The International Symposium on Open Collaboration (2005-2022)

Blog

  • Interview: Stewart Nickolas

    Stewart Nickolas, creator of IBM’s QEDWiki, working in the Emerging Technologies group in IBM for the past five years, will be a keynote speaker at WikiSym 2008.

    We interviewed him by e-mail to know more about his involvement with wikis and web-related issues, concretely OpenAjax and application wikis.

    Q: How is the OpenAjax Alliance related to wikis?

    The OpenAjax organization was created a few years ago and is dedicated to the successful adoption of open and interoperable Ajax-based web technologies. Within the Alliance there are several working groups actively addressing key challenges in achieving interoperability across the many Ajax toolkits. Some of the challenges include: How can toolkits coexist on a single page without corrupting the page? How do toolkits communicate with one another on the same page? How are widgets described in a common way so that aggregation canvases such as Wikis, Mashup Makers and traditional IDEs can use the widgets? Through our work with QEDWiki we recognized the importance of hosting content from multiple providers. Each content provider may use different Ajax toolkits to deliver a rich experience within a single page. To address this problem we originally developed a proprietary proof-of-concept technology for QED; however, we felt it was necessary to have open standards to enable and extend the content delivery ecosystem around Wikis, Mashups & content providers.

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  • Wiki This site: The Universal Edit Button Launches Today

    Tim Berners-Lee’s intended the web to be writeable by all. Yet, for decades it’s been stuck in a “read mostly” mode. Everyone web surfs, some add content but very few really get to fundamentally re-express and re-structure web content. We know this. We wiki. Problem is, many don’t.

    It is hoped that the icon will draw contributions to wiki-based sites, by serving as a reminder to how changeable they are.

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  • Registration for WikiSym 2008 is Now Open!

    Registration for WikiSym 2008 is now available through the conference site.
    Due to several events in Porto on the days after and before WikiSym, hotels are likely to be booked very early. Consider booking well in advance! We are now providing pre-booked hotel options for WikiSym till the end of June!

  • Wiki Farm Companies: Which are Your Fastest Growing Communities?

    Martin Cleaver, Blended Perspectives. Toronto, Canada.

    Wiki farm: a website that offers to the public a sectioned-off set of wiki pages

    It’s evident that Wiki Farms, such as PBWiki, Wetpaint, Wikia and WikiSpaces are growing rapidly. Many content producers don’t have the resources or desire to install their own wiki platform behind the firewall or they want to dabble first, so these sites act as great places to experiment while allowing someone else to manage the content.

    Typical users are professors at universities and colleges, who assign their students homework on them, towns, many not for profits and groups of knowledge specialists (such as legal, medical and accounting) who have the need to share effort or align on approach. The result is these sites act as wellpools into which effort is gravitated and content collects around seeds of common interest.

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  • Thanks for all the WikiSym Poster Submissions. Deadline extension: June 30th

    Martin Cleaver Toronto, Canada

    Well, the deadline for posters has just passed, and for sure we have some interesting titles!

    I won’t tell you who submitted what because until we’ve read them and made commitments I can’t promise they will materialize. But, I will go so far as to whet your appetite!

    • Javascript-standalone, extensions for Firefox, new visuals to represent changes, Printability, Collaborative Translation, Citation extensions
    • Wiki intranets, Open Assessment, Maturity Models, Innovation Processes, Social Semantics, Analyzing large wikis
    • Specifics for the Heath Sector

    Notable, was that in addition to research contributed by our university crowd, are the companies submitting works to WikiSym Demos and Posters. These include: BT Group, Bosch, Microsoft, Vodaphone, and Sun – their offerings are certainly testament that cutting-edge firms are breaking ground with wikis.

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  • Interview: George Landow

    George Landow, Professor of Art and History at Brown University, will be one of the two keynote speakers at WikiSym 2008.

    George Landow

    We interviewed him by e-mail to get more information on how he became involved with wikis and web-related issues, as well as information on his point of view on wikis and society nowadays.

    Q: How did an English and History of Art Professor get involved with web and wikis?

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  • Business Intelligence? Competitive Intelligence? WikiSym is Where You Need to Be.

    Martin Cleaver MSc MBA. Blended Perspectives, Toronto.

    To improve business performance and to out-compete, an organization needs not only advantageous information but also to act upon it. Organizations that depend on a few key staff to gather information to help inform strategists who then “tell” the “workers” what to do will be at a disadvantage compared to those that “crowd source” to collect and consolidate ideas, observations and plans from hundreds of people who will have to execute that strategy.

    Few companies have a shortage of information, for we all have Google. The issue is too much, unconsolidated, unactionable information.

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  • Integration Wikis? Application Wikis? Semantic Wikis?

    Martin Cleaver. Blended Perspectives, Toronto Canada

    What makes your wiki technology special? Do you build encyclopedias or applications?

    While wikis are best known as a means to co-create knowledge, our industry is heating up and progress is being made in all sorts of technically interesting areas. If your organization is interested in cutting-edge wiki functionality, you’ll likely want to come to WikiSym.

    Content

    Wikis primary involve humans adding and pushing content around. Knowledge becomes profound when the most universally useful ideas are presented first. Do you have tools that surface content that relate to the roots of knowledge? Perhaps you have or have dreamt of innovations at the editing layer to shuffle content between pages?

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  • Two Weeks Left for Second Submission Deadline!

    After over 50 responses of paper submissions, here is a gentle reminder that the deadline for submitting posters, demos, WikiFest proposals, and DoctoralSpace proposals is still open, and due in about 2 weeks.

    Read more in the wikisym-announce email about the second round of paper submissions.

  • Call to Wiki Vendors: Come and Display Your Wiki Software!

    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!

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