Does Your Small Business Need its own Wiki?
If you have trouble keeping up with all the information required to run your company, consider setting up an internal wiki for your crew. You can set one up in minutes online, no server or technical expertise required. They’re secure, easy to use, and may bring a new level of organization to your company.
When I joined BookFool.com last year, we suddenly had the need to coordinate info among three full-time Fools working in 2 different states. We needed to keep track of who was doing what and when it was due. We also had a lot of documents to push around and revise. The wiki saved our life!
Why Bother?
With your own private, internal wiki, you can do all kinds of things:
- Keep track of the logins to your dozens of social networking sites.
- Start conversations with the entire organization.
- Share articles and your comments on them.
- Store photos and documents.
- Track your assets.
- Keep up with customer contact info.
- And more.
Instead of emailing everyone in the company to find out who has the latest version of your company’s employment application, look it up in the wiki. Instead of emailing around a document for everyone’s approval, put it in the wiki and let everyone hammer on it until it’s ready for the public. Archive that great email conversation between you and the head of sales where everyone else an comment on it.
We keep our Mission, Vision, and Values in the wiki where any Fool can see it and edit as necessary. We keep all kinds of stuff in there. Our wiki now comprises 555 pages. It’s the BookFool.com Brain.
This is our page for tracking assets.
Ready to Try Your Own?
After looking at all the web-based wikis out there, my wiki of choice is PBWorks (formerly PBwiki). They have a free option so you can get a feel for how it works before signing up for one of their reasonable paid packages. Their uptime and support are top-notch. I accidentally broke our wiki by uploading a corrupt file, and they had it fixed in no time.
You can also customize the look of your wiki (see above) and set different access levels for each user.
Because I currently work from home in Mississippi and spend all day on the computer, I may be more of a Wiki Power User than most. I looked up my usage stats and found I’m averaging over 40 page views per day. That’s a lot of wiki-ing. But even if you’re not a power user like me, you’ll still find ways to simplify your work life with this powerful tool.
If you currently have trouble keeping up with documents, ideas, conversations, logins, photos, or almost anything else, put them in a wiki and simplify your life.
Review: Old Smokey Electric Smoker
[Ed. note: If you're looking for some BBQ-related reading to keep you company during an all-night smoke, let us show you the lowest prices on the excellent Backyard BBQ: The Art of Smokology.]
When I want to show off, I smoke a couple of Boston Butts in my old-school Brinkman charcoal smoker (the one that looks like R2D2). The results are amazing, but you have to baby-sit it all day. Aaaalllll daaaayyyy.
When I want good BBQ that’s easy and consistent, I haul out the Old Smokey Electric Smoker. My wife surprised me with one for my birthday last year. I’ll admit to having a mildly snobbish reaction–”Charcoal is the ONLY way to smoke…”–but then I plugged it in. Hallelujah!
http://www.oldsmokey.com
It works without water in the pan because it’s a sealed canister. The moisture (and smoke) circulates throughout the cabin during cooking, so the meat doesn’t dry out and the chips don’t catch fire. It’s a clever design.
The consensus among online reviewers is that a traditional charcoal smoker produces better results but that the Old Smokey makes the best smoked meat for the price and amount of effort you put in. I couldn’t agree more. The meat from Old Smokey doesn’t have that characteristic bark of charcoal or wood-fired smokers, but it’s consistently good/great and is completely set it and forget it.
If you want competition-grade smoked meat, get a small loan from the bank and ask for some time off work. If you want to create restaurant-quality meat on your own schedule, look into the Old Smokey. Good price, too!
The Results
Here is our creation from today. Pork Loin, rubbed with Rendezvous Famous Seasoning and wrapped in bacon, which was then sprinkled with more rub. Before:
3 hours later:
And yes, it did taste as good as it looks. We’ll have y’all over for Boston Butt and sweet potato biscuits sometime. Which reminds me, I’ve still got to perfect my sauce recipe. I have not been successful with my applesauce-based concoctions thus far.
