Guest: Luis Suarez - IBM
Host: George Faulkner - IBM

George Faulkner - IBM
Welcome to ShortCuts, a weekly online broadcast brought to you by IBM Workplace. We're here to help you get the most of everyday Internet and e mail tools. I'm George Faulkner. This week's question came to us from the ShortCuts team. We've increasingly been using Wikis at work and wanted some tips on how to encourage team members to start using them day-to-day. On the phone with us is ShortCuts knowledge management expert Luis Suarez. With 10 years experience at IBM, Luis specializes in knowledge and collaboration tools. He is also a prolific blogger and maintains three different blogs both inside and outside IBM. Welcome to ShortCuts, Luis. It's great to have you on the show. What can you tell our listeners about helping coworkers adopt to Wikis?

Luis Suarez - IBM
Hi, George. Thanks a lot for the invitation. There are a number of different things that I can think of. The first one is to actually come out with what I call a critical mass of early adopters, that group of people who always want to test out the latest tools, who always want to be ahead of the curve, who always want to lead the pack. The basic idea with those early adopters is they're actually going to pave out the road for the majority of the end users by saying, "Well, if they have been able to do it, I could as well, why not?" That critical mass is actually going to be the main drivers of the activities taking place in the Wikis. In most cases it's important to know that when you're working in a Wiki, you're never alone. You have got a whole bunch of other people who are just rather reading the content or participating and sharing more content.

So, having a Wiki facilitator that actually facilitates how the information flows, how things get together, put together a structure with for instance different Wiki pages, with important links that people should check out when they first visit the Wiki, with a featured page where people have got 'must read' information, those are tasks that Wiki facilitators will be very good at. And in most cases there will always be people within that critical mass pool of early adopters who will be able to jump in and work with it. Another tip that I could give you to encourage people to use Wikis is always give an impression that they're working in a fully supported infrastructure, that it's not something that they're trying out for, you know, one, two, three months and after that they gave up and do something else.

You have to show people that this is a tool that is going to stay there forever so that the contribution is going to remain there as long as they share it for an extended period of time. That gives people a sense of belonging, a sense that a part of that Wiki is based on what they have shared, is theirs, basically. And what happens there obviously is that since you have got a whole bunch of different people come in from different backgrounds collaborating into the Wiki space that will give you a stronger sense of community. You could also help out with online tutorials or a screen cast, so both audio and video showing people how to perform essential tasks like how to add a page, like how to check on the access controller, like how to work with a WYSIWYG editors, for instance; how to work with the RSS feeds that there are, how to navigate through the actual Wiki space. So, quick online tutorials, stuff like say, one, two minutes, performing essential tasks so that when people go into the Wiki they can click on a link and say, well, watch me do this.

George Faulkner - IBM
See, I think its common sense, Luis, in person-to-person contact. You know, when you walk into a party or, you know, you're in a situation face-to-face, it's sort of innate. I do think that for many there still is a little bit of a stop-gap when they join communities online and that, you know, any fear or apprehension that people have, just throw it out the window, dive in, get involved, and it can be really enlightening.

Luis Suarez - IBM
That's right. And I think that that kind of ties in with what I mentioned earlier on, which is basically trusting the people that you work with, trusting the communities that you belong to. If you trust them, if you give yourself the chance to trust them, wikis will become second nature for you to collaborate with them. That's a very strong sense of belonging to that space, and the main key major fundamental factor to make it work is trusting others, trusting the knowledge workers that they're going to do the right thing.

George Faulkner - IBM
That's terrific. Great information, Luis. Thank you so much for joining today. For a transcript of today's show, visit us on the Web at ibm.com/shortcuts. There you'll find more information on this week's topic. And again, if you've got a question for our experts, write us at cuts@us.ibm.com. From all of us at ShortCuts, thank you for listening.