A few weeks ago, I attended the 6th Annual Knowledge Management Conference sponsored by the e-Gov Institute in Washington DC. GroveSite was invited to speak about wikis as part of a session about new tools for collaboration and we were excited to be included.
My presentation focused on the differences between Wikis, Content Management Systems and Collaboration Software. We get calls from many people who want to jump on the wiki bandwagon because of all the recent publicity. After further discussion we find that many are really looking for collaboration tools not wikis. Collaboration software typically offers more business workflow and interactive features with higher levels of security and customization. Traditional wikis, on the other hand, offer an easy way for many people to contribute web content without any cumbersome approval process. It will be interesting to see how organizations incorporate both types of software into their business processes in the next couple of years.
The conference seemed to have a pretty good turnout and it was great to talk to people who are representing many of the largest government agencies to find out how they are using collaboration tools in their environment.
The takeaway for GroveSite from this conference is that there is definitely a place for wikis in business organizations but the flexibility needs to be tempered with the reality of security requirements.
Koren Elder
VP of Technology
