WeAreSmarter

Context
Our experiment using a wiki for co-authoring our article was inspired by the WeAreSmarter initiative: http://www.wearesmarter.org/

Here are their lessons learned courtesy of project manager Aaron Strout, of Shared Insights, a key member of the [|co-ordinating team] that includes MIT, Pearson and Wharton.

Q1) What were the final stats on the book,
e.g., # invited to contribute, # that actually did, amount of content created...

· 4375 Registered Members · 737 forum posts · 250 wiki contributors · 1,600 wiki posts · In addition to actual community members and contributors, the project was influenced by hundreds of bloggers, Podcasters, and conference attendees at the inaugural Community 2.0 Conference in Las Vegas

Q2) What was the editorial process?
e.g. Who edited it? Who had authority? How were editorial decisions made?


 * To get the community started, seed content was created and presented to the community.
 * For a period of six months, the community at large had free reign over the contents of the book, including the ability to author and edit.
 * There was no authority granted to one community member over another.
 * At the conclusion of six months, a snapshot of the manuscript was captured and turned over to a writing/editorial team which created the final book

Q3) Were you pleased by the end product? What surprised you most about the process and the end result?

 * We are very pleased with the end product.
 * The book should have tremendous impact on how corporations do business based on how employee and customer communities are beginning to impact traditional business processes.
 * What surprised us was that the contributions from the community came back to us in such a wide variety of ways. We had anticipated that most of the submissions would come through the book wiki, when in fact the discussion forums, podcasts, related blog posts and in person comments were all substantial sources of content for the book.

Q4) You mentioned that the proceeds from book sales will benefit charities determined by the book's many authors. How will this work?
· All authors will receive an equal vote on the distribution of book royalties to charity. · We will advise the community of the royalties as soon as the book hits the book shelves · Royalties will be sent annually to those charities selected.

Q5) What were the key learnings from the book wiki? If you were to advise people on how to create the next wiki book, what most important insight would you pass on about your experience?

 * That writing a book on using a wiki is harder than we thought – including how to build, nurture and edit the content of the community for all who want to benefit from their contributions
 * We have yet to fully distill it all, but the community provided a wealth of suggestions for how to best create a wiki book. They didn’t all agree of course.
 * We intend to document the writing and community building process in a series of article that we will publish on the site and in a number of leading publications.

Q6) Do you envision a second or third book in this vein?

 * Yes. We are already talking about a series of books that will focus on how community and social networking is impacting sales, marketing, product innovation and training in the corporate environment.
 * We will be announcing the next book shortly

Aaron Strout Vice President, Marketing Shared Insights [|http://www.sharedinsights.com]

//Contributed via email August 20, 2007//