You've got 90 seconds to persuade someone to be interested in an inherently dull subject. How do you use that time?
In 2002 I co-wrote a book about knowledge management. Actually, it wasn't about KM, but since I wrote it on contract to John Wiley's computer books division, they got to insist that it be titled Building the Knowledge Management Network. *yawn* (Note to self: Never, ever again write a book on contract!!!)
It's actually a pretty good book about sharing and generating knowledge through online conversation, at least for the time it was researched and written (just prior to the blog boom), but the title didn't impart its content and it was longer than it needed to be (yet another *!@#!* requirement of the contract).
Anyhoo...my point is that marketing a Web application for making knowledge useful and actionable promises to be a challenge when you need to get the attention of people long enough to sell its advantages to the folks within a corporation who will then bug their superiors to actually buy it.
A wiki, for example, is a basic knowledge tool but not wikis differ. Demonstrating the differentiating freatures to prospective customers requires caffeine intake on the customer end and creativity on the sales end.
Creativity is present in this nicely done screencast for ThoughtFarmer - a super-wiki being marketed as an intranet you can fall in love with. I found it being blogged on TechCrunch. ThoughtFarmer's integration of various social tools makes their intranet platform look especially attractive, though I'm not sure of the "lovable" part. I do agree with its approach - and with that of Socialtext - that surrounding a wiki with social tools such as robust profiles, blogs, feeds and social networking is a good way to lure enterprise employees to participation.
Check out ThoughtFarmer's "coolest org chart you've ever seen." Maybe it actually is.
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