I, like most nonprofit staffers I imagine, both love my job and always have a mountain of work to get through. So, with that in mind, I am always looking for ways to be as efficient as possible - things that will hopefully increase effectiveness at the same time. As indicated in previous posts, I am a relatively new to the web2.0 world (although, I have been using Facebook since you had to log in at THEfacebook.com), I'm guessing I'm not the only one a little timid to experiment with new tools, so I am compelled to share when I've had a great experience. If I can do it, so can you! Last week, I wrote a post [2]about how useful Delicious[3] is to keep resources organized - I'm still in awe of that one. Now, for the next tool of my affection: wikis[4].
A couple of months ago Laura[5] Quinn, our Executive Director, asked me look into using a wiki to help with version control when having people review our upcoming Field Guide to Software for Nonprofits: Fundraising, Outreach, and Communications. With over 35 sections on different types of software systems, and many people volunteering to review, we knew it could be a versioning nightmare if we were just emailing around Word docs with comments.
I did a little bit of research first, reading Peter Campbell's post[6] on how wikis are becoming more relevant than (gasp!) Word, and Jeremy Wallace's article[7] on using wikis for internal documentation. I then poked around Wikispaces (since the We Are Media wiki [8]is using the platform, it seemed like a good choice) a little before jumping in.
It took basically zero technical skill for me to set up, once I remembered that I needed to copy and paste into notepad from Word before then pasting into the wiki. We created nearly 40 pages in a couple of hours. The most difficult thing was crafting the directions for the reviewers: we wanted them to comment at the bottom of each page instead of directly in the text.
Wikispaces also made it easy to change the privacy settings so that only members could view and comment. This was important to us. Since the Guide will be sold, we can't let everyone access it for free. I could then invite people to be members so that they had access. One thing to note is that our reviewers were pretty tech-savvy, and many had clearly used the tool before.
Once we had everyone's comments, it was easy to revise directly in the wiki. We used Google docs to track who had made a final internal review, being shared between me, Laura, and the writer working on the project, Chris[9]. As of today...the draft is being put into layout as I type!
There honestly weren't really any downsides to using the wiki to help in this review process. I guess the one thing that could have been difficult is that since people can use an alias, it could be hard to track exactly who is making what changes or comments. We got around this by asking that people put their name above their comments.
I feel like there should be more negatives to make this a more balanced post...but I can't think of any. I'm a wiki convert!
I'm curious about other people's use of wikis, especially on a larger scale. This was pretty controlled. Do you have any experience using wikis for large-scale version control or project management? Please post your thoughts and experiences in the comments section.
