Wikis and visualisation tools

IKM Emergent’s new website is based on a wiki, a mediawiki wiki which is a type of wiki which can be uploaded onto your own server. Mediwiki was orignally developed for Wikipedia. But what is a wiki?

Wikipedia defines a wiki as:

A wiki is a web page or collection of Web pages designed to  enable anyone who accesses it to contribute or modify content (excluding blocked users), using a simplified markup language.

A wiki – as the basis for the IKM website – was chosen for a number of reasons.

Co-created website
Firstly, the fundamental advantage of the wiki is that it can be co-created. The IKM website is therefore able to host thematic workspaces, both for the programme itself and for other related initiatives which are being edited by individual workspace editors. These workspaces are currently focused on:

1. Information artefacts
2. Intellectual output from the South
3. Intermediaries
4. Local content
5. Participation
6. Translation

There is also a seventh workspace on complexity which will be used to post material on the relevance of complexity to development policy and practice. These thematic workspaces are currently in the process of being created: the ones above with the live links are further on than the others.

Visualisation tools
In addition to this, IKM Emergent is planning to introduce visualisation software so that it is possible to see dynamic, visual links between concepts and contents on the website. A wiki appears to provide a better basis for forming such connections than other website software. This is part of IKM Emergent’s experimental approach to knowledge mapping. The current plan, on which IKM Emergent’s web designers are working, is to map the content of the website using mind mapping software although this is very much work-in-progress.

The Brain is mind mapping software, now only possible to use on a stand-alone desk top, which shows the potential of such dynamic links.  Below you can see a web map generated by TouchGraph which visualises virtual links to the IKM Emergent website. However, at this scale, it is not possible to read the links but does seem to be a powerful way of visualising them.

More on wikis and visualisation
At a recent network event on wikis, hosted by Euforic and ICCO, in February 2009, I got the opportunity to chat to David Weekly the creater of PBwiki, a hosted wiki. When asked if PBwiki had ever considered linking with mind mapping software, he said ”not yet” and that he had so many question about this in the past 24 hours this was something he was going to look into…