Last week an AVP took a group of us to see [Anthony Williams][], one of the authors of [Wikinomics][] (short review -- Mr. Williams talk was much better than the book). In the talk (and the book) Williams discussed how companies are using technology (like wikis, etc.) to collaborate better with each other as well as with their customer and make it easier to deal with third-parties.

I'm not sure what the AVP expected -- he said that he just asked his directors for people that are interested in this stuff and that he doesn't always get the interact with the worker bees (my word, not his). But I suspect that he also wanted people to be inspired to change our own wiki. Yes, we have a wiki and it's really become a dumping ground for Scrum notes, and project related documents. There is nothing bad about that, per se, but they cloud up the search. It's also hard to get some employees to even look at the wiki. And, I think the most important part, is that our wiki is about getting information there, as opposed to having a conversation. In other words, no one collaborates.

Williams was a good speaker and a few minutes after he was done, someone asked the AVP if we could have a follow-up. He said he would schedule something. The car ride home was filled with good conversation and ideas. I was inspired and appreciated the fact that other people were just as frustrated by our lack of collaboration like I was.

We have a meeting yesterday and brainstormed what was wrong with our current collaboration efforts and what we can do to fix them. We have a base game plan in place -- let's see how we if do it.