Wikis and the Micro-ISV…

And now for something completely different…

Wikis are a simple, yet amazingly versatile and useful software concept. I’ve used one for the last few years on a personal domain as a scratchpad and notebook for the various tips, tricks, and clever solutions I discover in my day-to-day work. It’s not a known wiki and it’s only really ever visited by one person – me.

It has been a “life-saver” many times for when I have been unable to remember the steps involved in a certain procedure or something else and I’ve been able to get to my notes easily and refresh myself.

What I’m wondering is how can wikis be used to benefit those of us trying to build our Micro-ISV ventures?

For example, should wikis used as mentioned above, as personal knowledgebases, be opened up for viewing by our customers? Part of me thinks that this would be a good way of showing the breadth of our skills and expertise in various areas. Another part of me says “No, that’s giving too much information away”.

I saw reference somewhere that Bob Walsh is/was thinking of including a wiki as part of his My Micro-ISV resource site (which would make it an even better resource), but that’s not what I’m interested in here: there does not seem to be any MicroISVs who have included a wiki on their main site in some way, either for support or something else (except for the LookLater FAQ page). Perhaps some Micro-ISVs are using them, but are keeping their URLs hidden or on internal sites only?

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One use for a wiki that I can see potential in would be as an easy way to maintain and produce product documentation: the wiki provides the online searchable version (not necessarily editable by the public) with an easy way to create printable PDF versions. e.g. see the combination of PmWiki and WikiPublisher, as one way to achieve this. Then said PDF could be uploaded to Lulu or CafePress, made into a book and then used as another way to promote yourself and your knowledge a bit, a promotional tool, or even another revenue stream (although it’d be unlikely to be a big one).

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Or, perhaps a wiki could be a place to put all those tidbits of info that will one day make it into the documentation proper but hasn’t yet. This wiki could then be available for the more technical users amongst our customer bases.

I’m just thinking aloud here, but, it does appear that there may be opportunities for Micro-ISVs involving wikis. I’d be interested in knowing if any others are doing anything interesting in this area.

A couple of links that are helpful for selecting a wiki are:

• Top Ten Wiki Engines @ c2.com
• WikiMatrix.org – Wiki Feature comparison

MicroWiki looks like an interesting option for those that already use WordPress for their site’s content.

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Myself, I’ll probably setup a copy of PmWiki and experiment with it, as that’s one I’m familiar with and it has a lot of active development behind it, plenty of interesting plugins, and a sizable and active user-community.