I stumbled across an interesting analysis of a new technological process, horizontal drilling and extraction of shale natural gas. Read the whole thing here but here is the key chart comparing horizontal vs vertical wells:

Comparative production from a vertical and horizontal natural gas well (Chris McGill).

Production Volume

One thing that did strike me is that the horizontal peak production is well above the vertical well but has a shorter life span. Horizontal wells do have significant technical challenges (as seen in the article), but perhaps we can analyse the above chart to give us an idea of the benefits of horizontal drilling. Now to do this is a little tricky, as I do not have the original chart. However, using Photoshop, I was able to extract the area of the chart and the scale to get us total volume (note these are approximations only, but it gives us a “back of the envelope” view):

• Vertical Well (Yellow): 3547 MMFC
• Horizontal Well (Orange): 6097 MMFC
• Horizontal to Vertical Well total production gain: +72%

Judging from the chart the horizontal well extracts and extra 72% more oil in 10 months versus 100 months for vertical wells.

Production Value

Now to estimate the total value of the well let’s assume the price of natural gas is stable (at Henry Hub) at $8.00 per MCF:

• Total value of the horizontal well is  6097*1000*$8.00 = $48,776,000
• Total value of the vertical well is 3547*1000*$8.00 = $28,376,000

Time Value of Money

This is where we get to use some basic financial models to determine the value of horizontal wells compared to vertical wells. The time value of money is the value of money figuring in a given amount of interest earned over a given amount of time. As an example, with an interest rate of 5% per annum, 100 dollars received today is equivalent of receiving 105 dollars in a year’s time.

Note that the horizontal well lifetime is 10 months compared to the vertical well lifetime of 100 months. Thus to be fair we need to compare the value of the horizontal well and the vertical well after 100 months. This is where the Time Value of Money comes in. Let’s pretend we bank the $48,776,000 that the horizontal well extracts, thus after 100 months (assuming 5% interest rates):

• Total value of horizontal well at 100 months: $70,913,392
• Total value of vertical well at 100 months: $28,376,000
• Horizontal to Vertical well gain: +150%

Extraction Costs

I do not know, in detail, the relative difference in extraction costs for these two methods. However, we now have the Horizontal to Vertical Well gain to use in our decision making. If the Horizontal to Vertical well cost is less than Horizontal to Vertical Well gain (+150% in our example), then it becomes economical to use the horizontal well method.

With the resultant economic downturn around the world, companies should exploit their under-utilised human capital to prototype new products, services and business processes.Change challenges your company’s business practices, orthodoxies and the status quo. Executives should take a step back and re-assess their strategies and question how their organisation can better serve the market in the most cost effective way. If your company is suffering through a slow period, and have excess capacity, then this is a perfect opportunity to experiment and beta trial new products, services and business methods in your organisation.

Meet with your customers. Discuss their problems. Look for opportunities to remove their pain points. Can you save them time and money? Invite them to work with you on a solution. As an example, we are currently conducting a small scale trial of a prototype pedometer teaching aid at a local primary school that helps educators teach children about the importance of physical activity. This helps teachers who are time-poor to create new and inspirational classroom activities for their students.

Mobilise your team into groups of 3-4 and brainstorm new areas that the business to explore. It is not enough just to have ideas; you need to empower them with resources (ie. money and time) to conduct small scale beta trials. A scenario: your team has an idea for an intranet software package that integrates data from different departments and brings up an information dashboard to allow quick and timely decisions. Connect your engineers, business analysts and relevant stakeholders together to get a quick prototype done, evaluate the results and decide how to proceed. Having the ability to experiment and actually implement prototypes of ideas will give your company the competitive edge when the economy turns around.

Let the ideas flow from the bottom-up. Assuming you have adequate rewards and recognition based on personal and departmental Key Performance Indicators, the ideas and prototypes that flow from your team will have a better chance of success than ones forced down from above. Provide the leadership, parameters and boundaries of the solution and watch the magic happen!

While investing in new products and services may seem risky in the present climate, it is far better to start innovating now and be in a strong position when the economy (eventually) starts growing again.

Giving us more Time. That’s the goal of technology. As CEO’s, we are time poor and are expected to perform miracles across many disciplines, and as such, we look for any tool that helps us save time while continuing to perform at our peak level.Over the years, I have tried and tested many software programs and am ruthless about hitting that “uninstall” button if it doesn’t fit my needs. So I have come up with my Top 10 list of software tools which have stood the test of time on my PC.

1. Microsoft Office (including Outlook)

Part of any IT setup is the ubiquitous Microsoft Office. Due to the shear scale of usage, this is a no brainer. Excel is my favourite for doing financial modelling, simple databases and charts. I use Microsoft Outlook as my personal information manager to organise email from my 11 email accounts, my tasks and calendar. Make sure you archive often to improve Outlook’s performance.

2. Firefox

The fastest growing web browser, Firefox, is easy to use, fairly light and fast. Good security and regular updates. 3^rd party plugins such as FireFTP, Google Toolbar and Roboform (see later) further enhance this product.

3. Roboform

How many passwords do you have to remember? I have nearly 600. Roboform is a program that manages your passwords securely on your computer. One master password gives you access to all of your passwords. Web browser plugins (Roboform Toolbar) allows you to easily fill-out and submit login codes into websites. This has saved me countless hours of frustration. Well worth the investment.

4. Google Desktop

So much time is devoted towards searching for relevant documents and emails. Google has a neat program that indexes your computer and your servers for files, emails, chat logs etc. It has saved me a lot of time searching for those elusive documents and emails. While it does take quite a bit of processing power from your machine, it is well worth it in the end. And it’s free.

5. Maxtor BackUp

When you purchase a Maxtor external hard disk you get a neat backup program. You can schedule an automatic backup of your important folders on your PC. I set mine to run at 3am every day. It also has a “Safety Drill” Copy which takes an entire image of your hard drive. So if your PC hard drive fails you can recover it (including your installed software) on a new hard drive. I run the “SafetyDrill” every week.

6. Evernote

Have you ever been working on a project and wanted one area to collect your notes (handwritten and electronic), emails, websites into one area? I discovered Evernote a couple of months ago and have been a heavy user since. I use it to store my current projects I am working on. It even has rudimentary handwriting detection, which makes searching fairly easy. It also has a feature (which I do not use yet) to synchornise with other computers, servers and your colleagues. Plus it’s free.

7. MYOB

Having a snapshot of your finances at an instant is vitally important for a CEO. For startups, you can’t go past MYOB. It is fairly intuitive to use, although you may need your accountant to run through the basics with you.

8. Avast!

Avast! is an excellent and low-cost virus protection. It automatically downloads and installs updates so you don’t have to worry about checking to see if you have the latest version. Be sure to remove your current virus scanner completely before installing Avast as it will conflict with one another.

9. CCleaner

Over time, your PC will accumulate a lot of information in the system registry and in temporary files. If it fills up too much, it can have a detrimental effect on your PC’s performance and stability. CCleaner is a free software package that runs a diagnostic check over your system and automatically clean up any unnecessary files and settings that you no longer need. I run it every fortnight.

10. SpyBot

With the open nature of the Internet, there comes the threat of spyware, adware and malicious programs can infiltrate your computer via the websites. Note that these may not be picked up by your normal virus scanners, so I recommend that you install this and run it regularly. I run SpyBot automatically every night to keep my PC clean.

So that’s my Top 10 Software Tools on my PC. Stay tuned for next month’s article: Top 10 Online Web 2.0 Services for StartUp CEO’s

The thirst for knowledge, entertainment and communication online continues to. Internet technology has evolved from being primarily a text based medium to a rich multimedia channel for its audience. So why is video growing so rapidly on the web? I believe that online video is replacing TV as the primary form of entertainment. This trend will continue to grow as more content producers use the Internet as a primary means of distribution.

To understand the potential of video I hypothesized that the online media consumption habits would, in the long term, mirror offline media consumption habits. One basic metric to measure consumption habits is to examine at advertising expenditures. According to TNS Market research, year is the US advertising expenditures for all media in 2005 were:

So that we compare apples with apples I have grouped offline media into text (newspapers, magazines), audio (radio) and video (TV) based offline media. Thus we then get the following breakdown:

So if we assume that the online viewing habits will mirror online viewing habits expect to see advertising expenditures to be split is roughly the same way. Total US Internet advertising expenditure for 2008 is projected to be $25.9 Billion and currently online video accounts for a tiny $1.3 Billion (Source:eMarketer). This represents just 5% of the total US Internet advertising. In comparison, offline video accounts for 44% of total offline ad spend. If we extrapolate these findings we see that video has the potential to be worth approximately $11.4 Billion in the US in 2008. In other words, there is over $10 Billion in unrealised potential in online video right this minute.

This is why online video is so hot right now.

Web 2.0 is the current flavour of the month in the online world. Businesses, start-ups and established corporations are embracing this new trend like, well, Web 1.0 circa 1999. What can Web 2.0 offer your business? We will explore three somewhat overlapping aspects of Web 2.0 and discuss its impact on organisations. There are three “spheres” of Web 2.0:

• Technology Architecture;
• Business Models;
• Aesthetics.

What drives the business model for a company to establish a Web 2.0 project? It’s about communication. The simpler the communication method, the greater the capacity to communicate more effectively, which inevitably leads to more people sharing knowledge. We have seen the explosion of user generated content, such as You Tube, MySpace and Flickr. Companies are now moving towards “employee generated” and “customer generated” content. Instead of managers and the executive writing “top-down” directives, we may see the emergence of “bottom-up” policies and ideas emerge and discussed from staff and “lateral” policies introduced from the macro data of customer experiences. Of course, the cultural aspects of the organization needs to support such open discussions and this level of workplace democracy for this to work. This also includes engaging with your customers in an open dialogue and be prepared to hear their opinions: good and bad.

But haven’t we heard this all before? Didn’t IT knowledge platforms of the past from Lotus, Microsoft and the myriad of other software providers going to help knowledge sharing and customer satisfaction? Yes, they did help. But as employees become increasingly comfortable with consumer oriented Web 2.0 websites the more they become familiar with both the culture and technology tools that aid knowledge sharing. Similarly, customers now expect companies to have online forums and blogs and be intimately involved with the brand and product experience- thereby increasing their loyalty.

So what is the software platform that enables Web 2.0? In simple terms, the software architecture of a website consists of a database (where raw data is stored in logical groups, eg. user login details), the code (which communicates with the database and decides what is displayed on a particular page) and the presentation (or the “look and feel” of the website). These are separate modules that communicate with each other. For example, if we change the presentation or “look and feel” of a website we don’t have to worry about changing the structure of the database. This means we can have database designers working on the database structure, the coders working on the programming and the graphic designers working on the presentation of the site. Of course, there will be interface points that need to be managed but by separating these three basic layers allows innovation to prosper in each layer as a specialist can develop solely for a particular layer and not have to worry about the other. For example, it is unlikely that a database programmer will have the artistic flair of a graphic artist designing a website’s “look and feel.”

You have probably noticed that new Web 2.0 websites like, YouTube, Flickr and the myriad of blogs out there, somehow look different. Bolder, cleaner, gradients, bigger text and less cluttered. Screen elements can be resized and buttons fade. The technology fuelling this innovation is AJAX (Asynchronous JavaScript). We won’t be going into its details, but the key message is that AJAX is helping improve the look and feel and more importantly the usability of the web. By usability we mean that the web user experience is moving towards what we expect of PC software (eg. Word, Outlook etc.). Think of it as having the best of both worlds – the user experience we expect from PC software coupled with the power of being online via your web browser.

The other important technology, XML (Extensibile Markup Language) is a common language that allows software (be it on the web, PC or mobile) to communicate with each other. So by having that common format, data can be exchanged and presented in unique ways.

So how can Web 2.0 “aesthetics” help corporations? One of the key problems facing executives is the real time reporting of what state their organization is in. Revenue, expenses, customer satisfaction, burning issues, media and PR “buzz.” In most cases, the information is there; in fact one can argue that there may too much information. The trick is to turn information into knowledge (and hopefully knowledge into wisdom!). Web 2.0 technologies can be used to distill information into dashboard objects – charts, dials, bar charts etc. For example, below is a snapshot from Salesforce.com’s analytical dashboard:

Note the wonderful, colourful snapshot of the organization an executive can get and cut through the information “clutter.”

Concluding remarks

As with all new corporate technology, it’s important to have realistic expectations about what it can achieve. If you want a knowledge sharing blog make sure you have a knowledge sharing culture first with your customers. Want a great executive dashboard? Make sure you have a visually creative development team that can transform your old boring spreadsheet data into an imaginative array of dashboard indicators to help you, at a glance, get a hold on how your organisation is performing.

With the rise of online advertising (now worth 10% of the $10 billion Australian advertising market), we discuss strategies your website can employ to earn money through online advertising.

3 Fundamentals of Online Advertising

First a refresher. There are 3 basic ways to advertise on a site: 1) Cost per 1,000 impressions (CPM), 2) Cost per Click (CPC) and 3) Sponsorship

Cost per 1000 impressions (CPM): This is the amount charged to an advertiser per 1000 views of an ad. Rates generally range from $30-$50 per 1000 impressions.

Cost per Click (CPC): This is when charges are only accrued when a user click on the ad which takes them to your website. Rates for these generally range from a few cents to a couple of dollars. This sort of advertising is popular with search engine companies.

Sponsorship: This is generally based on a finite time-period (e.g.. for a fantasy sports competition) or for a specific event (e.g. an email campaign to your customers). Generally, these are secured through your existing business relationships or managed via a PR/advertising team.

(UPDATE: Google have just announced a trial where advertisers only pay when a specific action is undertaken online. For example, you only pay when a customer who clicked on your ad then goes and purchases a product or submits a contact request. Read here for more details.)

4 Online Advertising Revenue Models

1. Share Advertising Revenue with your Contributors

The big trend that is generating a lot of interest is consumer generated media served from a central, well-branded website. Think YouTube, MySpace, Facebook and Flickr. These are sites that de-centralise (some say democratise) the process of creating content and placing the power back into the hands of the individual. This process is important because it is incredibly popular. Being popular means happy advertisers.

But what of smaller, niche sites such as blogs and forums? How can they compete with the big boys? As we have mentioned previously in our technology reviews, content is king. Focus on getting the right content for your audience. High quality content gets you loyal visitors. A niche market means that advertisers can target their message carefully. Focus on getting high quality content for a niche audience and advertising will follow.

So it begs the question – “How do I get great content?” One way is to pay experts to write about their industry, or build a great brand (see our article from Pandemonium for tips) that attracts experts. The other option, which offers some promise, is sharing advertising revenue with your writers. This is where YouTube, MySpace and blogs will head in the future.

Sharing advertising revenue with your writers/contributors works like this. Assume you have advertisement running on your website and you are using a cost per 1000 impression (CPM) model (See earlier discussion on CPM). Now, when a visitor reads, watches or listens a contributors’ content, the ad is displayed next to it. In normal run of events 100% of the ad revenue from that ad goes to the website operator. In the ad revenue share model, a cut (say 20%) will go to the contributor.

The great thing about this model is that it is self-correcting. A popular contributor will be encouraged to continue submiting more content because they are getting rewarded. A less popular contributor will be discouraged as they are not relating to the audience. Thus, the “cream rises to the top.” and thus improves your website’s popularity with your audience.

2. Podcasts

Advertising strategies for podcasts are more or less borrowed from their traditional media counterparts, radio and TV. Typically, short ads (less than 30 secs) are inserted into the start of a podcast. Again, subscriptions to podcasts can be tracked although it is a little harder to actually know how many people listened to it (SONAR recently released a media player that can track this sort of information).

3. Really Simple Syndication (RSS)

Really Simple Syndication (RSS) gives users the power to subscribe to a website’s news, new articles and new content. For example, this blog has an RSS feed. RSS feeds can be sent to a dedicated RSS Feeder (such as FeedDemon) or viewed on your personal Yahoo/Google homepage. It’s a great way to keep in touch across a number of websites without actually having to visit them – which is why they are very popular. Now this could be a website operator’s worst nightmare as the number of visits to your page could be threatened by this technology. However, RSS feeds can have advertisements embedded within each feed, thus providing a extra source of revenue. New ad service companies, such as FeedBurner, help website operators to embed advertisements in their feeds.

4. Google Adsense vs Yahoo! Publisher

One cannot talk about online advertising without discussing what the big players, Google and Yahoo! are up to. For the uninitiated, Google have a system to help customers earn revenue on their website, called AdSense. Google AdSense automatically serves advertisements (by you placing a small bit of code on your website) and will automatically display ads that are relevant to your website. When a user clicks on an ad, you get a share of revenue and Google gets a share.

The online world has been waiting for Yahoo!’s response to AdSense. Yahoo! offers an invite-only, BETA system called Publisher Network.

It is worth considering Google or Yahoo! Services to manage your advertising on your site. It’s very easy to set up either service and requires little management overhead.

Last Word

Using a mix of the above online revenue models can boast your site’s earning potential. But as with any media, it is important to understand who visits your site. How many unique visitors per week? What locations (country, state, city) do your visitors come from? What are the general demographics of your visitors? These are the basic questions that any advertiser will want to know. Create a media pack with all of your demographic information, rates and technical (size, format etc.) specifications. Make it as easy as possible for an advertiser to say “Yes” to advertising on your website.

This article provides 4 predictions of where search is headed and how it will add to the user’s search experience.

1. Corporate Search

Generally speaking it is easier for people to find information on the web than it is on their own corporate intranet. Finding the right documents and information quickly and without having to trawl through various directories and database is a must. We will continue to see companies battle it out in the corporate sector. Not surprisingly, Google, have an enterprise solution where a Google-designed server is simply plugged into the intranet and goes to work indexing documents. Two industry heavyweights, IBM and Yahoo! have teamed up to introduce OmniFind, a software-based enterprise search solution to compete in the corporate market.

1. Location, Location, Location

With the rise of mobile phones, wireless hotspots and GPS, users will demand location-based search. Although we are in a globalised economy, people are yearning for that sense of local community. Look out for the major search engines to push “local search” (Eg. Yahoo! Local). Also watch out for mobile enabled search with the capacity of searching local businesses and even “finding a friend” in a crowd.

Sensis.com.au claims to enhance their search by integrating their Yellowpages, Whitepages, CitySearch and TradingPost assets to serve up local results. Businesses will be (and already have) begun to take a localized approach to advertising, rather than a “shot gun” approach characterized in the early days of online advertising.

1. Business Linkages

Have you ever tried to find a business partner via the web? Currently, search engines allow you to find companies, but not the right person in that organization to contact. This is where search and social networking will merge. So in the future, we will see a lot more business linkages between key decision makers within companies. A great example is LinkedIn, where you can search through and get introduced to a range of professionals from around the world. It’s not one big marketplace, where anyone and connect to everyone. You still will need to use your online network to establish contacts, just like you would in the physical world, to facilitate business connections.

1. Video and Podcast search

With the emergence of multiple forms of media out in the web, consumers will demand easier search of non-text based information. There are search engines that specialize in video and podcasts but they only search the “meta-data” (that is, information, tags and categories that accompany the media). Future research will focus on the search of the actual content of the media, by analyzing the media stream, extracting relevant information and keywords, index it and make it searchable. If this is achieved, this will help both the producers and consumers of content to connect to one another.

Final Thought

Humans have and always will need information. We will always place a premium on finding it. But let us not confuse information with knowledge, nor wisdom for that matter. Knowledge and wisdom will continue to remain the defining human advantage over machine. So be it.

This article gives a basic overview of how search engines work and tips to improve your ranking.

Yahoo!’s original strategy

In the beginning, Yahoo! started as a student hobby by David Filo and Jerry Yang, who in 1994 decided to keep an online list of interesting websites. As their list grew, they decided to put those links into categories, and sub-categories, and so on. This is important as this dictated their general approach to advertising – businesses pay to be listed within a certain category. Think of early Yahoo! as the YellowPages of the Internet world. Over time they developed search algorithms to trawl their listings (and then the web at large) for interesting websites.

Google’s approach

Like Yahoo!, Google was spun out of Stanford University by two PhD students: Larry Page and Sergey Brin in 1998. Their approach was to not to categorise websites but to rank them based on their popularity. On a basic level, website’s popularity is based on how many other websites link to them. So the more your website is linked by others the more popular you are and thus your website will be ranked higher than others.

As Google’s search engine evolved, their algorithm ranked “main stream media” websites (eg. News.com.au or cnn.com) as having higher quality content. So if your website is linked from these high quality sites, your ranking improves and you start to shoot to the top of Google’s search rankings. User’s found that Google’s method of indexing and ranking websites extremely useful in getting to relevant information on a consistent basis.

How do you get onto search engines?

There are a number of strategies to improve your website’s “popularity” ranking on search engines.

1. Content is king

Many people focus on “tricks” to fool search engines. Your primary strategy is to continually improve your website content. Make your content so interesting and so compelling that other website operators and bloggers want to link to you.

1. Write articles for the main stream media.

This is easier said than done. But take any opportunity to write opinion pieces or give interviews to the main stream media. Get them to provide a link to your website. The search engines will give your website a boost.

1. Participate in online forums

Find online communities in your areas of interest. Participate, but don’t “spam” your message. Make sure your website or business solves a need that is being discussed in the forum or blog.

1. Meta data

Make sure that you include meta data and meta tags to your website. This “meta” information helps search engines understand the content of your webpage and thus helps connect searchers to you. Ask your website operator to make sure that these are up to date and relevant to every page of your website.

1. Free press releases

There are a number of free press release services out there. Do a Google search for them. It’s one way to promote your site and getting links to your site.

What is social networking and how is it different to a plain old fashioned website?

Social networking is the new hot trend at the moment. Have you ever thought of YouTube and MySpace and thought “what’s the deal?” Many people ask why these website are gaining so much attention? The short answer is that new web technologies and almost ubiquitous Internet connectivity has allowed users to experience the web in a whole new way.

These websites are getting mainstream press coverage, in part, because of the massive deals that are being made. More eyeballs are now turning away from traditional TV, print and radio media.

But what is so different about social networking?

A social network is defined by wikipedia as:

A social structure made of nodes which are generally individuals or organizations. It indicates the ways in which they are connected through various social familiarities ranging from casual acquaintance to close familial bonds.

Note that there is no mention of technology in this definition. Having a strong social network has been a competitive advantage for humans to survive and thrive. Connecting with one another is still a basic human need. As we all know, networking in business is vitally important for professionals for career advancement and for companies to sustain their profitability.

A social networking website facilitates the connection between people. (In the strictest sense, dating websites are commonly considered to be the first social networking websites). It’s about connecting with your friends and colleagues online and new web technologies are the tools facilitating social networking websites. Traditional website tend to contain static information and maybe a blog and a forum; they do not actively try to create linkages between it’s members.

Social Networking Examples:

MySpace

MySpace allows people to connect and share information, in multiple formats and structures, news etc. with their friends and extended networks. There are over 100 million users of MySpace globally (predominantly teenagers and young adults). It gives you an insight into the “future generation”, how they know interact with people in the virtual world and how they expect to interact when they enter the workforce.

LinkedIn

LinkedIn targets professionals looking to connect with one another to explore business development opportunities, jobs and investment opportunities. It works off the principle of “6 degrees” of separation. Your contact details are only exposed to those that you invite into your network. Example: Imagine if you are a Business Development Manager looking for a lead within IBM. You can then use your contacts within LinkedIn to see if their contacts can help find a contact within IBM. If you were a member of LinkedIn with 50 direct contacts – this means your social network is now estimated at 1 million people.

So can your business benefit from a social network website?

Here are a few questions to consider:

• Do you need to build a community with your customers to foster brand loyalty?
• Is it beneficial for your customers to network and connect with each other?
• Are you trying to build a distribution/sales channel with outside parties?
• Does your business need to link to, disseminate and utilise information content?

If you have answered yes to any of the above questions, then consider a social networking site. You can either create one from scratch or become part of an existing one – eg. LinkedIn, MySpace or one that is focused on your particular industry, and linking you to the people, networks and content you need to grow your business.

Social networks are nothing new. It is and always will be the lifeblood of business. By coupling the need for connections to information, networks and resources with new technology, social networking websites have the potential to open up business opportunities, new partners and new markets.

Do you have problems sharing knowledge across your business development team? Are you trying to build a community around your product?

What is a Wiki? In a nutshell, a Wiki is webpage that allows any one to change the content of that webpage immediately via their web browser. The best known example of a Wiki is wikipedia.org where registered users (anyone with a valid email can register), can submit new topics and edit existing ones.

In a non-wiki environment, generally one person is charge of website content. If another person wants to add or update information, he or she would have to go through this gatekeeper.

In the Wiki model anyone can directly change the content of a page – all through their standard web browser.

Scenario 1 – Sharing leads among your business development team.

Sales and Business Development are the lifeblood of any organization. Being able to work together as a team to secure new customers and retain existing ones is necessary to sustain a competitive advantage. One possible application is to use a Wiki like a virtual whiteboard. Each Business Development team member can add their opportunities and/or client facts to a client page. Once this page is updated, the entire team can now have access to this knowledge.

Scenario 2 – Building a community around your product or service

In today’s online world, users expect to find customer support and product information easily on the web. This means generating a lot of content. A better way is to get your customers to do it for you. A properly structured Wiki can enable your customers to add advice, create tutorials, create “Getting Started” guides and suggest product features. For example, GarageGames, a company that creates software for independent games developers, has a Wiki for customers to contribute tutorials and advice for the community. Another simple example, is Mick’s Wiki, a place where kids can contribute to ideas for a video game. In conjunction with blogs and forums, Wiki’s are just another way to integrate into clients and help customers feel part of the brand.

Scenario 3 – Internal documentation for your product development team

Creating and protecting technical documentation within a team is always a challenge. Usually you will have one “content manager” in charge of developing and releasing relevant documentation to the team. Wiki’s can help “democratise” this process by allowing programmers, team leaders, contractors to contribute in controlled space. There is only one document only one current version.

Who’s in control?

One big question for managers is “How do we control the content?” There are a number of ways:

• “Watch List”: anyone, including administrators, can watch a particular page. If objectionable material is posted you can always remove it.
• Banned Users/IP Addresses: if you have a habitual abuser you can block them from editing your Wiki.
• “Protect”: Administrators can protect a page so that only authorized users can change its content.
• Access Control: some Wiki’s allow you to restrict content based on group privileges. This is useful in a corporate environment where keeping information separate between business units is a requirement.

Knowledge Sharing Culture

One final note. While Wiki’s, (or forums, or blogs for that matter) are useful, they cannot by itself create a new business environment. For Wiki’s to succeed, your team must be committed to a knowledge sharing culture. An environment where people are encouraged for sharing information and wanting to help others. Only then will Wiki’s provide valuable communication functionality for your business.