Wiki Bridge

BRIDGES...Wiki Wiki Building Bridges

This site--under construction--is being supported by lawyers and CPAs interested in bringing different segments of their professions together and reaching out to other professions. Wiki Wiki Building Bridges, the long name for the site, would be at the same time a quest for similarities and a celebration of differences. With some mentoring from WardCunningham, not to mention software skill and computer hosting, the BRIDGES site is up at:

http://c2.com:8000/

 new site: http://network-lawyers.org/bridges/HomePage (20030826)

There is some evidence of this here at Wiki already in GabrielWachob discussion of the law and patterns. The comments there and in PatternThink that this extends to areas beyond just the law. There may also be an opportunity for lawyers and CPAs interested in organization and management to open a dialog with the participants in JimCoplien's Org Patterns:

http://www.bell-labs.com/cgi-user/OrgPatterns/OrgPatterns

And perhaps there is something in what JohnDeBruyn (yours truly) as a user of computer mediated communications software sees in pattern concepts for improvement in the design and implementation of Wiki Wiki, ThoughtsWeaver and whatever else comes along to extend these two 3D communications/publishing programs.

I like the idea of bridges to other communities -- the WikiWikiWeb concept is more malleable and friendlier than most of the forum/discussion software I've used. (But I'm a nerd, and don't mind the rough edges that might throw other users.)

We're currently (or more accurately, I am) trying to adapt pattern languages to the problems of knowledge management. Patterns are useful in two ways:

We'd like to collect and discuss recurring idioms/motifs/patterns in knowledge management applications. For example, many of our proposed efforts have "shared practices" components, which require users to share their work methods, include a committee or team to evaluate them, and some sort of escalation process to propagate/mandate the best ones. From my point of view, "Shared Practices" is clearly a knowledge management pattern candidate.
In some cases, pattern mining and pattern methods (e.g. workshops, descriptive texts, standard templates, Cockburn's symptomatic index) can be useful components in knowledge management. I'd like to move towards a more pattern-mining like methodology, for example, in the "Shared Practices" area.

We also have a chance to learn from the applications of patterns in other fields, such as architecture where they are mostly used by novices to communicate with experts, or in software where they sound like a great idea but haven't really gelled yet. (IMHO)

-- KenMeltsner