Mashup Wiki Apps

I suppose that sounds like a bad translation from some foreign language, but it seems to be what MindTouch Deki enables. In this blog post, Dennis Howlett discusses the latest release.

I heard an interview over the weekend with the inventor of the wiki and thought it was interesting that he invented it to replace e-mail-based collaboration on project. What little I know about wikis indicates that, within the enterprise, they still work best in the context of a group that needs to collaborate to complete a task.

I suspect it has to do with the fact that individual identity within an enterprise is usually tightly coupled to specific goals and tasks. As a result, most individuals are a bit at sea when asked to start or contribute to a wiki outside the context of some specific goal/task.

I'm not sure anyone can keep track of all the innovation going on in the social media arena, and I don't even try. So, there may be a number of products that look like MindTouch Deki. Regardless, it's an intriguing concept: combine the artifact-oriented wiki with the ability to mashup application inputs/outputs and you get something like a collaborative workflow exploration tool. Something about this sounds catalytic...