A blog? Did you say wiki? Is that something to do with Cricket?

I was chatting to a good friend last night and mentioned that I had started bloging. I was chatting away talking about what I was doing and then realised that there was a look of "what the hell is a blog?" on my friends face. I guess I was initially surprised but then after thinking about it realised that in Australia bloging really hasn't taken off yet. I guess in IT circles it is becoming well know but it certainly isn't mainstream yet.

So anyway I went on to explain the concept of a blog and why I would bother doing it. I think she thought I was nuts and that I was just spending time posting stuff that nobody was reading (which is probably right at the moment to some degree). I explained that I wanted to try and communicate better to a broader audience of our clients and other interested people. That it is just another way to be more open about what we have been doing with our products and our thoughts on emerging stuff. While I received a degree of understanding I think there was still that look of "Are you nuts or what?".

After getting past the blog stuff I then (probably a mistake) mentioned Wiki's. Now this concept just went way over the top. Why on earth would people spend time posting information? and bothering to correct others? Is it anonymous? Can anyone change anyone's posts?

I explained how sites like wikipedia.org had reached a critical mass where thousands of people were contributing and now it is this awesome site with a wealth of info. I explained that while you could post anything, and that it isn't peer reviewed, the sheer fact that people can correct errors and ommisions has meant that wikipedia.org is actually a pretty good reference.

Still I got an amazed look. I am sure she thought I was nuts. My friend is a teacher so I suggested wouldn't it be awesome to create a wiki with teaching resources. Teachers seem to be creating ideas for teaching aids etc all the time and if they had someway to share these wouldn't that be great. I suggested that she could just start by creating wiki entries for projects she had prepared. It could simply start as a repository for what she is doing and then that way she would have her own reference library for future years. Then I suggested why not make this available to other colleagues over the web. They might just use what she had posted, but some of them might think of posting their own. After a while the resources would start to build up and the word might spread. Before you know it you might have thousands of teachers around the world contributing resources to the site.....wouldn't that be awesome!!!..........I got that look again.

I guess the thing with bloging and wiki's is that they have to start somewhere. With any luck and a bit of consistent work the blog or wiki might generate some interest. I think there must be a point that a ground swell just reaches a level where it ends up having a life of its own. The question is how to start that ground swell. Any ideas?