By Martin Cleaver MSc MBA, Blended Perspectives

The nice thing about the WikiSym community is that we, between us, have seen far more variants on the technology than can be quickly ascertained from short summaries.

With such a dizzying array of wiki technologies out there, it can be difficult for companies to pick one. Many WikiSym attendees have gained extensive experience about how to weight the factors relevant for a particular corporations. So, organizations wishing to build on their knowledge (or get a grounding on wikis) will find attending WikiSym a useful starting point to pick a platform, as you hear from real users with real stories. Come and ask us the right questions and you will save yourselves time and money!

There are a multitude of open source wikis, as well as plenty of commercial ones too. Whereas some such platforms just “contain a wiki” (i.e. there is a wiki module, but there are many parts to the software that are not in the wiki), others are so “wiki-centric” that not only content is stored in the wiki but so too are the settings, security permissions etc. Which factors are right for you? Do you know how you would choose?

In the coming weeks I will be putting together the plan for Wiki Platform Demos. One of my goals is to provide a venue for corporations to quickly get around Wiki vendors. There decision makers can ask the tough questions.

• If you are a wiki vendor, open source technology team or have a technology (e.g. translation) that complements wiki use, do contact me to arrange your slot in the proceedings.
• If you are a corporate I want to know which particular topics you think must be included

WikiSym is a tremendous venue for specialist practitioners, internal consultants and wiki vendors to meet the general public. I look forward to experiencing this year’s buzz, this time in the beautiful city of Porto.

I can be contacted by email (demosandposters at wikisym dot org) or by phone (+1 416 786 6752 (GMT-5))

Martin.