wiki and bistro: similarities

There is a legend (or reality?) that says that after Napoleon lost his last wars, Russian soldiers came to Paris. This was around 1815. They were very thirsty and when they asked for a drink, they shouted at the counter: "bistro, bistro".

The meaning of bistro in russian is Quickly .

Basically, they wanted to get their glass of vodka quickly as possible.

After some 70 years, the name "bistro' appeared in Paris for describing this small restaurants, coffee places where you could get some glasses of wine, simple food such as boiled eggs, oinion soup etc.

It is said that the meaning of bistro comes from 'bistrouille' (some kind of food) and has nothing to do with russian soldiers.

With the time, the bistros in Paris and elsewhere have become much more sophisticated and some of them challenge restaurants regarding the wide choice and the quality of the dishes that are served.

So, what does bistro have to do with wiki ?

When Ward Cunningham: invented the wiki, he said that it is "the simplest online database that could possibly work". The name wiki was actually taken from Hawai and means: "Quickly".

All in all, bistro and wiki have the same meaning, at least in terms of language.

The similarities do not stop here.

When the wiki was invented in the 90s, all in all it offered a blank web page that anyone could press on edit and on Save. Nothing sophisticated, so far.

From there, impressive initiatives started, wikipedia being the most famous one.

Now, just like the bistros, wiki platforms have become very sophisticated.

We're not talking only about simple collaboration with just a couple of buttons.

We are talking about a whole range of complex features

1. Use of Plugins: for instance, Confluence of Atlassian provides a Slideshow inside the wiki page
2. Use of Macro: for instance, Socialtext provides an easy way to integrate google results into a wiki page
3. Addition of Widgets: it is possible to add a youtube clip inside a wiki page
4. Using Templates: you dont have to start from a blank page but you can use templates and fill in some forms
5. Access rights: it is no longer the period where you would trust anyone not to spoil your page. There is a whole authorization system to make sure that only the right people can view/edit/comment the pages.
6. Last but not least, interface with other systems provides some headaches

Bistro and wiki started very simply and have become very complex and unfortunately do not always fill in the expectations of their visitors.

We can see it especially in the workplace. (see slide show presentation: )