NTEN’s Wiki

Last week I attended the Nonprofit Technology Conference put on by NTEN. It was an excellent conference and packed with plenty of info for techies and non-techies alike. Before I went to the conference I mentioned to a few people that I thought it was interesting that NTEN was creating a Wiki for the conference. I had never used a Wiki before and was a little unclear about what it is and how it differs from a blog. Now I’ve used a wiki and have a better understanding of it and thought I’d post a note here to share what I learned.

As defined in Wikipedia (which is a wiki itself and a free encyclopedia that anyone can contribute to) A Wiki or wiki is a website that allows users to add content, as on an Internet forum but also allows anyone to edit the content. “Wiki” also refers to the collaborative software used to create such a website.

So here is how someone at the conference helped me to better understand the difference between a blog and a wiki. Blog entries are usually organized by date and bloggers don’t usually go back to old posts and change them — just as you don’t change an entry in your diary from last year. A wiki is a website and any part of it can be changed at anytime by anyone. An automatic log then tracks all the changes made and notifies all the wiki contributors that a change has been made to a particular page.

I found it very easy to use the Wiki. I created a page for the conference session that I spoke at, uploaded a PowerPoint presentation, and posted a few comments. The Wiki helped to create a tighter community of conference attendees and build a resource that attendees can use long after the conference ends.

Here are some links to articles I found about why use a wiki:

http://bird.net.au/bird/index.php?title=Why_use_a_wiki

http://www.usemod.com/cgi-bin/mb.pl?WhyWikiWorks

I’d love to hear if your organization is using a wiki and how you are using it. Post your comments here. And hope to see you at the NTC conference next year. I think some nonprofit staffers think the conference is only for tech geeks – wrong – it’s for fundraisers and marketers too and lots of fun!