Yesterday evening I was putting the finishing touches to my upcoming white paper on the use of wikis as an online publishing format, and was thinking back about the techniques we used here at WebWorks to make the use of our internal wiki such a success.

Here’s what I wrote in the white paper:

While the main focus of the wiki may be technical, you can speed acceptance by seeding the wiki with other topics that may have a broader appeal. For instance one of the things we use the wiki for at WebWorks is organizing the company Christmas Party!

By posting information on something that everyone was interested in, and wanted information on, the wiki quickly became seen as an authoritative source of information on what was happening in the company. Rather than have information going around in uncoordinated email threads, it was in a central location where everyone had access.  By asking for menu suggestions and comments, we also introduced the idea of using the wiki for feedback and commenting.

By using the wiki to organize a fun event in which everyone had a vested interest, the acceptance and usage of the wiki was a lot quicker, more user driven, and far more acceptable than any imposed mandate of “you must use the wiki from now on.”

And the end result of that particular wiki project last month?

WebWorks.com 2008 Christmas Dinner