Last Christmas my son got a set of Kapla blocks which have since become his favorite toy. For the uninitiated, Kapla blocks are small, flat blocks of wood around 4" x 1" x .25." wide. They are the simplest toy you can think of, even simpler than LEGOS. Most adults look at the blocks and say, "What in the world would I do with a bunch of wooden sticks"? But children know exactly what to do with them. The blocks are so basic they can be morphed into just about anything a child can imagine...a boat...a train...an airplane.
While playing with Kapla blocks one Saturday morning it occurred to me...wikis are the Kapla blocks of software. They're so basic that they can be morphed into anything...an intranet site, a team page, a customer community. They are the ultimate in open-ended content creation. However, their lack of structure is sometimes daunting to us adults who have spent our lives learning to color inside the lines. We don't always know how to get started when confronted with a blank canvas.
The clever folks at Kapla address this problem in an elegant way. In the box they include an idea book showing various works people can build with their blocks. A rigid, step-by-step instruction guide would be too stifling - not to mention useless - to a young child.
In Confluence 2.10, we wanted to give our users their own book of ideas. That's why we extended the Demonstration Space to include three examples:
If you want some ideas on the kind of pages you can build in Confluence, download Confluence 2.10 with the bundled Demonstration Space. Click through the example pages. Edit them. And Feel free to borrow some of our ideas. Or, if it's instant gratification you seek, visit our hosted Demonstration Space. Like Kapla blocks, Confluence will morph to your imagination. Just remember to tap into your inner child!
6 Comment(s)
Hi Bill -
Really nice analogy - and so true - as so many customers of Atlassian have already proved, as well as Atlassian in their own site.
And then when the "kids" get into the plugins already available - it's just more and more candy. Just as a child is willing to taste ANY kind of candy, experimenting with the plugins is equally gratifying (well the "kids" may dispute that - but anyways ;).
Though the case studies are interesting (since they cover needs and background too), any chance for a running list of public Confluence WIKI "reference implementations" (public to the Web) to show even more. I guess I'm suggesting blowing this out page - since there are alot more than this out there nowadays...
A ongoing central list of linked reference implementations would be a great collection for all. (Maybe people reading this can post can email sales@atlassian.com to get your site listed?)
In the same similar "child" line of thought, "seeing is believing"...
Again - great post and analogy!
By Ellen Feaheny at January 1, 2009 2:24 AM
Great idea!
I'd love to see something similar bundled with JIRA - some example workflows that could be modified for particular uses...
By Jim Priest at January 1, 2009 2:47 AM
Yes - I agree Jim - JIRA as well.
Especially since I just noticed that Atlassian updated (recent?) its front page customer stats - if I recall, from 13,300+ customers in 106 countries - to what shows today: 14,000+ customers in 108 countries!
That's some serious implementations out there!!
It would be great for more knowledge and information to be shared back (i.e., screenshots, work flow flowcharts, more live site links, scripts, sample markups, FAQs, whatever you have) with Atlassian, so they can continue to collect and share with everyone... :)
Please share your knowledge -
Implementation examples speak a gazillion words (as we all know).
By Ellen Feaheny at January 1, 2009 4:42 AM
Note: there is an American made version of Kapla called KEVA planks at KEVAplanks.com. (made from maple) Visit the projects pages to see more ideas of things you can build with Kapla or KEVA planks. You hit it on the head with the simplicity. People need a few examples to get started with blocks or software.
By K Scheel at January 2, 2009 3:54 PM
I recently stumbled upon some nice "live site" lists (in the most recently evolved Evaluator Resources area), that should be added to this thread (and my apologies for suggesting otherwise - doh!).
It's not 1000s of customer reference implementations, but it's also positively not nothing too (and both pages invite additional contributions):
>>> Confluence-powered LIVE Customer Sites
>>> JIRA-powered LIVE Customer Sites
Anyways, should have figured - those Atlassians are pretty on top of it all!
By Ellen Feaheny at January 6, 2009 12:00 PM
great story. it helped me to explain it to someone else about how a wiki works. will send this story to my team.
thanks.
By Matthew Ho (Next Digital) at January 22, 2009 11:32 AM