Lightening Collaboration

This paper examines the technology of wikis, a class of software tools for collaborative editing of web pages, as it applies for use within the Air Force and the interagency community. It proposes wikis as a part of the solution to the demonstrated unequivocal need for greater collaboration between the military, other US governmental agencies, other governments, and non-governmental organizations. After describing the types of currently deployed collaboration tools Communities of Practice, mIRC chat, and Blogs, the paper suggests wikis as an additional mechanism to meet the need for a non-sequential web-like collaboration tool. The paper gives a basic description of wikis and looks at the world's largest public wiki, Wikipedia, describes some features and benefits of wikis, and then describes the underlying technologies. It then provides examples from the public internet, private sector and government of on-going successful uses of Wiki.