Wiki Leadership
by Trevor Nimegeers, September 24
Ok, ok. It's been 11 months since I put up a blog post and frankly, its about time it gets off my todo list. Here is a good reason to write something... An interesting thing happened to me this week as I filed through my regular smattering of news feeds on what my customers are up to. I feel as CEO it's my job to keep abreast of our customers -- and one way I do that is by watching the public companies closely via news services. While many of our customers are not public -- for the ones that are there is a wealth of information available that allows us to serve them better. So this week I saw the little newsfeed alert that indicated that Ritchie Brothers had some news they were talking about. I was very excited by what I saw.
As big believers (and implementers) of the web as a channel for communication and corporate transformation, I'm always excited when you see a company who "gets it". Ritchie has long been using the web as a pimary vehicle for conducting their unreserved auctions. Now, Ritchie launched a wiki called RITCHIEWiki. This shows they have a deep understanding of how Web 2.0 can help organizations operate differently.
As the worlds largest industrial auction company, this Canadian company is setting the pace. They understood that they could make a significant donation to the world of online documentation by pre-populating the wiki with industrial equipment information and this would only help their business. Rather than letting the wealth of knowledge remain locked up behind company walls -- Richie Brothers embraced change -- and opened this information to the world, and invited everyone to participate in making this and even richer resource for people looking equipment information.
Congratulations Richie Brothers -- I'm impressed with your leadership.
