Uses for wikis, part X of Y: Brainstorming

February 23rd, 2005

One of the key roles in a brainstorming session is the person who’s in charge of writing down the ideas. The central premise of brainstorming is that every idea is captured, no matter how ridiculous it seems at the time - and this normally means someone standing at a whiteboard scribbling furiously.

Which is all very well if everyone is in the same room - but how do you capture the ideas if you want to brainstorm with people on the other side of the world?

The answer - use a wiki.

You’ll still need someone to fill the role of scribe, but instead of choosing someone who can scribble fast but legibly, now you’re looking for someone who can type fast but accurately. Instead of writing the ideas up on a whiteboard, the scribe types them into a wiki page - which can be accessed from anywhere with a network connection, and instantly refreshed to see the ideas as they go up.

The wiki then becomes a permanent record of the ideas that were generated (saving someone a job of typing up the whiteboard) - and because all the best ideas happen in the shower, it’s there in the future for ideas to be recorded once they’ve happened.

Filed under Wikis, Working smarter |

One Response to “Uses for wikis, part X of Y: Brainstorming”

  1. David Tebbutt on February 23, 2005 4:07 pm

    I don’t want to be a pain (by commenting too often) but your subject matter and mine are close.

    There is a way to brainstorm effectively (although differently) when you can’t be together. You can do it with a wiki, sure, but you might find BrainStorm a more flexible option for this idea grabbing stage of the creative process.

    Marck and I have worked together (but not physically together) for something like ten years. It’s most unlikely we’ve met ten times during that period, and it’s also unlikely that we’ve made more than a hundred phone calls. We do throw BrainStorm files back and forth, each embellishing the other’s work. Sometimes we brainstorm into the same files at the same time and then I merge them. Sometimes we just pass a file back and forth. We are talking about a software design, development and publishing environment.

    Rather than me bang on here, may I give you a link?

    http://www.brainstormsw.com

    Thanks.

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