While the title of this book may be focused on the word WIKI as a technology, in fact this is a book about collaboration, and any book, even one with a single author’s name on the cover, is in fact an exercise in collaboration. Projects like this can never be done alone, and I have been very lucky to have such a great team of collaborators with me, helping pull my ideas together and make this book a reality.
First off I’d like to thank XML Press Publisher Richard Hamilton for agreeing to help turn my various ramblings and ideas about wiki implementation into a book. Also a big vote of thanks to The Content Wrangler himself, Scott Abel, for introducing me to Richard in the first place and for providing the foreword to the book. My fellow XML Press authors, Anne Gentle, Zarella Rendon and Brenda Huettner were a great team of cheer leaders. Thanks also to Scott, Anne, and Brenda for being part of the review team, along with Mike Aragona, Jay Willson, and Sarah Maddox. All of them provided great notes, helped me overcome certain assumptions and pre-conceived ideas, and helped make the book a much better read.
I’d also like to thank wiki evangelist, Stewart Mader, for some excellent conference bar conversations and for sharing his infectious enthusiasm for the wiki’s potential. The team at WebWorks.com in Austin, TX, Tony McDow, Ben Allums, and Jesse Wiles, deserve a note of thanks for introducing me to the practicalities of using, managing, and publishing with wikis in a business environment. Thanks are also due to the folks at Atlassian software, makers of the Confluence Wiki, for being such great hosts when I visited their San Francisco offices to talk wikis.
I am indebted to Noelle Thurlow and Francisco “Pancho” Castano for sharing a panel at the WikiSym 2009 conference with me and for giving me permission to use their wiki stories as case studies. A vote of thanks also goes to Gina Fevrier for permission to use her STC presentation as the basis for a case study.
A special mention to my two artistic collaborators on this project, Patrick Davison for the excellent cover design, and Doug Potter for the fun cartoons. It was a pleasure working with both of you.
But, as always, the biggest vote of thanks goes to my family, my wonderful wife, Gill, and my two daughters, Meggan and Erin, for their support and for putting up with the many evenings of me disappearing into my home office to hit the keyboard. They are the best collaborative team that anyone could ever wish for.
Alan J. Porter
September, 2010
Austin, Texas