Hello! We’re Osmosoft, the open source arm of BT. We’re a small team of techies that love open source software. We mainly work on the TiddlyWiki open source project.

A TiddlyWiki is a single html file which has all the characteristics of a wiki – including all of the content, the functionality (including editing, saving, tagging and searching) and the style sheet. It’s a single file so it’s very portable – you can email it, put it on a web server or share it via a USB stick.

And it’s not just a wiki! It has very powerful plugin capabilities, so it can also be used to build new tools. You have full control over how it looks and behaves. For example, TiddlyWiki is already being used as:

• A personal notebook
• A GTD (“Getting Things Done”) productivity tool
• A collaboration tool
• For building websites
• For rapid prototyping
• …and much more!

The best way to understand it is to use it! We hope you’ll check it out (you can download it below)

The Osmosoftonians

Empty tiddlywiki: www.tiddlywiki.com/empty.html (right-click and save as)

Osmosoft twitter feed: www.twitter.com/osmosoft

Video channel on Vimeo: www.vimeo.com/osmosoft

Our site: http://www.osmosoft.com/

One of the hottest topics at this year’s WikiSym 2008 will be application wikis.

To put it simply, an application wiki allows its users to create… applications. Why is that exciting ? Because it means users can mix both structured and unstructured freely over the same platform. Take product sheets : you might want to have both structured data (name, retail price) and unstructured data (the product description or a sales pitch). In a typical wiki, none of that data would have metadata associated to it.

This means that if you were to write a list of all the pages that are product pages, you would have to identify every one of them and list them manually on one page. Same thing if you were to modify the layout of those pages : you’d have to iterate them one by one to change the intended layout. Pretty frightful when there’s a hundred of them… On the other hand, typical content management systems aren’t perfect either. While they offer a predefined set of templates for content, it is harder to create free-flowing pages and links between those pages. Application wikis bridge the gap between those 2 types of software : they let users add freeform information while at the same time providing the ability to typify it and manage forms from a central location. Forms can be created easily and mixed with typical wiki pages and a query language provides additional power.

Come give a look to the getting started with XWiki tutorial delivered by Guillaume Lerouge (product manager at XWiki, an application wiki provider) or to the application wikis panel (where Stewart Nickolas from IBM & Ludovic Dubost from XWiki will speak) to find out more on the topic !

SAPO was born in 1995 at Universidade de Aveiro
becoming, some years later, Portugal’s leading portal, providing
internet access and web services to millions of users every day.

For years, SAPO is using wikis
internally to organize and share information among it’s teams members.
Wikis are great collaboration tools when integrated in the developing
cycle of a project for documenting purposes. They provide historical
changes, and are a natural repository for information provided by all
team members along the development process.

Some time ago SAPO started using
wikis externally, on services provided to it’s costumers and users.
Examples solutions range from knowledge sharing apps, costumer care
support solutions or to just publicize the portal public APIs
documentation.

Saber is SAPO’s Wikipedia.

The Portuguese version of Wikipedia is mainlly written in Brazilian Portuguese. Saber was based on Wikipedia‘s
contents (respecting the GNU Free Documentation License) with the
purpose of promoting the culture and knowledge from Portugal and
fomenting the writing of articles in Portuguese from Portugal. Other
localized versions were also made available to portuguese speaking
countries like Cabo Verde and Angola.

Some customizations had to be done to integrate the portal users accounts and some Mediawiki extensions had to be created to integrate other content. Scripts periodically merge Wikiipedia‘s content and pictures with Saber updates.

During the project several ideas came about. One of he most interesting
was to make available all geo-referenced articles to the community.
From time to time, all articles are scanned looking for geo-reference
info and made available to the SAPO GIS team, that makes them available through their API. Here’s an example of the POIs found on Saber versus the Wikipedia points that Google Maps reports on the same area.

Another wiki based project developed by SAPO to it’s parent company, Portugal Telecom, was Wikicare.

The main purpose here was to empower all costumers to collaborate with
each other, solving problems and make suggestions about the service,
support or billing issues thus helping Costume Care on it’s own
efforts. This wiki is still limited to costumers only, which are being
very active making contributions, but is expected to be made public in
the near future.

Wikis are a powerful and versatile tool that easily enable users
contributions, collaboration and feedback, which makes them the perfect
solution for this and future projects at SAPO.

Holger Junghanns, SAP AG

In 2007, I was a member of a project team that was responsible for the implementation of a wiki within the Product & Technology Unit (PTU) Customer Relationship Management (CRM) organization of SAP AG. The goal of this project was to promote knowledge transfer among the different teams involved in the development process of SAP’s CRM application.

Within a six month timeframe, our team introduced a wiki as a central point of access for internal knowledge transfer and collaboration within the PTU CRM. Prior to the wiki roll-out, a pilot user group provided continuous feedback on the prototype. Elements used to foster user adoption included the creation of wiki page templates, including a team page template, a meeting minutes template, and a wiki training cheat sheet, among others.

From a technical point of view, our project team followed SAP IT’s recommendation to comply with the standard for wiki technology within SAP. As a consequence, the PTU CRM wiki is now fully integrated into the existing wiki application within the company. This integration provides access to the wiki via the Single Sign-On capability and user support to ensure performance and sustainability of the system.

In terms of introducing the wiki to the organization, our project team conducted personal training sessions in the major CRM locations, namely Walldorf, Bangalore, Palo Alto, and Montreal. Teams that could not participate in person were provided with training sessions via video conferencing. In support, we linked training material, such as the wiki training cheat sheet, within the wiki, allowing colleagues to access it at their convenience.

One year after the roll out, our CRM colleagues actively use the PTU CRM wiki. Principle use cases include managing projects and meeting minutes on the wiki as well as building team workspaces. The PTU CRM Wiki is now the tenth largest internal wiki within SAP, incorporating more than 1,000 pages, 9,000 page versions, and 130 active contributors. Currently there are more than 1,400 live wiki spaces at SAP with more than 10,000 authors working on more than 100,000 pages. Participants of the WikiSym 2008 can get more details on this project in my WikiFest session.

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Holger Junghanns is a business analyst on the Industry Solutions Operations team at SAP AG. He joined the company in April 2007 to write his diploma thesis, “Wiki Technology for Collaborative Knowledge Management in Corporations”. In his current role, he leads a project to implement a wiki in SAP’s Industry Solutions organization. Holger holds a diploma in Business Information Technology and a Bachelor of Science in Network Computing, both from the Freiberg University of Mining and Technology.