Filipinos should redefine the Wiki

After I have discussed the technology of wiki, I think, it's about time to make something out of it. Now, do you want to share information fast and quick? How about letting others edit the site themselves and expanded it at will. Collaboration is the name of the game. Then, try the Hawaiian word for hurry.

Wiki can handle project collaboration as compared to the other Content Management System (CMS). This is the most successful platform ever produced in the opensource collaboration tool. Long time ago we use memo pads, photocopy, fax and now we can use the internet for collaboration.

Technology is changing in fast pace and it is inevitable. The government, corporate entities and educational institution should adapt the technology trends to have an edge in the 21st century. In recent years, we have experience the paperless reporting thru emails. It made sharing and processing documents much easier to manage and distributed. No hasle with leg works, it is cost effective and effecient. More people use it for communication and become a common commodity.

Then forums and blogs had an exponential growth and made a mark in the push technology or instant online publishing. This becomes an online community where instant exchange of information becomes more than just an ordinary text messaging and chat discussion. But forum site could not satisfy me by just relying on the threads of a discussion, you will have to organize it to come up with your expectations.

Today, project management is another game to address for the need of collaboration. How to manage documents or artifacts so it can be accessible to all your project members. It can be easily edited and expanded by anyone. Some serious techie who are always on the go has been expected this for a long time. And now here it is and was already tested for years. And here I am trying to make ways to create something worthwhile.

I am the type of person who always look for an answers. I find ways to make my work fast and easy. That's why, research and development is my game. If its a breakthrough discovery, I'll be happy to implement it in our own system. I am working in a traditional business giant that never realized how technology can solve the efficiency of its manpower. But later, they now starts to realized that technology is here to make their business grow and less manpower to maintain. The open source revolution is really a great help in today's day to day businessand I predict in the near future semantics will be widely accepted.

Wiki is simple to use but tends to be a little hard to grasp. (any logic here?) Peruse me from saying that Wiki is still an alien world to most Filipinos. If you are more of an IT person, may be you have heard of it but never been tried. For a bit of history of wiki, it was invented by Ward Cunningham, of Extreme Programming fame who use Perl scripts to run a website that has pages which contains an Edit This Page button and accessible by anyone. You heard me correct- you and I or simple Juan can log-in to a site and edit your work. Isn't that brilliant?

Small Medium Enterprise (SMEs) to Multinational Corporations are taking advantage of the technology. They use it to create their intranet site, documentations and other editorial project management. The good thing about this tool is it only need an IT developer to integrate the tool to the present IT system of an organization. Once it is implemented, all you have to do is learn the basic wiki codes or tags and your now on your own.

Now, that we know some basic use of wiki, maybe you have understood what i meant. Wiki is a piece of software open to all developers to use and made a derivative works out of it. Does it mean "you and I can also make my own encylopedia?" Yes, you can. But let me tell you that wiki is not tantamount to Wikipedia. It may be the most successful wiki site today, but wiki can be use in other projects.

There's a lot of business model we can conceived out of the wiki platform. All you need is to be creative and think of many possibilities. Personally, there are boundless projects that lingers in my mind because I have already studied how it works. So, to those who are interested, try first to understand the technology and look for its limitations and from there, you can have hints of what particular project you can develop out of it.