Escape, freedom and joy~ May 28, 2009
When I first read the title “The Wiki Workplace,” the adjectives escape, creative and joy came in my head instantly and right after, it lead me to think about a T.V program that I have watched long time ago. It was about a Google company where provides their employees, the Googlers, 20 percent time in which they’re free to pursue projects of their choice. Some immensely popular projects from the Googleplex like Orkut, Google News, Google Suggest and even AdSense were conceptualized and developed by Google engineers during their “20 percent time”. Not only have that, but the company often sent the Googlers a vacation in many different countries to explore their knowledge and bring back the company with full of fresh ideas. This is one of the strong results which brought Google to stand where they are right now. The business wiki is one of the most powerful web 2.0 tools and is capable of transforming the nature of communication within a company. While normal corporate communication flows in a straight line, often from top to bottom, a business wiki can create teamwork of communication that flows from the bottom up. Designed as a simple-to-use collaborative tool, wikis have raised through the ranks of content management systems. From replacing an internal knowledge base to providing templates for reports and memos, wikis are invading the workplace and changing the way people do business in these days. Global communications is an obvious target for a wiki in the workplace. The ease-of-use makes it a great tool for dispensing information across the globe and the simplicity of editing makes it easy for satellite offices to offer input back to headquarters. More than just keeping employees around the world informed, a global wiki can provide a method for teams with members in different locations to work together seamlessly and share information on a project. This is not only applied in business workplace, but also in study workplaces where we, (yes! WE) are right now. Posing weekly reading responses on our own blog and open the blog to share your thoughts/writing with others, is something that we cannot do in in-class. I remember that in this week’s online chat, someone mentioned that he/she read other classmate’s reading response first before he/she begin his/her response to have some ideas and have better understanding towards the reading. This can be happened because we are in wiki study/work place. How can we read someone else’s writing in in-class before we begin our own? Wikis can also play a role in enhancing meetings, and in some cases, replace them altogether. A wiki can be a great place to store meeting minutes and provide the opportunity for employees to offer additional input outside of the meeting. A wiki can also reduce the number of meetings needed to keep a project on track. Communication and teamwork of ideas are the two main goals of most meetings, and a wiki is an excellent tool that can accomplish both of these.. As an example of just how far the wiki meeting can go, IBM held a global wiki meeting in September of 2006 with online discussions that lasted three days. Over 100,000 people from more than 160 countries participated in what IBM considered a highly-successful brainstorming session. However, some companies worry about the risks of uncontrolled communications leaking out. But a growing number believe the new collaboration tools are good for innovation and growth—they help employees connect with more people, in more regions of the world, with less hassle and more enjoyment, than earlier generations of workplace technology. Geek Squad is a case in point. Many thousands of Geeks are using a growing suite of collaboration technologies to brainstorm new products and services, manage projects, swap service tips, and socialize with their peers. Provided on instant messaging, blogs, wikis, chat groups, playlists, peer-to-peer file sharing, and online multiplayer video games, the net generation will increasingly bring a heightened comfort with technology, inclination toward social connectivity, more emphasis on creativity and fun, and greater diversity to the companies they work for and to the companies they found themselves.
My Wiki May 28, 2009
Claire’s contribution to Kimchi.
I added Kimchi varieties section, as well as In popular culture section
where I deleted some of sentences and added more information.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kimchi#In_popular_culture
By the way…
How do I attach an image??
We call it the age of peer production May 24, 2009
Now we are happy to work for free. We call it the age of peer production. From Wikipedia to Facebook, the most successful web companies are building business models based on the peer production. This is perhaps the most dramatic manifestation of the Web2.0. The tools of production, from blogging to photo-sharing, are fully democratized, and the engine for growth is the spare cycles, talent, and capacity of regular folks, who are in aggregate and creating a distributed labor force of unprecedented scale. Trysha is a great example of Wiki addict in the book Wikinomocs, who is working full-time occupation as a competitive dog trainer yet when she is not busy, she is on Wikipedia voluntarily. “[She] maintains a watch list of hundred of articles and photos [which contributed on various dog breeds] that she monitors every time a change is made” (73). Rather than having one clear “answer,” people’s information that comes through their own experience and wisdom of life is what “we” are looking for through internet and preferred to find out something you cannot find in a hard-covered encyclopedia such as Britannica. Although Britannica is created by limited groups of socialists, there is often an error with imitated information that needs to be updated. However, Wikipedia provides massive topic/tittles with information provided from regular folks all around the worlds that have confident in their area/interest through volunteer perform. In other hands, it is more interesting and authenticity than Britannica. Also, Wikipedia has ability to update any information that has missing pars and/or errors fast, and because it can provides links, reference, algorithms that is related to the topic/title, in quality and speed wise, there is clear reason why Wikipedia is successful. The examples are all around us: Wikipedia to Flickr. There are entire realms that regular folks/users are creating from scratch and there is the enormous audience that YouTube has conjured with video-sharing technology. The book Wikinomics provides great example of open source software, which has changed both the corporate server [Linux] and given new life to IBM, a company that now thrives by building software and services atop peer-produced code. Previous industrial ages were built on the backs of individuals, but in those days labor was just “work.” Workers were paid for their time, whether on a factory or in a business. Today’s peer-production machine runs in a mostly nonmonetary economy. Companies aren’t just apply free labor; they are also creating the tools that give voice to millions of people and that understands that talent exists outside of Hollywood, and that each of us has knowledge that is valuable to someone and somewhere. **By the way, in this week’s reading “The Peer Pioneers” where Tapscott & Williams answers my doubt that I left last week’s reading response were interesting: Do we really trust unknown participant’s information[In Wikipedia]? “True, Wikipedia’s openness leaves it vulnerable to inaccuracies, edit wars, and vandalism.”(75) Tapscott & Williams also agrees, “But its openness is also the reason why it’s constantly growing, adding new entries, covering new niches, and always reviewing and updating facts.”(75)
Have a seat! May 21, 2009
Would you like some tea?
Have a seat! Photo by Claire Ham is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Tap Message — water temperature indicator May 21, 2009
Choosing tap water is more appealing
when you are sure it is at the right drinking temperature.
Tap Message Photo by Claire Ham is licensed under
a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 2.5 Canada License.
Can we trust?? May 19, 2009
Can you live without YouTube, Wikipedia, Facebook, and/or Myspace?
In this 21stcentury, it is hard to imagine living without internet where we can chat, browse and collaborate. Not only with people who are close to you, but also with the rest of the world where things left us with all the curiosity. In the book “wikinomics,” Tapscott & Williams talks about the mass collaboration, as well as strong globalization. However, while I was reading the first two chapters, it made me wonder … Do we really trust unknown participant’s information?
“‘Peer productions,’ or peering—which describes to drive innovation and growth in their industries” (11).
In these days, the term, web 2.0, is becoming very common to us. People are participating, interacting, and collaborating via online communities and organizations. In this mass collaborative infrastructure, I was considering how the information I confront from unknown participant among thousands of thousands would be reliable and accurate. Even though wikinomics are intent of sharing ideas to efficient and effective result, I could think that not every information on the web could be correct and trustworthy. (I’m not talking about the collaboration in industry such as Goldcorp.) Sometimes, it’s not transparent to know source of information. While there are many trustful web contents, I could think of possibilities of having incorrect data due to rapidly increasing amount of peer production.
This is something that I have not thought about before yet it was fascinating for me to realize this curiosity and now I am more curious towards other people’s thought!
What do you think??
