If you are unfamiliar with what a wiki is, I explain it like this: it’s a web site that anyone can edit, where all previous versions of every page are viewable, and where users can recieve automatic notification whenever a page of interest changes. Wikis are used for collaborative knowlege and document development. The best introduction is Wikipedia, the biggest wiki in the world. If you visit that site, make sure you click on the tabs at the top of each article and give a good look around.

There’s a fantastic looking conference underway yesterday through tomorrow in San Diego, called WikiSym 2005, the 2005 International Symposium on Wikis. The online resources available alone are terrific. The workshop page for the Wiki Spam session alone looks worth a look. I’ll be looking over this site as much as I can before I facilitate a discussion about wikis at a TechSoup online event later this month (Oct 24-28).

I found out about WikiSym via the blog of Ross Mayfield, wiki-guy extraordinaire and head of the wiki heavy-weight company SocialText. Ross is a charming guy and is providing some good, live coverage of the conference.

Technorati Tags: wikis, conferences, WikiSym