InformationWeek just came out with a great article on the impact of Web 2.0 collaboration tools like PBwiki on the role of IT.  Web 2.0 and Software-as-a-Service represent a major paradigm shift for IT managers, but as InformationWeek puts it:

“You can ignore Web 2.0 tools, or try to shoo users away. If you take one of these approaches, let us know how it works out for you. A better approach is to embrace new collaboration methods, whether through an in-house deployment, a software-as-a-service option, or both.”

Longtime customer and FOP (friend-of-PBwiki) Doug Cornelius also had some nice quotes about PBwiki versus SharePoint:

“It’s a classic story of enterprise 2.0,” says Goodwin Procter’s Cornelius. “We’re up and running with PBwiki in 30 seconds, and SharePoint is taking a year.” Fact is, users will find ways to make their working lives more convenient–with or without the input of IT. This is particularly true when it comes to Web collaboration tools.

Music to our ears. 

When I was putting together PBwiki’s Terms of Service a few years ago, I spent extra time with our lawyers to make sure that it was as pro-user as possible. The first few versions I got back weren’t good enough and I pressed them to make it shorter, simpler, and to put more rights in the hands of users. I eventually ended up with something I felt good about. Something that made it clear that we weren’t going try and take ownership of user’s content and that we took their privacy seriously.

That hard work has been paying off, with many enterprise customers praising our confidentiality clause for private wikis and our lack of authoritarian clauses. Today, Joshua Greenbaum at ZDNet published an article called Making Web 2.0 Safe for the Enterprise: TOS à la PBwiki that did a great job showing how important terms are for an enterprise service. So hurrah! We’ve got your back.

David E. Weekly
Founder & CEO

That’s geek code for “PBwiki loves South by Southwest!” One of the advantages of a tool that’s simple to get set up and running with like PBwiki is that you can use it to make quick, ad-hoc workgroups at conferences like South by Southwest. If you’re looking to post your own itinerary or put together a spontaneous birds-of-a-feather session, come set up a new wiki with us and email david+sxsw@pbwiki.com with the address and I’ll add it to the official PBwiki SXSW page.

Cheers,
David Weekly
Founder & CEO

Uber-blogger Henry Abbott of TrueHoop (now part of ESPN) is heading to the NBA All-Star Game, and he’s taking PBwiki with him.

Henry has asked TrueHoop’s tens of thousands of readers to join with him in creating a wiki for the All-Star Game which will include articles, posts, videos, and other original content.  And he’s chosen PBwiki.  Here’s what Henry had to say:

Let’s use that wiki to assemble, starting now and running all weekend, all of the best articles, blog posts, video, and original anecdotes about what’s happening all over the city. Not just the stuff that’s in press releases, but what’s really happening on the ground.

If you’re from New Orleans, and have a story to tell about having the All-Star game in your city, please share it here. If you find a great article or video about New Orleans, this is the place for it.

Basically, I am hoping that with your help this can become a go-to resource of the best real New Orleans information as All-Star Weekend rolls on. It’ll take a lot of you pitching in with thougtful contributions. But if you do, this’ll really be something.

Also, I’ll be honest, in the past I have found wikis kind of hard to operate. Not this one. It’s really simple. Try it. (emphasis added) Here’s the link again. Thanks.

Credit the assist to David Cohn of DigiDave fame for setting up the wiki.  Big thanks to both Henry and Dave for introducing PBwiki to such a broad audience.

If you want to visit the wiki, just go to http://truehoop.pbwiki.com.

Fortune Small Business just wrote a nice article about how Lee Rosen of Rosen Law used his creativity to drive adoption of his PBwiki.

Rosen offered a $1,000 cash prize to his 32 employees–for every page they created on the wiki, they earned a possible combination to the company safe (which contained the aforementioned $1,000).  At the end of three months, the prize went to Ben Sutton (pictured below).

But Lee had the last laugh–by switching his people over to PBwiki, he saved $25,000 per year that he had been spending on running a Lotus Notes server.  And money wasn’t the only benefit:

“The biggest reason that we’re switching is that the wiki is easier to use,” says Rosen. “If employees see a better way to organize or present information, they can just go ahead and do it with a wiki. With Lotus Notes, it required a programmer.”

Maybe you don’t have $1,000 to spare to drive adoption of your wiki, but maybe you can modify Rosen’s technique to fit your organization.  How about giving your top user tickets to the game, or a night out on the town?

If you get your entire company using PBwiki, the benefits will far outweigh the cost.

Click here to read the Fortune Small Business article.

We have some free PBwiki materials I want to share with you.

Lots of our users give talks about wikis. Some are teachers, like the 1,000+ who responded to an email I sent out a few months ago asking if they plan to present about wikis. (They presented in places like Maine, Malaysia, and Texas — see pictures.) Others are just casual users who want to show their friends what a wiki is. Sometimes, employees in big companies want to communicate the idea of a wiki to their boss.

For everyone, we’ve developed the PBwiki Presenter Packs, which include videos, how-to guides, and more. Until now, you had to sign up to get them (and if you want a free PBwiki t-shirt, you should still sign up).

But now you can download the PBwiki Presenter Pack materials and use them for free right here. Enjoy!

-Ramit

Our very own Nathan!

Nathan is the CTO of Pbwiki.com, a Palo Alto-based startup that is now the world’s largest hoster of wikis.

Nathan will be speaking about “how to keep a popular web service from melting when it becomes popular - Debian, PHP, Apache, Lighttpd, Squid, Memcache, MogileFS and MySQL.”

Nathan was a President Scholar and received a BS in Computer Systems Engineering at Stanford University.

More information from the Stanford Linux Users and Open Source Group.

PBwiki is going down in history. Namely, PBwiki will be included in a book tentatively titled, “The Teacher’s Guide to Teaching History with Technology: A Handbook for Teachers, by Teachers” by Justin Reich and Tom Daccord of the Center for Teaching History with Technology.

The book, to be published by M.E. Sharpe, has an anticipated publishing date of sometime in Spring, 2008.

On hearing this news Peebers the Undeniable Robot of History ®, a bit of a history buff, clanged his enormous iron feet onto his hassock, clenched his half-bent billiard between his two rows of frighteningly regular enamel teeth and sighed with satisfaction.

–Curt

I don’t need to tell you that PBwiki is a giant robot, clanking through the forelorn alleys and lonely highways of the world, shooting lasers out of its eyes and sizzling the Ignorant. That’s because you helped to build PBwiki and you know it to be a Thing of Collaborationâ„¢.

I do have to tell others, however. Most will be welcomed, weeping and relieved, into its cold, metal embrace. For others, the robotic klaxon will serve as a cautionary tale. Either way, I can’t do it without the help of the PBwiki faithful. Sure, I know reporters and editors. What are you talking about? I know like a million. But I don’t know all of them. How could I? So I need your help.

Is your brother the tech reporter for the Robotic Sun-Times? Does your sister-in-law cover education for National Public Robot? Is your college roommate the reviews editor for Robots and Gardens? If you’ve got anyone out there in the mythic world of the “mainstream media” please let me know by emailing me at curt(at)pbwiki(dot)com so I can convince them to help me warn the world at large of what you and I already know.

Woe betide the unprepared when the Giant Clanking Robot of Perfectly Reasonable Vengeance®, appears unheralded on the horizon.*

Help me help you. Help me help you. Help me help you.

–Curt

*I don’t know. I guess there are like two robots, and they’re fighting. Or maybe it’s just one robot, but with two aspects. Or maybe it’s like the robot from The Day The Earth Stood Still, not having a nature sufficient unto itself, but rather reacting to those it comes into contact with, thereby being either a kind of savior or an agent of punishment, depending on how a given person behaves.