'Wikimaniacs' debate getting corporate acceptance of wikis

CAMBRIDGE, MASS. — It's a wiki, wiki world, whether you know it yet, or not.

Such was the vibe at Wikimania 2006, the second-annual conference on all things Wikipedia — the online, free (and sometimes controversial) encyclopedia. The event drew an estimated 400-plus attendee from 50 countries s to the Harvard Law School, where the conference ran from Friday to Sunday.

News out of the conference varied as widely as Wikipedia's interests: the launch of a project to put Wikipedia on the One Laptop per Child's $100 computer; the unveiling of Wikiwyg, a WYSIWYG text editing software; the introduction of plans for a "Wikiversity"; and an initiative to "turn attention away from growth and towards [the] quality" of information in the 1.2 million articles on Wikipedia.org, which was announced by Jimmy Wales, the project’s founder.

Among the myriad ideas bouncing around the conference was the emergence of wiki technology behind corporate firewalls as a knowledge management tool. One thriving example of this is going on at Intel, which runs Intelpedia — an online, freely-editable encyclopedia of terms and concepts specific to Intel employees (and accessible only on the company's intranet).

The site is run by Josh Bancroft, a systems developer, technology evangelist, and self-described "geek blogger" for the chipmaker, who discussed his work at Wikimania on Sunday.

"There are all sorts of silos of people at Intel, who needed to share information and need a good tool to do it," Bancroft said. MediaWiki — the open-source application package that runs Wikipedia.org — emerged as being fit for the job.

The site has two rules, Bancroft said. First, entries must not violate corporate policies. (In other world "don’t post the recipe to secret sauce," or any other information that you wouldn't want the entire company to see). The second rule: entries must be useful to at least one other person.

While the site uses the same software and format as Wikipedia.org, Intelpedia looks at the world as it pertains to the company. For example, a Wikipedia entry on Helium might give basic facts on the properties and uses of the gas. Intelpedia would discuss how the element is used in the various processes of chip fabrication, or other manufacturing activities, for example.

According to Bancroft, Intelpedia came about from a post on an internal Intel blog by John G. Miner, a senior Intel product support engineer, stating: "Wouldn't it be cool to have something like Wikipedia inside of Intel?"

Initial reaction to the post was pessimistic, Bancroft said. A long project approval process and internal resistance was expected for such an undertaking. So Bancroft downloaded MediaWiki — the open-source application package that runs Wikipedia.org, and other internal wiki sites — and put the site up himself. As the tool caught on, Intelpedia entries began flowing in, and support for it grew among Intel employees.

"Intel is a very closed company," Bancroft said, jokingly referring to Only the Paranoid Survive, the title of Intel co-founder Andrew Grove's book. "That's just kind of the mentality," he said. "[Intelpedia] is the beginning of what I hope is a cultural shift at Intel."