The topic was MediaWiki in production, with presentations by Greg Rundlett of Harvard’s Initiative in Innovative Computing (IIC) and Daniel Barrett, who wrote the (O’Reilly) book on MediaWiki, and uses it in production at VistaPrint.

Greg Rundlett presents at BostonPHP

Dan Barrett gets ready to present at BostonPHP

Greg’s presentation, appropriately enough, is in the format of a MediaWiki page. He provided an overview of wikis in general as well as some of the other activites of the MediaWiki Foundation, then got right into details of MedaWiki syntax, built in features, and plugins.

Daniel Barrett’s presentation (which he was kind enough to send to me and allow me to post – thanks Dan) focused more on how to deploy a successful wiki, including six lessons:

1. It’s not about the technology
2. Know the strengths and weaknesses of the platform
3. Know the culture of the enterprise
4. Pre-structure the wiki and write stubs
5. Integrate with legacy systems
6. Measure your results

There was also good time for Q & A at the end, including a number of questions that were as much about corporate culture as technology: how to handle “potentially dangerous” procedures, how to deal with employees who horde information in search of job security, and the like.

Looking forward to next month’s BostonPHP which will be Jesse Burns facilitating a “PHP IDE Bakeoff” – February 11th, 6:30 pm, at Optaros Boston (More detail on Meetup.com – please RSVP if you plan to attend).

• Joshua Porter on the Bungee Line Podcast
• Chris Brogan’s Social Media and Social Networking Starting Points
• Forrester Report from Jeremiah Owyang on Online Community Best Practices

Joshua Porter of Bokardo, has a book coming out: Design Social Applications (Voices That Matter). He was also recently interviewed by Alex Barnett and Ted Haeger for The Bungee Line podcast: Social Design with Joshua Porter. It’s a great interview, ~45 minutes, covering many of the themes covered at Bokardo: social software as modeling the real world, personal value before social value, and data driven design. I look forward to the book.

Chris Brogan also recently published Social Media and Social Networking Starting Points, a quick, concise, eBook focused on how companies can get started in the world of social media, especially with the concept of encouraging employees to blog or otherwise connect with online audiences. Key takeway: don’t obsess about “corporate blog policy” – take your corporate email / web terms or policy you already have (don’t reveal corporate or client secrets, don’t post pornography or copyrighted material, etc) and treat your employees as adults.

Finally, Jeremiah Owyang‘s first Forrester Report (Online Community Best Practices) is out and it’s a good sign of things to come. Unfortunately this one isn’t free, unless you have access to a Forrester subscription. (If you do, get the report from the Forrester site). The report doesn’t exactly break new ground – as the “best practices” in the title suggests, it synthesis and summarizes the core ideas enterprises need to hear as they think about creating online communities. As I read it, I found myself nodding vigorously, and recognizing mistakes people make that result directly from skipping some of these best practices.

My favorite part is the section on “A Taxonomy of Detractors” which lists these types:

• Legitimate complainer
• Competitor
• Engaged critic
• Flamer
• Troublemaker

And then describes ways of dealing with those detractors, ranging from “engage rationally” to “remove from community.” I like that it doesn’t oversell the fear of bad actors in a community (which can scare companies away from engaging in social media) but also doesn’t ignore it – just notes that there are clear ways of handling such problems.