The Global Toastmasters Resource

This is an example of a Wiki. (http://toastmasters.wikicities.com) It's a web site, made up of pages. The cool thing is that anybody can edit the pages.

Wikis are great for any kind of content that would benefit from having lots of people contribute to it. Encyclopedias, for example: (go to wikipedia.org and look something). There's even a How To wiki, where people collaborate on How To do almost anything.

There are lots of on-line resources for wikis. I've found one at http://www.jotspot.com (Tip: if you want to make a hyperlink clickable, start it with http:)

There is another site at http://www.xwiki.com

The key is to have the software that generates the pages that are editable. This particular wikicity is running a thing called MediaWiki which is downloadable for free, gratis and for nothing. I've got it running on my Mac. It's fabulous software (as you can see for yourself).

Contents 1 What wikis are used for 1.1 Establish a company Intranet 1.2 Genealogy 1.3 Product documentation 1.4 Manage Meetings 1.5 Recruiting 1.6 To Do List / Task Management 1.7 Track Competition 1.8 Share Interesting Articles (which is what this wikicity is about) 2 What wikis are not that good for 2.1 "Official" sites 2.2 E-Commerce

[edit] What wikis are used for

For a fuller list, go to http://www.jotspot.com. I got some of this stuff from there. The more I see of wikis, the more excited I get by them and their possibilities.

[edit] Establish a company Intranet

• Publish company information in a Jotspot wiki:
• Project specifications
• Distribute employee information and policies
• Company news and events
• Marketing collateral

[edit] Genealogy

• Every member of the family has a page
• People can update each other's information
• Helps create a much more rounded view of the individual family members

[edit] Product documentation

• Users collaborate to keep documentation up to date
• Users report bugs for everybody to work on

[edit] Manage Meetings

• For a cool live application of this, go to http://conferences.wikicities.com and click on the Kammacon link.
• Or try SAQA on this wiki.
• Organize your group:
• Schedule meetings
• Create agendas
• Reserve conference rooms
• Record meeting notes
• Display results in a group calendar

[edit] Recruiting

• Manage your recruiting process:
• Manage candidate pool
• Attach a resume to reach candidate page
• Aggregate emails from the candidate by CC:ing their individual page
• Gather interview notes from employees using page comments
• Organize job openings

[edit] To Do List / Task Management

Productivity for a distributed team: Shared calendar and table views Assign tasks Set priorities Schedule due dates Organize tasks by group Flag items for discussion

[edit] Track Competition

• Monitor your competitive landscape:
• Maintain list of competitors
• Integrate news from the web
• Compare features
• Target customers

[edit] Share Interesting Articles (which is what this wikicity is about)

Create a public bulletin board:

• Interesting articles
• Research
• Community news
• Essays

[edit] What wikis are not that good for

[edit] "Official" sites

It's good to have official sites that are not as fluid as wikis are. This site will NEVER replace www.toastmasters.org or your disrict's official site -- or even your club's for that matter

[edit] E-Commerce

• Amazon.com is never going to be a wiki