Mediawiki

Union & Government Birds of a Feather

Submitted by mgifford on

Government Birds of a Feather gathering at DrupalConOne of the things is common in technology conferences these days is side gatherings that are informally called to discuss certain issues.  They are generally referred to as Birds of a Feather Gathering.  Today I participated in two sessions (discussing nonprofits & CiviCRM) and initiated two (focusing on governments & unions).  All were quite interesting and a good opportunity to talk with people passionate about a sector they are involved in.

In both sessions there were nearly 15 people involved.  Considering the multiple presentations and discussion sessions that were available at that time I was very happy to see this type of turnout.  Both sessions there were active discussions that could have gone on for much longer.

So in the government talk it was impressive to hear about all of the new projects and initiatives that were going on in government. Certainly with Obama there is a new drive towards open source, their Rebuilding America site is a good example of that. One consultant reported that just earier in the day two .gov websites had been thrown her way.  Others discussed the adoption of Alfresco for file management and integration issues with Drupal as a great solution for organizations.  MediaWiki was also brought up as a very popular PHP/MySQL tool that is being actively used by the diplomatic community, the intelligence community & even the State department.

What People Aren't Saying about NRCan Wiki and GCpedia

Submitted by mgifford on

GCpedia Image - I Want You for GCPEDIAI've been watching government slowly getting onto the Wiki bandwagon over the last several months.  It's been exciting to hear about it evolve in NRCan's internal wiki and most recently really take off with GCpedia (internal wiki).  Both sites have gotten a great deal of well deserved attention within the government and have won awards for their innovation. 

Wikipedia has clearly demonstrated that a community of dedicated users can produce high quality, timely documentation about a wide range of issues that concern them. Wikipedia is being used by everyone as a resource these days, and Wikipedia is based on an open source PHP/MySQL application called MediaWiki.  MediaWiki is used by a wide range of companies like Novell, Intel, Pfizer, Siemens AG, and a great many more.

Working the Wiki

Submitted by mgifford on

I've been listening to some very interesting podcasts lately on Open Source Conversations, the best have been focused on the concept of the wiki. The most inspiring have been Mitchell Kapor's Wikipedia and Knowledge Communities and the panel discussion with Josh Bancroft, Ned Gulley and a few others, available in the podcast's archive, Wikis in Enterprises - Wikimania 2006.

It's been a week or so since I listened to Mitchell's talk. Couple things that struck me from this was the fact that despite the fact that Wikipedia is having a huge impact on how we work, and how we will do so in the future, it has only two staff people - everyone else is a volunteer (including the system administrators). Was also encouraging to hear that it is running using the PHP application MediaWiki and MySQL - it has certainly scaled well! It was also great to learn more about Wikipedia, it's history, struggles in the community and where Mitchell things it is going to be going in the future. It is interesting to think how this type of participatory documentation/communication could have impacts on our society. Being able to provide a comprehensive and growing encyclopedia within the One Laptop Per Child Project is a relatively simple, yet powerful outcome.

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