Field Use Of Blogs, Wikis, Etc. And The Importance Of Getting The Context Right
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Dr. Biren Saraiya, MD has a good, detailed post on his experiences with using blogs, wikis, and other technologies over at the SAHRI blog (a non-profit). I love to see both frank positives and negatives about the use of different technologies by real practitioners. Technology companies cannot build products in vacuums, and his comments are great feedback.
What is very important about introducing technologies is getting the context right. Although I love to push technology (since I work for a blog vendor), the management consultant in me actually comes first - that means you have to try to understand a problem first before you can try to solve it. The work structure for SAHRI that that Dr. Saraiya conveyed to me about his organization is key to understanding what will work and what won't for his org:
--- our collaborators will be geographically disconnected
--- our collaborators will have busy (limited time for synchronous collaboration)
--- it will be long term committments (for any given project)
--- most of them will be technologically naive.
Another key to think about here, which is not discussed, is to figure out where to get leverage. It is often very hard to do this in non-profit environments. That said, a systematic shakedown or analysis of which levers create the biggest bang for the buck is worthwhile. Inexpensive communication and collaboration tools like blogs, wikis, and audio conferencing seemed to provide great benefit for very low entry-costs and minimal risk.
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