Growing in a Down Market with PBwiki (recording and transcript)

We had a great webinar this morning with Teo Mayes, the CTO of RMC Vanguard Mortgage, a rapidly growing mortgage company in Houston that has used PBwiki to improve both employee productivity and customer satisfaction.

Click the link below to watch a recording of the webinar:
http://www.archive.org/details/GrowingInADownMarketWithPbwiki

Or, if you’d prefer a quick summary, one of the webinar attendees put her own transcript of the proceedings on her blog:
http://christytucker.wordpress.com/2008/06/10/wikis-for-improving-productivity/

Our next big event will be a live webinar with Peter Williams, the CEO of Deloitte Digital.  This webinar will take place at 4 PM Pacific on Wednesday, June 25.  To find the exact time in your time zone, use the Time Zone Converter (PBwiki’s time zone is U.S.A. – California – San Francisco).  Click the link below to sign up:
https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/986201823 

Congratulations to our 500,000 wikis contest winners!

A hearty PBwiki congratulations goes out to the winners of our 500,000 wikis contest.  Each of these winners will be receiving a lifetime upgrade for their wiki that includes all of our premium features features like single sign-on, IP whitelisting, and PBwiki’s famous automated design customizer (just upload your logo, and let PBwiki redesign your wiki to match it).

The lucky winners are:

Samantha, a teacher in the Washington Township School District, created wiki number 499,999 (renaissanceleaders.pbworks.com).

Mara created wiki number 500,001, the DI (Differentiating Instruction) Resources Wiki, which you can visit at http://diresources.pbworks.com.  “This is a space for educators to gather, share, and reflect upon web-based resources for differentiating instruction.”

And finally, congratulations to Dr. Carl Binder of SixBoxes.com, who created wiki number 500,000 (sixboxes.pbworks.com).  “This wiki is a place to collect what we know and what we are learning about the Six Boxes Approach, and how we plan to learn and develop more.”

Congratulations again to our winners, and thanks to everyone who helped us reach the 500,000 wiki mark!

PBwiki helps University of Kansas & Tulane rebuild post-Katrina

Now this is one of those things that makes us feel good.

Architecture students from the University of Kansas and Tulane University are working together to help rebuild New Orleans’ 7th Ward.

One one year, the project, called “Rebuilding the Seventh” has already grown to encompass nearly 1,000 documents.

The professor leading the project, Nils Gore of Kansas, had this to say about PBwiki:

“It’s cheap, it’s easy, and it works.  When you’re looking for a tool to enhance collaboration, what more could you possibly want?”

Transition to a PBwiki 2.0

We know our users are excited about making the switch to PBwiki 2.0, and we’ve been working on a tool that will allow our users to update their existing wikis to PBwiki 2.0. This tool is now ready and we’re looking for interested users to sign up, make the switch to PBwiki 2.0, and tell us what you think.

If you’re interested in trying this out, please click here to apply. We’re looking forward to hearing from you!

Note: Please don’t forget to check your email for a confirmation link!

See PBwiki's Newest Features (Webinar 5/20, 10 AM Pacific)

We’ll be showing off some of the new features we’ve added to PBwiki in the past few months since the release of PBwiki 2.0.  These include:

  • Undo button
  • Remove formatting
  • Sortable tables
  • Footnotes
  • Improved lock stealing
  • AJAX tags
  • Notifications 2.0
  • Comment notifications

    • To sign up for the webinar, click the link below:
    https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/992520148

    PBwiki featured in New York Times blog

    Marci Alboher, the career columnist at the New York Times, wrote about PBwiki in her latest blog post.

    By now pretty much all of us (and even our parents) have used Wikipedia to look something up…But have you ever seen or used any other kind of wiki? If the answer is no, it may be about time to add wikis to the tools you use to work collaboratively with others.

    She points how PBwiki can be used to reduce the number of emails you receive and edit a New York Times bestseller.

    But the most interesting part is the comments, where people ask about the differences between PBwiki and other collaboration services.

    Read the article at the New York Times blog: More to Wikis Than Wikipedia

    Sign up before June 1 for a chance at a free lifetime wiki upgrade

    Birthday Cake

    (Photo courtesy of PinkCakeBox and Flickr.)

    PBwiki’s 3rd birthday is coming up on May 31, and to celebrate that happy day, as well as PBwiki hitting the 500,000 wiki mark, we’re giving away free lifetime upgrades to wikis 499,999, 500,000, and 500,001.  Click here for the full announcement.

    We’ll be announcing the three lucky winners on June 4.  They’ll be receiving lifetime upgrades with all the bells and whistles.  Tell your friends!

    UPDATE: Congratulations to our lucky winners!

    Do wikis make a difference in the way students collaborate?

    As more universities adopt web 2.0 technology, administrators want to know exactly how students are using these tool and what benefits they bring. Campus Technology addressed this question in their latest article “Wikis, Blogs, & More, Oh My!’

    Here are two different ways Universities are using wikis, and their results:

    Professor Kane at Boston University encourages students to submit their own exam questions via his Exam Question Workspace wiki. In a year, students submitted a whopping 600 questions overall.

    At SUNY-Delhi, CIO Patrick Masson uses wikis to assist in policy decision-making. Masson says user response to this approach has been overwhelming. Over the course of one month, the school’s president made 73 edits, the coordinator of online learning made 58, the chair of budget and planning made 31, and the vice president of student housing made 29.

    Here are three more suggestions from PBwiki educators:Continue reading “Do wikis make a difference in the way students collaborate?”

    What we really work on at PBwiki

    My new flip video arrived today, and I decided to interview some folks at the office. I asked what they are REALLY working on and I received some enthusiastic responses!

    Stay tuned for some more quick videos from my flip camera. What do you want to know from the PBwiki team? Leave your questions for our next video in the comments!

    If you’re interested in joining this wild and crazy team, see what positions we have open at http://pbworks.com/content/jobs

    Getting a "read only" message?

    [9:09pm] If you’re getting a “read only” message on your wiki, our engineers are performing unscheduled maintenance and are currently working to restore full wiki access. We estimate restoring full access by 1am PST.

    Your data is safe.

    We’ll continue updating this post with the newest developments. If you have any questions, please leave a comment here and we’ll respond right away.

    [11:37pm] We’ve revised our timeline and expect to restore full access to wikis by 4am PST. We apologize for the inconvenience. Please see some of the Q&A in the comments (below). If you have any other questions, please leave a comment and we’ll get right back to you.

    [1:42am] Great news: We’ve restored access to your wikis. You should be able to access your wiki now.

    If you have any questions or notice any irregularities, please click “Help” in your wiki. Again, we apologize for the inconvenience — we all worked around the clock to restore full access to your wikis.