I mentioned at the Connectipedia launch last year – if They can do it, why can’t we?
They – are the intelligence community. Intellipedia is a U.S. government cross-department wiki with differing security and access levels. I believe it was started after a Navy representative attended the first Wiki conference in the United States – WikiSym in October 2005. It has been rolling forward ever since – check out this video – the closest representation of the power of Wiki that I have seen to date:
While the video came out in June, I ran across it a few weeks ago. Marc Ambinder of The Atlantic focused on how They used YouTube and NamHenderson is amazed that They are talking candidly about using open source philosophies to tear down silos in that community.
What was missing from both posts was the analysis of the powerful platform and community that wiki is and provides for – ‘Living Intelligence.’
Wikipedia is obviously the most known case, but even the very first Wiki, which was created to change they way software engineering was taught – succeeded in both community and ‘Living Intelligence’. AboutUs attempts to bring TheWikiWay to people, companies, institutions, non-profits… really anyone/anything who is organized enough to have an Internet presence.
hat tip to Suzi Ziegler for editorial support.
{ 4 comments }
I agree, what the Intellipedia folks are doing is tremendous against odds that most businesses do not have to deal with. Minor factual correction: The fellow you mentioned who attended WikiSym 2005 was with the Department of Defense, and he had nothing to do with the creation of Intellipedia.
Ah- thanks Eugene, I remember that he was from the Navy… thanks for the correction. Who *is* credited with the creation of Intellipedia?
the production reform ideas described in the video are not operational in Intellipedia. In fact, very few subscribe to the living intelligence model, but we are making progress. I want to make clear that Intellipedia cannot “stamp” things like in the video: we are working on it in another project. This video has been great in rallying support within the community but it’s still a nascent movement. The living intelligence model will not work if agencies try to protect the traditional “each agency as an independent center” concept. Agency production centers will have to give up some control for this to work.
To learn more about the history of Intellipedia, go to Wikipedia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intellipedia – the data is mostly accurate (based on media reports). The idea for an intelligence wiki came from a paper written in 2004 called “The wiki and the blog”.
Intellipedia.org is not associated with the Intelligence Community but does capture public internet information that is related to either the Intelligence Community or Intellipedia in some way.
Comments on this entry are closed.