Using A Wiki, Or Embracing It?

Cormac insisted that we use a wiki in our business. So I said yes. Well we are meant to know about these things, so we should play a bit. And he was insistent – it seemed to be important to him, and if we were going to disagree about something, this was too small. But then I found he wanted me to use it properly. I was using it. I’d develop ideas for something in Word upload the file, and link to it from a wiki page – I’d even provide some context in the wiki page. But he wanted me to write in the wiki page not in Word. Image by Andrew*

Me: Word gives more formatting capability.

Cormac: How much formatting do you need to develop a few ideas.

Me: I am used to using Word.

Cormac: But If you want me to help develop the document I have to download it, amend it and upload it. Seems a bit of wasted effort and time-consuming. Also we'd more than likely run into version issues.

I won’t elaborate all of my excuses and his counters. I ended up doing the wiki thing. But that was not the end.

Cormac: We should create a wiki for our client ASTI.

Me: OK.

Cormac: We should encourage them to use it.

Me: Yep.

Cormac: We should put all of our stuff relating to ASTI in there.

Me: Yeah.....Hold on. What was that!

Cormac: Well, for instance, as we are developing the next workshop we should develop it in there, so they can see where we have got to.

Me: But it will be messy.

Cormac: To a point, yes.

Me: They’ll see our stumbles and when we go down dead ends.

Cormac: Yes.

Me: It’s unprofessional.

Cormac: Maybe by the old way of doing things, but not by the new way. It's taking transparency to a new level. We say that people and organisations have to get use to operating more transparently. We should prove that we know what that means.

That moral argument always gets me.

Eat your own dog food. 

Practice what you preach.

Put your money where your mouth is.

And use a wiki with your client?