Category Archives: Wikis

Professor for Open Source Software at University of Erlangen

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After 12 years of working in the high-tech industry, I’m changing gears. I left my prior industry job and am starting today, September 1st, as the “professor for open source software” in the computer science department of the Friedrich Alexander University of Erlangen-Nuremberg in Bavaria, Germany. This is a free (not tied to a chair) full (fully tenured) professorship. I’m looking forward to joining the department and collaborating with my new colleagues at the university, local industry, and beyond.

The professorship is well-funded and I’ll be seeking to hire Ph.D. students right away. For my research plans, please see the upcoming blog post. For now, I’ll let my favorite (ex-)Stanford comic strip do the talking. If you aren’t reading Ph.D. comics yet, check it out.

Call for Papers: Fourth Workshop on Wikis for Software Engineering

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For your information, the fourth workshop on wikis for (in) software engineering. I’m on the program committee.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Fourth Workshop on “Wikis for Software Engineering”, May 16, 2009, at ICSE 2009, Vancouver, Canada, May 16-24, 2009

Submissions are due on January 26 (abstracts), February 2 (papers), 2009

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WikiSym 2009 Call for Papers (Submissions)

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WikiSym 2009 Call for Papers

The International Symposium on Wikis and Open Collaboration

http://www.wikisym.org/ws2009/

October 25-27, 2009, in Orlando, Florida, USA

In-cooperation with ACM SIGPLAN and ACM SIGWEB, co-located with ACM OOPSLA 2009, peer-reviewed and archived in the ACM Digital Library

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The International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym) is the premier conference dedicated to wikis and related open collaboration systems and processes.

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Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Software Development Teams (SofTEAM '09)

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For your information, a workshop on Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Software Development Teams (SofTEAM ’09)

CALL FOR PAPERS

European Workshop on “Collaboration and Knowledge Sharing in Software Development Teams (SofTEAM’09)”

www1.in.tum.de/softeam09

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Learning from Wikipedia: Open Collaboration within Corporations

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Wikipedia is the free online encyclopedia that has taken the Internet by storm. It is written and administered solely by volunteers. How exactly did this come about and how does it work? Can it keep working? And maybe more importantly, can you transfer its practices to the workplace to achieve similar levels of dedication and quality of work? In this presentation I describe the structure, processes and governance of Wikipedia and discuss how some of its practices can be transferred to the corporate context.

This presentation represents the next step in the evolution of two Wikimania tutorials/workshops, see Presentations/Tutorials. If the slideshow doesn’t play, please use the PDF file download below.

Reference: Dirk Riehle. “Learning from Wikipedia: Open Collaboration within Corporations.” Invited talk at Talk the Future 2008. Krems, Austria: 2008.

The slides are available as a PDF file.

Open Collaboration: Self-Organizing Innovation in Large Corporations

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Author: Dirk Riehle, SAP Research, SAP Labs LLC

Reference: Steven Fraser (editor). “Escaped from the Lab: Innovation Practices in Large Organizations.” In Companion of the 2008 Conference on Object Oriented Programming, Systems, Languages, and Applications (OOPSLA ’08). ACM Press, 2008: Pages 787-790.

Available as a PDF file; my part follows as HTML below.

Position statement for the OOPSLA 2008 Panel on Innovation Practices in Large Corporations

In most companies, the innovation process is organized as follows: A research unit suggests to build a prototype of some innovative product or feature, a line-of-business sponsor signs off on the project, the research unit develops the prototype, a product unit receives it and turns it into a real product.

The critical point is the transfer from research to product unit. Here, many things can go wrong, for example:

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End-User Programming with Application Wikis

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Title: End-User Programming with Application Wikis: A Panel with Ludovic Dubost, Stewart Nickolas, and Peter Thoeny

Author: Dirk Riehle

Abstract: Wikis empower users to collaborate with each other using prose. Users imprint data structures and processes onto wiki pages using social and technical conventions. Application wikis enhance wiki engines with lightweight programming features that aid in making data structures and processes explicit. Using these features, end-users can program a wiki to better support them in their collaborative processes and integrate their work into the overall IT infrastructure. Application wikis make database access and business process integration easy from within the wiki while maintaining the wiki-style of collaborative work. The panelists of this panel, together with the audience and the moderator, will review existing work and explore future research directions in application wikis.

Reference: In Proceedings of the 2008 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym ’08). ACM Press, 2008: Article No. 4.

Available as a PDF file.

Interdisciplinary Research on Wiki Communities Workshop

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For your information, a workshop on interdisciplinary research on wiki communities.

CALL FOR PAPERS

First Workshop on “Interdisciplinary Research on Wiki Communities”, on September 8, 2008, at WikiSym 2008, Porto, Portugal, September 8-10, 2008

Introduction

The array of approaches to studying wikis is a source of wealth but also a possible source of confusion: What are appropriate methodologies for the analysis of wiki communities? Which are the most critical parameters (both quantitative and qualitative) for study in wiki evolution and outcomes? Is it possible to find effective interdisciplinary approaches to augment our overall understanding of these dynamic creative environments?

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A Grammar for Standardized Wiki Markup

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Authors: Martin Junghans, Dirk Riehle, Rama Gurram, Matthias Kaiser, Mário Lopes, Umit Yalcinalp

Abstract: Today’s wiki engines are not interoperable. The rendering engine is tied to the processing tools which are tied to the wiki editors. This is an unfortunate consequence of the lack of rigorously specified standards. This paper discusses an EBNF-based grammar for Wiki Creole 1.0, a community standard for wiki markup, and demonstrates its benefits. Wiki Creole is being specified using prose, so our grammar revealed several categories of ambiguities, showing the value of a more formal approach to wiki markup specification. The formalization of Wiki Creole using a grammar shows performance problems that today’s regular-expression-based wiki parsers might face when scaling up. We present an implementation of a wiki markup parser and demonstrate our test cases for validating Wiki Creole parsers. We view the work presented in this paper as an important step towards decoupling wiki rendering engines from processing tools and from editing tools by means of a precise and complete wiki markup specification. This decoupling layer will then allow innovation on these different parts to proceed independently and as is expected at a faster pace than before.

Reference: In Proceedings of the 2008 International Symposium on Wikis (WikiSym ’08). ACM Press, 2008: Article No. 21.

Available as a PDF file.

Wikis for Software Engineering Workshop

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For your information, a research workshop on wikis for (in) software engineering.

CALL FOR PAPERS

Third Workshop on “Wikis for Software Engineering”, September 8, 2008, at WikiSym 2008, Porto, Portugal, September 8-10, 2008

Introduction

The use of wikis in software engineering dates back to 1995, when Ward Cunningham created the first ever wiki as a platform for discussing patterns and software development efforts. The simplicity and effectiveness of wikis as a medium for collaborative authoring has lead to their vast popularity across many domains.

Goals

This workshop aims to bring together researchers, practitioners, and enthusiasts interested in exploring the potential of wikis as an effective tool to support software engineering activities. Specifically, it is an opportunity to:

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