Yesterday the SAP Community Network launched their new concept for the use of a wiki environment (disclaimer – I launched it) and it’s been met so far with mixed feedback. Now I was the primary driver behind the concept and it was something we spent almost two full years talking about and discussing (debating or arguing might be better words) and yet we still don’t know if it’s the right move or not. I launched the “official” announcement yesterday and I followed up with something a bit more personal today, I decided to take that and post it here as well because I truly do want as much feedback as possible from both inside our environment and from outside. I created a short video with my thoughts and added some text…
There you have it a short 13 minute video of me describing the past two years or so working on this project. Thinking back to when Scott Jones and I discussed/debated and worked through the concept (to put it on paper) while I drove him from Walldorf to the Frankfurt Airport and how we continued inside the airport as well. To discussions with SAP Mentors, Top Contributors and others and how they challenged the foundation of the idea and how we evolved it or at least different aspects of it over the course of the pilot and prototype stages.
The project itself was easy to implement the challenge of course was the theory behind it, it was one of the most interesting and challenging projects I’ve worked on because there is no clear defined answer to this topic, it’s a matter of use and how people view it. Yesterday I got one piece of feedback via Twitter which was expected but it does force one to “rethink” – is this approach right?
“Honestly, it does not seem like a wiki to me. Too much control is not collaboration. Not bottom up, organic, community oriented…”
I received a phone call,
“Thank you, we were getting tired of having to move content out of our space to other locations where it was a better fit!”
and
“Does this mean I won’t have to worry about someone erasing the pages and replacing it with a question anymore that should go in the forums?”
an IM came in,
“but I was working with a whole new group of people to fill out a new wiki space, now what?”
For that one I had a quick response, and that was – ping me who they are and we’ll add them! This concept is not meant to keep people out it’s meant to highlight and focus on quality content and those dedicated to creating it!
All in all we are going to be watching how this progresses over the course of the next few weeks and see if we need to either fine tune, leave alone or roll back. Keep that feedback coming please!!!
(via My personal thoughts on the expert wiki )
