What’s a wiki?
Our intranet pagemasters participated in a lively discussion surrounding the use of wikis for collaborative workspaces.

• Cynthia Q, my crime partner in our portal group, first layed out the wiki landscape for me several months ago, demo’ing its features and showing me how editing permissions work.
• Just the other day, TaeAnn, my bud in the Customer Care division, wowed the pageMasters with a demo of how four (five?) teams in her division have run with the wikis, using it for team solutions, info sharing, decision-making, reference and resource noting, etc.
• Information Technology has a dozen pockets of techies, project managers, and other early adopters using wikis for instantly-accessible repositories of constantly shifting team info, code snippets, system notes, trouble-shooting tips, and shift-coverage historical reference.

I’ve been waiting for more than a few months until the right topic and collaborative space idea appeared. Finally, today, I played with the wiki and here’s why.

I’m one of 50 Cyber Buddies at work, business employees paired with local high school students in business and technology classes. Coming soon, they plan to tour our work, sitting alongside each of their buddies for 90 minutes.
90 minutes with a high schooler at my desk? Excruciating! Uncaffeinated boredom! Not for me, for the poor youth who has to sit still while I regale him wth fascinating discussions of document repositories, communication media, file migration, the document review process, intranet usability…I’m already hearing some yawns. So, I had an idea to take this youth on an interactive tour of our campus and highlight points of interest…his interest.
Naturally, although I had a ton of ideas, I wanted ideas from the other Cyber Buddies, and I wanted to share my ideas with others, in case they too, wanted to make their buddy’s visit more eye-popping.
I opened a wiki space and invited all the other Cyber Buddies to add and collaborate on “How to Give a Tour to a High Schooler.” Scavenger hunts, cafe menu math, game room and basketball court gym time, executive conference room window-watching, stuff like that. Oh yeah, visits to the IT data center, not a techie-centered, acronym-filled presentation, but one that sparks a “how cool is that?’ Remember, these aren’t clients, brokers, and potential customers, they’re teenagers!

I opened the wiki to anyone who can add their ideas on what to show.

(Note: our wiki is on the intranet, so I’ll invite fellow employees to visit the wiki and find the “How to Tour with a High Schooler” page)

OK pagemasters, here’s your first challenge.