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Okay, so I have an inservice coming up for work on Monday. One of the issues I want to bring up relating to my job is consistent documentation and communication of information.
My job primarily involves organising events. This means keeping track of lots of information in lots of programs.
Currently, I use:
- Two spreadsheets for financial information. I maintain them both, different people have access to each.
- Another spreadsheet for publicity-fu, shared and maintained with Communications.
- A table for more generalised publicity-fu, only some of which is directly related to me. I own the document and regularly issue death threats against five specific people for the information I don't have control over. The updated table gets chucked at Communications on a regular basis.
- Email correspondence in Outlook with anyone who has anything to do with events.
- Internal staff calendars in Outlook, to see who's available for what event and if they're taking 'initiative' and going to events that don't cost anything WITHOUT TELLING ME. These give me a varying quality of information, dependent on how staff manage their calendars.
- Two FileMaker databases which cover overarching information on the events; one is for statistical purposes and the other has more qualitative information.
- Paper files, which contain hard copies of correspondence, and (theoretically) a hard copy table of what I've done for that event. I say 'theoretically' because in practice finding the time to go and dig out the paper file and trawl through all the information from different sources to update it is near impossible. That, and the blind girl in me doesn't like paper files all that much.
Certain things do with events - travel bookings, approval for advertising, overarching changes to our strategic plans - are dealt with by other people and I have to chase them if I need that information.
This means that information is easy to lose track of and can be very fragmented. If I'm asked a simple question like "Are we having a telephone line at Event X?" I have to go through my email correspondence in the appropriate Outlook folder to find out whether I've spoken to the event organisers about it, then through the finance spreadsheets to see if we're processing a payment for it, and then I might double check the paper forms to make sure there aren't any specific conditions on that phone line, such as local calls only. Then I have to chase the person who needed the information urgently because the event is in three days, they're attending but will be out of the office between now and then and they really need to know NOW.
So it's not terribly surprising that I've occasionally wondered if a wiki would solve some of these problems. I could set up pages for each of the events, and possibly general sections on finance and publicity. I could bung in information from emails and letters as I got it without displaying anything confidential. I could link to the appropriate documents - all on file servers - where necessary. The other people concerned could add in questions and data. In the process, we could all stop chasing each other for simple pieces of information.
But it would be a huge undertaking to set something like that up, and I don't have the ability to justify it at this point. Would it be a better system, rather than creating yet more redunancy? How cost effective is it? How hard is it to use a wiki? How secure can the information be made? Could we get formal training for it, or would we have to teach ourselves?
So, what do people think? I'm not going to be putting a full blown proposal up at this inservice, but is it a totally stupid idea to raise in the first place?
My job primarily involves organising events. This means keeping track of lots of information in lots of programs.
Currently, I use:
- Two spreadsheets for financial information. I maintain them both, different people have access to each.
- Another spreadsheet for publicity-fu, shared and maintained with Communications.
- A table for more generalised publicity-fu, only some of which is directly related to me. I own the document and regularly issue death threats against five specific people for the information I don't have control over. The updated table gets chucked at Communications on a regular basis.
- Email correspondence in Outlook with anyone who has anything to do with events.
- Internal staff calendars in Outlook, to see who's available for what event and if they're taking 'initiative' and going to events that don't cost anything WITHOUT TELLING ME. These give me a varying quality of information, dependent on how staff manage their calendars.
- Two FileMaker databases which cover overarching information on the events; one is for statistical purposes and the other has more qualitative information.
- Paper files, which contain hard copies of correspondence, and (theoretically) a hard copy table of what I've done for that event. I say 'theoretically' because in practice finding the time to go and dig out the paper file and trawl through all the information from different sources to update it is near impossible. That, and the blind girl in me doesn't like paper files all that much.
Certain things do with events - travel bookings, approval for advertising, overarching changes to our strategic plans - are dealt with by other people and I have to chase them if I need that information.
This means that information is easy to lose track of and can be very fragmented. If I'm asked a simple question like "Are we having a telephone line at Event X?" I have to go through my email correspondence in the appropriate Outlook folder to find out whether I've spoken to the event organisers about it, then through the finance spreadsheets to see if we're processing a payment for it, and then I might double check the paper forms to make sure there aren't any specific conditions on that phone line, such as local calls only. Then I have to chase the person who needed the information urgently because the event is in three days, they're attending but will be out of the office between now and then and they really need to know NOW.
So it's not terribly surprising that I've occasionally wondered if a wiki would solve some of these problems. I could set up pages for each of the events, and possibly general sections on finance and publicity. I could bung in information from emails and letters as I got it without displaying anything confidential. I could link to the appropriate documents - all on file servers - where necessary. The other people concerned could add in questions and data. In the process, we could all stop chasing each other for simple pieces of information.
But it would be a huge undertaking to set something like that up, and I don't have the ability to justify it at this point. Would it be a better system, rather than creating yet more redunancy? How cost effective is it? How hard is it to use a wiki? How secure can the information be made? Could we get formal training for it, or would we have to teach ourselves?
So, what do people think? I'm not going to be putting a full blown proposal up at this inservice, but is it a totally stupid idea to raise in the first place?
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From:
wiki
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- data quality; someone has to look after all the changes, otherwise rumour etc. start to become fact
- people like to process their stuff in Word and Excel; getting them to something different (especially as different as a wiki) might prove a nigh-impossible task
Not even to mention the access-control nightmare it's gonna be.
From:
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it sounds like at least a shared calendar and document management tool will cover most of what you need.
I wiki might help. it's lack of access control (anyone can edit anything) may be an issue. it's edit tracking might help.
still, it sounds more like you need better communication channels than anything else.
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From:
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I have discovered that you can download your "tickets" as a list of tasks into any application that can parse iCalendar files off a website.
It can also be setup in a way to require authentication to edit any of the objects on the site.
(And the source code control part might still be useful, one can theoretically check in word documents... though that's usually not a good idea).
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The biggest danger is not forcing the Wiki to become the Source Of All Truth. If you don't actually do that, it becomes Yet Another Of Six Billion Spots To Look For Stuff.
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btw I found the post you did on your job incredibly insightful .. I work in an environment where we try to take into account accessibility issues with websites ...so really enjoyed your post ... hope you don't mind me saying hi :)
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You must've been there a loooong time before I was; it's entirely possible you started high school the year I was born. :)
I actually didn't like the place or the school all that much - I belive my first thought on starting there was "Only six more years to go until I can leave this town" - but it's part of my history, it's not something I want to hide and I don't really mind if the other people from that era or that town find my journal. I don't remember very many of them fondly, but the rest have faded to be of little or no consequence, so...*shrug*
My guess is that the small town thingo probably has a lot to do with the lack of MHS alumni on this site. If you still live in the area or you have family who do, it would be difficult not to be paranoid about having your journal broadcast across the whole valley. I don't think my Mum reads this journal, but she knows about it, and most of the things in it. And she doesn't care much for gossip. :)
Anyway, thanks for commenting. :) Who do we know in common, if you don't mind my asking?
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Can't say I got to experience the small town mentality at Macksville itself .. but certainly did in later years at another town I lived in. Now I live in Sydney and whilst its a big town :) I've noticed that gossip and the like still happens when you are part of a smaller 'unique' community :) Guess people are people where ever you go.
Who do I know? ... whilst he isn't somebody I've met :) I have been on his mailing list for years ... Thorfin :)
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