User 360
Emotional barriers
- people who are committed to wikis have a collaborative experience that sells them but a lot of people don't have a magic experience
- wiki is a tool and problem is that when everyone is responsible no one is responsible - if you don't have a human-based accountability structure just putting your name on the list to support an idea doesn't mean things are getting done - tool won't do everything for you
- most software doesn't respond to reality of what people are doing - just shoves things down their throats
- wiki literacy - in your interest to know - illiterate people afraid t ask questions
- idea of collaboration, openness versus traditional silo-based work - true wiki project
Structural barriers
- no way of contacting people if they don't check their namepages
- IRC effective - idea to draft a more comprehensive chat system onto wiki so you could initiate conversation
- facebook discussion area is sometimes/often better
Success strategies
- building relationships right away
Marketer 360
Marketing lapses
- once you get people together it doesn't matter where it happens
- if you are too focused on wiki, you're not focused on people
- when we say wiki we're talking about different things
- figure out what we're evangelizing
- viewing the wiki community from the outside, no awareness that linkages are there - that wikis aren't competing initiatives - being self-aware of the community and being able to point to the community - wiki creole effort to develop a common markup - out of two cultures comes a language that is a mishmash of the two but it is still it's own unique language - wiki ohana, symbol that represents the community a lot of things can happen out of the name badge - branding really important - if you feel like you're part of the wiki community use a name badge to identify yourself - proposal for logo for the community Hawaiian hieroglyphic that represents family - starting point
- what is purpose of wiki - think about why you do it and not just see mechanics
Marketing meta-strategies (i.e. applies to all marketing challenges)
- true evangelism isn't just preaching on the mount, but sitting with people and looking at how they should use the technology - purposeful evangelism that should happen in an context - focused evangelism should be the kind of evangelism where if you want someone to use a wiki you don't start with mechanics but "Tell me what you do all day"
- You don't force people to adopt your stuff, you have to start by adding value to them. Processes to elicit what adds value to people
- unreasonable expectations - need to be patient - can't expect things to be built right away
- long term effort
- focused evangelism - have to get feedback instead of being wedded to certain things
- define your market as something that you can control - find a niche you can go in and dominate and then begin evangelizing
- market and community are same entity when we are talking about online community development
- need be adaptive to where users are coming from - come to users from where they are
Marketing strategies
- wiki more focused on culture than it is on technology
- pinning down what wikis are and what they can be used for
- around the world, there needs to be a set of people working together to get wikis set up in workplaces - need to be cadre of freelance wiki consultants to do the work - build a reputation and make a portal for wiki consultants
- PR - Wikipedia does a lot of press
- blogosphere as example - linking to each other - wikis are better because we can all link to each other but also link to ourselves from each other - self-service advantage - better people - inclusive, sharing and collaborative in nature - licensing should make it easier to share information if you give proper credit
Marketing tactics
process models - templates or processes you go through (WikiPatterns partly about that)
- logo contest proposal - get community involved - submit to the community
- Start a wiki, a neutral guidebook to getting a wiki off the floor
- etiquette - how open is open?
- wikipatterns.com - writing pages on key wiki values - shared vocabulary
- wikiconsulting.com
wiki meetups - wiki Wednesday (SocialText), wiki Tuesday (Toronto), wikipedia meetups (Boston)
- wiki event calendar
- conferences: wiki sym, wikimania, recent changes camp, acm hypertext/wiki track
- wiki speakers list
- shared slide deck
- sister sites - if you have a page of a certain name and other wikis with similar name are listed on the side
- consistency in layout
Example processes
ConsensusPolling - state upfront what document needs to be complete, whether people agree with the document in its current state or not and then your responsibility is to fix it - know when you're done because you've met the criteria
Attendees: DaveCrosby, JackHerrick, AngelaBeesley, ReiniUrban, AndreasGohr, RaymondKing, StephaneThibault, NicoleWillson, ZachCopley, SunirShah, PatrickMichaud, EugeneEricKim et al