Podcast: Embracing Wikis -- Interview with Stewart Mader
Listen here:
Stewart Mader was one of the coolest people I met at Doc Train West 2008. He is a person driven by his enthusiasm for wikis.
In this podcast, Stewart talks about the following:
- Advantages of using a wiki for your technical documentation
- Why lack of advanced styles in wikis isn't a major problem
- The relentless focus on simplicity with wikis
- Choosing the right wiki among dozens of wiki engines
- Pitfalls with using an open source wiki (like Mediawiki) for your company
- Why your content (not your format) is the most important element of any wiki
- Techniques for growing wiki use and adoption in your organization
- Why customizing your wiki to look like a professional website isn't that important
- Managing multiple spaces inside wikis, and integrating with Active Directory
- Why Stewart recommends Atlassian Confluence wikis
- The number one reason why wikis fail
Resources
- Stewart Mader's blog
- Wikipatterns (Stewart's book on wikis)
- The Wiki Matrix
- Atlassian Confluence wikis (enterprise wiki software)
- 21 Days of Wiki Adoption
Stewart's PowerPoint on his Grow Your Wiki session is below.
About Tom Johnson
I'm an API technical writer based in the Seattle area. On this blog, I write about topics related to technical writing and communication — such as software documentation, API documentation, AI, information architecture, content strategy, writing processes, plain language, tech comm careers, and more. Check out my API documentation course if you're looking for more info about documenting APIs. Or see my posts on AI and AI course section for more on the latest in AI and tech comm.
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