Join me in Brighton, UK, 3-4 September for Wiki Workshops

I’ll be in Europe in early September for WikiSym 2008 (Porto, Portugal - 8-10 September), but before I get to Porto I’ll be stopping in the UK to give a workshop in Brighton.

Evening Gathering - 3rd September

On 3rd September from 7-9PM, the Whuffie Club is holding an evening gathering at The Werks (Map). I’ll conduct a short session on wiki use in organizations, answer questions, and then we’ll have a mixer afterward. Sign up for 3rd September

Workshop - 4th September

On 4th September at 9:30AM, I’ll be conducting a half-day workshop at The Werks on Effective Project Management Using a Wiki. If you’ve been thinking about using a wiki, are just getting started with one, or want to maximize existing wiki use, this is an excellent opportunity for you and your team to learn how a wiki can help you manage projects.

Teams can use a wiki to organize and work on critical documents and project plans. It lets people work more efficiently between face to face meetings and becomes a magnet for all the information relevant to a project. This workshop will show you how to:

• Organize your project on a wiki
• Help your team make the change from trading emails and attachments to gathering, building, and editing information on the wiki
• Manage everything related to the project, including background research, notes, URLs, timesheets, meetings agendas & minutes, action items, and finished documents, presentations, and files

Sponsors:

It’s all about bringing together those with an interest in social media to share, discover, work and play together.   We’ll be hosting a variety of events in and around Brighton - more news coming soon.

We want to make (local) Whuffie like never before. Exploring all things social on and offline. Encouraging everyone to be part of the whuffie making network. We want to do creative and fun things, initially our focus will be on events and hope you will join us.

Contact Rosie Sherry of Schux and Emma Wallace of social8 for more details or visit whuffieclub.com for latest news and events.

• Organisation: US Government Intelligence Communities
• Source: Article from CIA Website
  
• Technologies: wiki, blogs, other web2.0 tools

• Organisation: US Government Transportation Department
• Source: Article from Federal Times
• Technologies: blogs, wiki, virtual classrooms

The Internet and new social-networking technologies are allowing companies and their customers to interact with unprecedented levels of richness. Some leading organizations are using this opportunity to draw customers into the heart of the product-development process.

You will need to register with McKinsey (free service) to read the full article.

Sponsored by Channel 4, the BBC, the Technology Strategy Board and the Northwest Regional Development Agency and held in at the Museum of Science and Industry in Manchester today, the event aims to bring together attendees in an environment that supports cross-fertilization of ideas, knowledge sharing and innovation. An opportunity for independents and large investors to connect over great ideas.

I picked up on the conference via micro-blogging service Twitter and visited the website to check out the live webcast - powered by Knura. The quality of the webcast was initially superb: clear, timely and well filmed.  With the exception of a couple of microphone-sharing hitches and a few minor disruptions to the feed, it was a brilliant delivery format.  The long delays in the video and sound delivery after lunch were frustrating and lost a lot of people, which was a shame.  The service was also supported by a live chat panel which was being streamed to the conference and was projected on the wall next to the presenters.

This recognition and inclusion of the *backchannel* is not a new phenomena but is still relatively new to most conference formats.  It’s  a great thing for:

1. Bringing the audience closer to the topics of discussion; a stronger feeling of involvement and participation results - something often missing and desperately wanted (see the comments regarding the backchannel at the NESTA Innovation Edge earlier this year).
2. Adding a further dimension to the conversation - those on chat tend to add to the content, providing links to relevant sites, adding their views on the subject matter, making connections about the content that otherwise wouldn’t be published or shared until after the event.

Overall - let’s have more of this, especially from the non-digital, non-web2.0 events companies.  It’s a winner. My carbon footprint was *ZER0*, I did not travel from the South East coast to Manchester to attend. It cost me nothing and I got to attend, experience, participate and learn from a great conference. You can watch b.TWEEN08 on their YouTube channel.

So much similarity and thankfully based on good old common sense - raises the question:

How close are we to creating and agreeing on some *best-practice* guidelines?

1. UK Civil Service Guidelines - published June 2008
2. IBM Social Computing Guidelines
3. Sun Guidelines on Public Discourse
4. BBC Editorial Guidelines (Personal Use of Social Networking and Other 3rd Party Websites)
5. Cisco’s Internet Posting Policy

Notes

see also: Blogging policy examples - Charlene Li, Scout - Guidelines for Blogging and Forums, Corporate Blogging Wiki - Charlene Li