At Elevator Up, we have quite a bit of information that we need to constantly organize. Not only does this information need to stay organized but managed by a multiple people.
So a wiki has been introduced into the company. It’s something that has always made sense but it’s a tool that I (1) didn’t really know how to manage and (2) didn’t like the lack of good organization that I was seeing while we began to enter information into it.
So, tonight I made it my mission to figure out how to best organize some things on our internal wiki. I started by adding some of our web clients but then quickly realized it was going to take awhile to keep these organized.
I’d like to introduce WIKI Categories. This is an awesome little feature that I am now taking FULL advantage of. All you need to do is put the following tags at the bottom of your page.
[[Category:Web Clients|Mast Heating]]
This places all of our web clients into a category called “Web Clients” and then organizes it under “M” because I said “Metro Health”.
[[Category:Hosting Clients|Mast Heating]]
This does the same thing as above but also places it within the “Hosting Clients”
The results of this creates a nicely organized list of pages in a category (example on MediaWIKI
posted on September 25, 2007| 11:05 PM EST
For those that know a bit about the craziness of my life, I’m in currently in Boston getting ready to attend the Ektron 2007 User Conference. Ektron (for those that don’t know) is a content management system (CMS) that is built with all Microsoft languages. I’m not a huge fan of Microsoft but we’re landing a few clients that need exactly what Ektron offers and they said they need to stay with Microsoft.
In my younger days I would have walked away from projects like this but I’m beginning to realize there’s more to life than a certain language. It’s the ability to solve problems for people in inspiring ways. At least that’s what I find myself dreaming about.
One thing I decided to do while waiting for the conference to start was do a little viral marketing (to steal a phase from the buzzword bucket). I always figure out what session to attend right before it begins and often need to make a decision fast. One of the things I’ve really liked while attending other conferences is that random guy that spends time converting the schedule into an iCal (calendar) format and offering it up to everyone for a free download.
The results of this is easy integration with your favorite calendar tool and the ability to sync that information with your phone. Once it’s on the phone, it’s easy to review all the information you need to make those quick decisions.
The viral part comes in when (after you’ve made it for yourself), you offering it up to everyone else at the conference - giving them the same convenience without the pain staking 45minutes of data entry you went through.
I also emailed some of the folks that are running the conference and hoping they will link to my recent development or maybe even make a comment/thanks to me while on stage (I can dream).
Now it’s off to figure out how to feed myself.
posted on September 11, 2007| 3:53 PM EST
