Why Wiki?

From WikiADAPT

Learning together: wikiADAPT

Initial thoughts from Tom

Why a wiki?

wikis are the perfect venue for:

• collaborative brainstorming
• project development
• project documentation and
• management

Engaging in collaborative communities means ceding control, sharing responsibility, embracing transparency, managing conflict and accepting successful projects will take on lives of their own.

Over the past several years, we have been working on climate adaptation guidance (e.g. for NAPA teams), training (e.g., the ACCCA project) and applications in our own work (e.g, the EC ADAM project). It is a stimulating time--many people are asking important questions, looking for practical guidance, sharing their experiences.

We have had many discussions in many contexts: What is good-enough practice? How can we build a professional community? Even, what is a platform?

We decided to begin with a 'wiki', an on-line collaboration where everyone can draft material, upload documents, etc. weADAPT was well received at COP-13 in Bali, and wikiADAPT is now public. The material should mature over coming months into a public resource for everyone to use. At least that is our hope, and our commitment.

Do join us. I know you will see this request over and over. Personally, I hope you take your contribution seriously. Together I believe we can shape our future.

Tom -- TED 13:02, 26 November 2007 (CET)

Reflections

The aim with the wiki was that members of the adaptation community (that's you guys!) would contribute articles either about adaptation in general, for example the principles on which adaptation should be based, or more specific articles either relating to project work on the ground or to emerging methodologies. Within our core group we have found the wiki extremely useful for sharing information on the projects that we're involved in, and writing collaboratively without having to send streams and streams of track-changes documents. Papers for both the Circe project and the 2008 AMCEN conference were written through contributions to the wiki and then produced as word documants. I think it's fair to say that we underestimated the hurdles (technological, time pressures, institutional) that there are to engaging users to be editors and not just consumers of information.

More and more we are trying to take a more active approach to engaging writers, for example through the collaboration on the Frontline Knowledge Explorer, or working on the idea of Institutional Entry Pages. We have over 600 registered users and around 500 unique visits a day; the question now is how do we engage all those people so that we can get a snowball effect of people writing? The answer may be a different technology and is definitely in how we build a Community of Practice around adaptation - which is a much more interesting question!

Just some thoughts on the process so far. . .

--Ben Smith 11:41, 30 July 2009 (CEST)

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