That’s from Scott Nesbitt, in his summary of my talk at DocTrain West on Thursday:

It seemed like I was stalking Stewart Mader during the conference. But Mader told me that he was happy to see many of the same faces in all of his sessions. It showed that he had something interesting to say, and that attendees wanted to hear it.

In every presentation I give, I tell a story about how wiki use has helped me do something that’s:

1. Successful - People want to know how to do something well. I want to you see that if I’m successful with something, you can be successful too!
2. Useful - I want to show you exactly how I did it, so you can replicate it as quickly and easily as possible. That makes you successful, and completes the cycle when you pass along the knowledge to someone else so they can be successful too.

Here’s an example. Scott put together a good summary of my talk on using a wiki to: [Read more]

The Grow Your Wiki slideshow is currently being featured on the homepage of SlideShare!

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Here’s what I wrote about the slideshow a couple of days ago when I first posted it. I hope you find it useful - please feel free to embed it on your own website, wiki, or blog. If you want a portable copy, you can download it from the SlideShare page. [Read more]

Campus Technology writer Linda L. Briggs discusses wiki use with Carter Snowden of MIT and Geof Corb of Johns Hopkins University:

MIT, which has been running Confluence for about three years, has several thousand users and a couple hundred classes using Confluence in some way. Academic uses range from urban studies to the Sloan School of Management; from a team developing an electric car to a committee on intellectual property.

Carter Snowden talks about the ease of setting up a wiki, and how MIT automates and streamlines the procedure for creating new wiki spaces and giving users appropriate permissions: [Read more]

Get the answers to these and other questions on wiki adoption and uses by listening to Tom Johnson’s podcast. He interviewed me at DocTrain West last week, and we discussed:

• The relentless focus on simplicity in wikis, and how that makes participation democratic
• How wikis are useful for technical writers
• Why content comes before format when using a wiki (and how that ultimately makes for better format!)
• Techniques and strategies for growing wiki use and adoption
• The number one reason why wiki use fails
• Why you need to make sure internal wiki use is successful before using it in any external-facing way

Duration: 18 min.
Download MP3

Scott Nesbitt says the biggest highlight for him was attending my presentations Grow Your Wiki, and Wiki Use Case: Publishing:

The biggest highlight was speaking with Stewart Mader and attending his presentations. To say Stewart is passionate and enthusiastic about wikis is an understatement in the extreme. It’s difficult to describe the amount of passion he has for this subject. You really have to listen to Stewart speak to understand what I’m talking about.

And wouldn’t you know it? I introduced Aaron to Stewart, and Aaron scored a free copy of WikiPatterns. I had to buy mine … Seriously, though, if you’re interested in wikis then WikiPatterns is a must read.