Like the Borg - but in a good way
Thursday Feb 19, 2009
I was a big Star Trek fan (aka "Trekkie") growing up. One of my favorite things to do with my dad was to watch the old Star Trek episodes (you know, the *real* Star Trek, with Captain Kirk and Spock). I also liked Next Generation (I just *loved* Picard, and Data was fun), although I never really got into Deep Space Nine. For me it was a lot like the "Island of Misfit Toys" in Rudolph the Red-nosed Reindeer. Voyager was good, but not great. I loved all of the Star Trek movies, but "Wrath of Khan" had to be my favorite.
Who knows - maybe this was early evidence of my fascination with technology and my desire to be an in-house technology lawyer? Had I known then what I know now, things would have been a lot easier. 
In any event, I often make analogies to things on Star Trek. I was talking to a colleague yesterday and made such an analogy, which gave me the idea for today's blog.
In our legal department we have an internal wiki. If you're not familiar with a wiki, it's a wonderful tool with a collection of web pages where everyone can add their content and knowledge, and everyone else can access it (think Wikipedia). When talking with my colleague yesterday, I compared our wiki to the Borg on Star Trek - only in a good way. No need for the clunky face hardware. And "assimilation" is a *good* thing.
We used to have information, policies, processes, templates, and the like used by many different people located in lots of different places - people's filing cabinets, individual home directories, separate web pages, shared servers, email folders, laptops, car trunks, etc. all over the world - making it very difficult for others to find and access, especially people in other groups who didn't have the hidden treasure map or someone in a remote location. This could result in the old, ineffective "sneaker network" - walking down the hall and asking people "Do you know where I can find the template for the [fill in the blank] agreement?" (Or its telephonic or email equivalent.) Or worse, reinventing things that already existed. Fortunately, the wiki has changed all of that!
Now, each of the groups within our legal department has added their crown jewels such as policies, processes, templates, guidelines, org charts, and other valuable information to the wiki, making it a cinch for everyone to locate. Some groups have also included additional information about their client groups, technology, products, and other topics, making that information easily accessible as well. Anyone can add to or edit anyone else's content, so we can all build on what's already there (we're a trusting bunch ). The wiki is a living, breathing tool.
To me, the potential of the wiki is amazing. Imagine if all the attorneys at Sun were connected like the Borg and we all had access to everyone else's legal knowledge and expertise - the power would be truly awesome. The wiki is like that - the more people add to it, the more others can share and benefit from it and the more powerful it becomes. In today's collaboration age, resistance may be "futile" (as the Borg are known for proclaiming), but why would you want to resist something so compelling?
The other alternative, I suppose, is a Vulcan mind meld. 
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That's "trekker", not "trekkie"...
According to Gene Roddenberry, who created Star Tr...