The good news - Another article about a civic organization using a wiki to streamline their documentation requirements and activities. From the web site ferret.com.au :
Mercy Ships is the leader in using hospital ships to deliver free world-class health care services to the poor. Founded in 1978 by Don and Deyon Stephens, the newest Mercy Ship is the Africa Mercy, due to be commissioned from London in spring 2006.
Atlassian, an Australian based developer, is providing Mercy Ships IT with Confluence, its popular commercial wiki.
"In the past it's been very difficult to capture meaningful documentation," says Mercy Ships chief information officer Kreig Ecklund. "It was always left to the end of the project, and often never happened. Even when we did produce documents, they were buried in the developer's personal directories."
The bad news – (1) it’s a PR piece for Atlassian’s Confluence wiki and (2) the ‘solution’ is focused on Mecy Ship’s IT department.
Now, I have nothing against PR articles for software vendors and nothing against IT using a wiki. Heck, IT developers are the guys who invented it. But, again, here’s a reinforcement of a perception that wikis are for developers.
Wikis are for everyone. I hope the non-tech staffers of Mercy Ships come to realize that they too can get tremendous benefits out of the Confluence wiki.
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