ACMEpedia = Wikis + Tags + Facets

Today at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference we saw a presentation from Pete Bell, Co-Founder of Endeca, called "ACMEpedia: Wikis, Tags, and Facets." As part of the Advisory Board I lobbied for a session like this and I am grateful for Pete being here.

Pete told us how Endeca applied their own "guided summarization" product to aggregate information from several sources and present it within an intuitive interface for employees to find information and learn about Endeca's business. The intranet site is called Endeca-pedia and it provides a functional view of corporate data and content coming from:

• Formal documents stored in eRoom and Alfresco
• Business process information stored in SalesForce and QuickArrow
• Informal knowledge stored in a Confluence wiki

It was interesting to see how this combination of structured and unstructured information can be navigated.

I'll post a link to the slides once they are available.

At the Enterprise 2.0 Conference this morning Ross Mayfield is announcing that SocialText is releasing a production version of SocialCalc, a multi-user web-enabled spreadsheet embedded within SocialText wikis. You may recall when Dan Bricklin announced some time ago that he was working with SocialText to make a commercial version of wikiCalc.

I had a chance to talk with Ross about it earlier and I have to say it looks impressive.

Excel may be the most used collaborative application in business today. We often don't think of Excel this way but many companies make critical business decisions based on data tracking, reporting, and modeling done through Excel. Often this work is done collaboratively among several people.

SocialCalc looks to provide a new approach to traditional Excel-based collaboration by embedding spreadsheet capabilities within SocialText wikis. This has the potential to enhance many existing collaborative spreadsheet scenarios and likely creates a whole new set of possibilities as well. Even a simple spreadsheet embedded within a wiki page benefits by gaining useful wiki features such as version control with rollback and functioning completely within a browser.

In addition, SocialCalc  has a number of options for referencing structured data stored elsewhere. For example, SocialCalc can reference named ranges in other spreadsheets and also query web services (check out this early screencast of wikicalc).

Although SocialCalc is not the first product to offer collaborative spreadsheet capabilities (SharePoint 2007 and even Hyperion Performance Management come to mind) but being embedded within a wiki makes it an interesting option for enterprises to consider.

I missed the announced release of the Wikipatterns book but I am thrilled for Stewart that it has been published.

I first noticed the Wikipatterns wiki almost a year ago and wrote about it on Collaboration Loop. The site is a tremendous resource for Enterprise 2.0 advocates. I am also intrigued by the application of patterns to wiki adoption and wonder if they can be applied elsewhere.

I had the pleasure of meeting Stewart at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference last year. We happened to be sitting next to each other at the same table during lunch and had one of those pleasant small-world "Oh, you're the one that...!" moments.

The Wikipatterns book is now available both online and in “brick and mortar” stores in 10 countries! To help you find it, I’ve compiled a list of stores currently selling the book. Just find your country and choose the bookseller you prefer. The link will take you directly to the product page for Wikipatterns on that store’s website.

Source: Where to find the Wikipatterns book in online and retail stores around the world