Tech Talk: Using Wikis

By Elizabeth Wasserman

Delivering large project files to clients via e-mail became cumbersome for the employees at Write2Market. Here, CTO Miles Thomason tells Inc. Technology how a wiki transformed his company's ability to share information.

Write2Market is a business-writing firm servicing such clients as ADP and UPS. The Atlanta area business, founded in 2003, has 23 employees and full-time independent contractors. The company writes everything from advertorials to white papers and delivered large project files to clients via e-mail, CTO Miles Thomason tells Inc. Technology Editor Elizabeth Wasserman, until he deployed a wiki.

Elizabeth Wasserman: How have you used wikis?

Miles Thomason: We set up the wiki a few months ago specifically to solve the problem we had with the delivery of large documents to clients. So we have a wiki set up where each client can have a log on and we can put the finalized documents right there in the wiki where clients can download them and make comments.

We don't actually use it as a collaboration tool. We use it as a delivery mechanism for our large documents. Write2Market produces written materials for business-to-business communication -- such as case studies, white papers, and that kind of thing. Sometimes we'll produce a manual for a software system and it will wind up being a 15 megabyte PDF file. You can't just go e-mailing that everywhere.

Wasserman: How do you deal with security with the wiki?

Thomason: The wiki has got an excellent username and password set up. We just have to go in and set the client up with a username and password. Then we notify them that we have a user created for them and give them the link and that's that.