how to retain knowledge - and keep knowing it all
I stumbled across an inspiring blog post on killer sites and started writing a comment in response.
After doing so - i thought
(a) The text of this comment could look a bit spammy in the wordpress comment moderation list - and could easily get deleted by accident.
(b) Its such a long comment that it could become a blog post in itself.
So, here it is:
The geeky way to deal with memory loss
Whenever I do something techie, I create a new wiki page for the task/mission on a password-protected personal Trac site. (Trac is an open source ”project management ticketing application”).
In fact ,this blogsite - eatmybusiness.com - is a pre-cursor to the idea. This site is basically my personal knowledge base of techie problems that i come across and (sometimes) solve. Its a place to offer my little experiences to the World in the hope that others can follow. ( In fact, another way of looking at this site is as a ”reverse forum”, my personal stand in the web 2.0wnership wars - But i’ll write a post to explain this idea in more detail some day).
My Trac site is, in essence, the same thing but contains more detailed personal info that I don’t particularly want to tell the World.
On the Trac site I have two kinds of wiki pages for each techie thing that i do; First is a P.O.A (Plan of Action). The other is a ”HowTo”.
As I learn, Google-search and research how to do the particular task I scribble my progress in my POA notes.
Then once i have finished the task - i get on with my life.
Months later, if i need to repeat the task again, I go through my POA page and transfer the knowledge over to a ”HowTo” page - writing it up more neatly.
Then, every time i need to repeat the task, I search my wiki and its all there for me: a personal step-by-step tutorial that gets the job done in next-to-no-time.
I highly recommend it.
Here’s a sample of my pages (note they are named in wiki format):
# HowToAddAnEmailAccountToOutlook
# HowToBackUpDataBase
# POAsMovingtoHomeOffice
# POAsSetUpQueryCaching
# POAsThingsToIncludeInTermsAndConditions
Update 2008 10 26
Since writing a recent post on wiki standards I have come across MoinMoin - the ancestor of Trac.
So, if you like the idea of getting a FREE personal wiki up-and-running then you need to do two things:
* install moinmoin on your desktop
* read about how to use MoinMoin as a personal information system
If the reality matches the promises on those pages - you could be writing your first personal wiki note within a matter of minutes.