dwlt.thinksOutLoud

I am currently reading Collapse by Jared Diamond, in case you were wondering.

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Start-up Technology

Sat 13 May 02006 04:11 AM
Business
5 comments

I had an interesting chat on Thursday with my friends Julie and Martin where amongst other things, we talked about using blogs and wikis within small and virtual companies.

At The Games Kitchen, we used a home-grown blogging tool to try and keep everyone up to date with what was going on. At Slam, we use Trac, which is a wiki geared towards task management purposes (I do wish it had a better administration interface though). In my work with Dynamo, I encouraged them to use a blog internally to capture knowledge, and it seems to work well for them.

Martin’s take was that these technologies come into their own in virtual or distributed companies, where people can’t be kept up to date with daily meetings or chats. I think he’s right, and it will be interesting to see how it all works out in practice for him (it’s always good to watch from the sidelines!). I can see a couple of gaps for products which could fit in amongst the mix, but I’ll keep them under my hat for now.

Later in the day, Scott Johnson (ex-Feedster) had made a podcast about “internal podcasts”, where he uses podcasts both as instructional and information communication tools with contractors and staff. Of course, this is just the 2006 version of voicemail communications, as used by retailers, airlines and many other companies to disseminate information on a daily and weekly basis. The advantage of podcasts is that they aren’t tied to one device, and Scott points out that your staff can now be listening to your message when they are jogging, walking the dog, or driving.

I’m curious to know if anyone else has used these technologies successfully or otherwise in their workplace?

Technorati Tags: business, startups

Martin Gibbons wrote at 09:16 AM on 13 May 2006

I have been running a disparate (not desparate) organisation for four years but now with the power of blogs and more recently Wiki, I think I can overcome many of the downsides of disparity. When you think of it most companies are disparate, they just don’t realise it. My hope is that we will not only share information in real time but develop and build our company culture. I’ll keep you posted.

As an aside did you know that Ford originally set up production lines, not to be more efficient, but because it was not possible to communicate and share information with everyone over such large distances in the factories, where were big by nature. With a production line you only needed to share info with the person next to you. Makes you wonder why we still use production lines.

dwlt wrote at 10:37 AM on 16 May 2006

@Anon: Good point – I think the other thing is that these types of software are getting easier to install and manage, and in some cases (such as with Jot and Socialtext, no need to install at all).

Scott Johnson of Oookles, Formerly of Feedster wrote at 01:25 PM on 16 May 2006

Hey there,

A) thanks for the link
B) getting used to doing this is really, really hard but its starting to pay off now in the form of training new staff i.e. "Here’s 5 hours of audio lectures on what we’re doing; listen and THEN ask questions"

Scott

Scott Johnson of Oookles, Formerly of Feedster wrote at 01:53 PM on 16 May 2006

Hey there,

Scott

dwlt wrote at 05:55 PM on 16 May 2006

Scott, thanks for stopping by – when I saw the idea mentioned on your blog and then listened to the podcast, it was one of those "duh! Of course!" moments. Glad to hear it’s paying off for you.

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This is the website of one David Thomson (aka dwlt) from Edinburgh, Scotland. It contains the results of my patented thinking-out-loud process.

According to the about page, I'm a miscellaneist — at any given moment I'm a game designer, entrepreneur, programmer, consultant, and/or writer. I also read a lot.

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