successful or perhaps not. I'm trying to convince the management at my firm to try it out, I think it would solve some issues of poor communication between people who do disparate things in the office.
For example, if I need to print to the color printer I have to go talk to the 'graphics' guy to show me all the settings I need to take into consideration. Or maybe I'm meeting with a contractor for the first time that our firm has dealt with in the past, I might have to ask 4 different people before I figure out who has actually worked with him/her and the best way to get on the contractor's good side. It would also help with the loss of information that a firm experiences whenever they have an employee move on. For example, if I left this firm today I would be taking with me a ton of knowledge on how to create Revit families which they've paid me to learn.
There's quite a few other good uses for a Wiki, is anyone using them?
aside from an office manual and a project management manual?
i setup one at an office in 1997 (pre-wiki), simple HTML, but it had all of the basic info on printing/plotting/CAD standards plus some nifty things like a shared calendar and links to architectural web resources, and list of all software (and the order they had to be installed - this was a mac office in the late 90's) including passwords/settings for new machine setup.
i used it all the time, mostly to refer others back to it so they'd stop bugging me.
Keeping a wiki is time consuming. Just like keeping a library of CAD details or Revit families is time consuming as well but our firm does both of those things and wouldn't dream of not doing so. Why not manage information the same way?
i worked for a while in an office that was ISO 9001 certified. it was a large corporate office, quite bureaucratic, but things did run smoothly. there was always a mad rush to get the office in shape before the auditor came in. i think for most offices though an office wiki is probably a reasonable compromise.
we have a wiki in our office - right now we are just using it for sustainability research/topics/resources. its working out ok...although i think only around 20% of the office bothers to use it (mostly b/c of age-techonology gap issues..) even though there is a link from everyone's desktop. but we have amassed a decent amount of info (started around 6 months ago?) and those who were interested learned to edit it very quickly.
Another try at bumping this thread. I am still trying to convince the firm I work at (of ~50 people) to consider more closely using an internal wiki. Would love to hear of a successful implementation by a firm of roughly the same size. Or is it wishful thinking?
An internal wiki, like all wikis, works best where there is little control and lots of participants, not usually the best way of maintaining standards. Its reliance on consensus processes is usually counter to offices with hierarchical structures. We use a wiki in our office but only the under 35's get it, everyone else still wants it printed out and in a binder. Those of us who use it are more up to date and it is really effective at establishing, sharing and modifying best practices. We don't get much out of it office wide. You need a different company structure to really benefit from it. I am guessing that your firm can't afford to lose control of that kind of information and that they would want to institute someone to "manage" the wiki, at which point it becomes just another bulletin board, not benefiting from the knowledge of the whole office.
j
I use one but we don't call it a wiki. The terminology might confuse the non-web 2.0 crowds. Just a company intranet that all staff can edit/add to. It does require much more IT staff hours to manage but saves desk space for the employee handbook, etc.
large firm of about 1000 and we have a wiki... its used mostly for various pieces of information on programs that we use such as CAD, microstation, revit, etc etc... there is also a good bit of information on production standards and such so that our documents look very similar no matter if it was put together in dubai or in miami a C05 partition is a C05 partition...
i think the biggest downfall of the wiki is that no one has a really good feel about what kind of information is on there and what kind of information should be on there... also many pieces of information can be found in other locations or simply by asking someone...
also no matter how good a wiki is it is never going to be able to exhibit information in the off the cuff way that talking to someone with the knowledge in their brain can...
there are plenty of people in my office with specific skills or knowledge and i'd much rather ask them in person about a specific subject as it relates to my situation instead of search a wiki for a general discussion of the subject... call me old school
I understand what you're saying Architorture, but the problem is what happens to the information that one person has stored in their head if they were to leave the firm. Its as much about retaining knowledge as it is about disseminating it.
Okay, a database is probably not going to be as robust as what is stored in the head of someone who has 30 years of experience on that topic, at least not at first. What it does give you is a place to jump off from: learning the basics about a topic, other related topics, and where to look for more information / who to ask.
we are working on implementing a wiki & have the software set up, but are struggling with getting people to actually use it. it's an awesome idea, if you can get people to use it. our theory is "put any type of info on that you want". FWIW, we are using dekiwiki software (freeware) and it seems to work well.
KTA hosts a two wiki databases that capture research within the office. There is an internal research wiki for material investigations, software tutorials, detail investigations, etc. We also host an external wiki for our RED (research and environmental design) agenda reports for various projects. The RED agenda is a formalized process for predesign research that becomes the basis of design strategies. This document is also a collaborative tool for working with our consultants
I got the green light to create a wiki on our intranet. The conditions were that it had to be 1)free/open source and 2)the server was to be an existing un-used and phased out desktop. No problem! After a quick survey at WikiMatrix to get an idea of the merits of various softwares I chose DokuWiki - it is free and stores data in plain text files (not a database) and is therefore quite lightweight. Runs on IIS (Microsoft's web server software that is bundled with XP) using PHP and is not much of a pain to set up and seems to have an active development community.
I skinned it to look like wikipedia to help users feel more comfortable with the interface.
I've been working on it for 3 days now (24 non-billable hours) and have the skeleton fully laid out, now I just have to sell it to the employees and get some people excited about it and creating content. I showed it to the graphics guy this afternoon and in less than 30 minutes he already had a page going about the best configuration for printing large color plots and even uploaded and included some screenshots of the process (its apparently something that people continually ask him about).
Office Wiki
Does anyone here have a wiki in their office? If so, I'd love to hear about how big your firm is and how its been successful or perhaps not. I'm trying to convince the management at my firm to try it out, I think it would solve some issues of poor communication between people who do disparate things in the office.
For example, if I need to print to the color printer I have to go talk to the 'graphics' guy to show me all the settings I need to take into consideration. Or maybe I'm meeting with a contractor for the first time that our firm has dealt with in the past, I might have to ask 4 different people before I figure out who has actually worked with him/her and the best way to get on the contractor's good side. It would also help with the loss of information that a firm experiences whenever they have an employee move on. For example, if I left this firm today I would be taking with me a ton of knowledge on how to create Revit families which they've paid me to learn.
There's quite a few other good uses for a Wiki, is anyone using them?
aside from an office manual and a project management manual?
i setup one at an office in 1997 (pre-wiki), simple HTML, but it had all of the basic info on printing/plotting/CAD standards plus some nifty things like a shared calendar and links to architectural web resources, and list of all software (and the order they had to be installed - this was a mac office in the late 90's) including passwords/settings for new machine setup.
i used it all the time, mostly to refer others back to it so they'd stop bugging me.
bump ... to go along with the other thread dealing with blogs
Please forgive me for a bumping an old thread, but wanted to see if anyone can add something to this discussion.
What is a Wiki? Seriously.
If you office is ISO 9001 certified then most of your questions should be answered ( as El Jeffe said; it can be found in the manuals).
Keeping a wiki updated sounds time consuming to me...
ISO 9001.. yuck.
did someone say....ah, nevermind.
keeping your office ISO 9001 certified is time consuming;)
Keeping a wiki is time consuming. Just like keeping a library of CAD details or Revit families is time consuming as well but our firm does both of those things and wouldn't dream of not doing so. Why not manage information the same way?
living is time consuming.
some people think ISO is the way forward.....
I didn't know offices could be ISO 9001 certified I'd only heard of it in relation to manufacturing processes.
i worked for a while in an office that was ISO 9001 certified. it was a large corporate office, quite bureaucratic, but things did run smoothly. there was always a mad rush to get the office in shape before the auditor came in. i think for most offices though an office wiki is probably a reasonable compromise.
we have a wiki in our office - right now we are just using it for sustainability research/topics/resources. its working out ok...although i think only around 20% of the office bothers to use it (mostly b/c of age-techonology gap issues..) even though there is a link from everyone's desktop. but we have amassed a decent amount of info (started around 6 months ago?) and those who were interested learned to edit it very quickly.
What is ISO 9001 certified?
Wow - this seems even more regimented than even a person like me could handle. Cottonmouth is setting in...
Another try at bumping this thread. I am still trying to convince the firm I work at (of ~50 people) to consider more closely using an internal wiki. Would love to hear of a successful implementation by a firm of roughly the same size. Or is it wishful thinking?
An internal wiki, like all wikis, works best where there is little control and lots of participants, not usually the best way of maintaining standards. Its reliance on consensus processes is usually counter to offices with hierarchical structures. We use a wiki in our office but only the under 35's get it, everyone else still wants it printed out and in a binder. Those of us who use it are more up to date and it is really effective at establishing, sharing and modifying best practices. We don't get much out of it office wide. You need a different company structure to really benefit from it. I am guessing that your firm can't afford to lose control of that kind of information and that they would want to institute someone to "manage" the wiki, at which point it becomes just another bulletin board, not benefiting from the knowledge of the whole office.
j
I use one but we don't call it a wiki. The terminology might confuse the non-web 2.0 crowds. Just a company intranet that all staff can edit/add to. It does require much more IT staff hours to manage but saves desk space for the employee handbook, etc.
large firm of about 1000 and we have a wiki... its used mostly for various pieces of information on programs that we use such as CAD, microstation, revit, etc etc... there is also a good bit of information on production standards and such so that our documents look very similar no matter if it was put together in dubai or in miami a C05 partition is a C05 partition...
i think the biggest downfall of the wiki is that no one has a really good feel about what kind of information is on there and what kind of information should be on there... also many pieces of information can be found in other locations or simply by asking someone...
also no matter how good a wiki is it is never going to be able to exhibit information in the off the cuff way that talking to someone with the knowledge in their brain can...
there are plenty of people in my office with specific skills or knowledge and i'd much rather ask them in person about a specific subject as it relates to my situation instead of search a wiki for a general discussion of the subject... call me old school
I understand what you're saying Architorture, but the problem is what happens to the information that one person has stored in their head if they were to leave the firm. Its as much about retaining knowledge as it is about disseminating it.
Okay, a database is probably not going to be as robust as what is stored in the head of someone who has 30 years of experience on that topic, at least not at first. What it does give you is a place to jump off from: learning the basics about a topic, other related topics, and where to look for more information / who to ask.
we are working on implementing a wiki & have the software set up, but are struggling with getting people to actually use it. it's an awesome idea, if you can get people to use it. our theory is "put any type of info on that you want". FWIW, we are using dekiwiki software (freeware) and it seems to work well.
KTA hosts a two wiki databases that capture research within the office. There is an internal research wiki for material investigations, software tutorials, detail investigations, etc. We also host an external wiki for our RED (research and environmental design) agenda reports for various projects. The RED agenda is a formalized process for predesign research that becomes the basis of design strategies. This document is also a collaborative tool for working with our consultants
I got the green light to create a wiki on our intranet. The conditions were that it had to be 1)free/open source and 2)the server was to be an existing un-used and phased out desktop. No problem! After a quick survey at WikiMatrix to get an idea of the merits of various softwares I chose DokuWiki - it is free and stores data in plain text files (not a database) and is therefore quite lightweight. Runs on IIS (Microsoft's web server software that is bundled with XP) using PHP and is not much of a pain to set up and seems to have an active development community.
I skinned it to look like wikipedia to help users feel more comfortable with the interface.
I've been working on it for 3 days now (24 non-billable hours) and have the skeleton fully laid out, now I just have to sell it to the employees and get some people excited about it and creating content. I showed it to the graphics guy this afternoon and in less than 30 minutes he already had a page going about the best configuration for printing large color plots and even uploaded and included some screenshots of the process (its apparently something that people continually ask him about).
i think we are making the jump to a program called confluence to try to gather all the various information storage points
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