Wikis for event planning and any other project type activity remains one of the easiest ways to introduce Enterprise 2.0 into the an organizations. I have heard from people at places like IBM and Novell that once you use a wiki for event planning there is no going back to email or other means. Every medium has its best practices. What are the right things to do to optimize a wiki within the enterprise?

HiveTalk recently had a post on How to hold meetings on a wiki that offers some excellent suggestions that I am adding a bit to. They first said to adjust the time of the meeting to accommodate its asynchronous nature. Allow time to reflect, one of the benefits of asynchronous meetings and also do not expect everyone to be always online and respond immediately, even if you are and do. Next, HiveTalk said to provide some structure. This is useful in any meeting, but it is especially necessary when people are confronted with a new medium. Provide a framework and questions for the meeting to get people involved.

You should also encourage participants to sign their contributions, In alive meeting this is obviously part of the give and take. People need to know the personal context of remarks and who they are responding to. Provide a means to allow participants to follow the discussion with RSS and/or email notification. But I would add to also allow this to go somewhere besides the email inbox. I am not excited when a heated discussion on an email group suddenly drops twenty messages in my inbox. Take advantage of the common workspace here and do not drag in the sins of email spaghetti with its overlapping tangled mess.

Like any meeting someone should be the moderator and capture actionable items. The moderator needs to keep thing son track but not smoother the conversation. Finally declare when the meeting is over. Give people advance notice and then shut it down. In most cases you will also want to continue to provide access to the meeting as an archive. This is one of the knowledge management benefits of Enterprise 2.0 Do not throw it away.

Thanks to HiveTalk for providing these suggestions. What has been you experience with wiki meetings. Are there other suggestions you want to add?