I was reading an article outlining the vision for the future of enterprise collaboration platforms by John Tropea. He discusses existing options for collaboration software and outlines a vision for an unified platform. The question he ends up asking himself is the following:
"Could we actually move in reverse and make some of the tools a little less unstructured? Anyway, to come to the focus of the post, can we somehow use design another way to increase adoption?"
Here are the 3 key takeaways that struck me:
- The vision of a unified platform addressing most (if not all) enterprise collaboration needs:
"The whole idea is to not have data locked up in multiple tools; []. The other premise is that it’s cheaper buying one platform that can mildly do all things, rather than lots of focused products."
- The need for content templates:
"Wouldn’t it be good if wikis could offer layouts using tables, this way my page is on the way to be structured how I like in one click."
- The need for additional structure, up to applications & an app store:
"I’m thinking further than extending a wiki with pre-formatted pages, I’m thinking apps (ie new modules) for the platform are a unique thing offered by social computing and the Web 2.0 ethos of the user building stuff."
What resonates with me is that this is exactly the vision at the heart of XWiki software, especially our current development effort:
- Positioning XWiki as an enterprise collaboration platform:
- Providing tools that make it easy to create templates and structured content:
- Moving towards an app store and the matching app repository:
Clearly, we still have work to smooth things out, eliminate remaining rough edges and provide a full and comprehensive package, but we're definitely on the right track. It's nice to see our vision validated ex-post :-)