A Sourcing Wiki!

David Bush and his Iasta colleagues never sit still on the creative marketing side of things. David is founder of e-sourcing forum, the second longest running blog in the Spend Management world. In fact, I remember when David and I came up with the idea for E-Sourcing Forum over a couple of beers back when Spend Matters was lucky to get a few dozen visitors a day (which explains why I was drinking). Like me, David and his cohorts decided to dive into the unknown by starting a blog. Their focus, however, would be on creating a site dedicated exclusively to e-sourcing (rather than the broader procurement and supply chain world like Spend Matters). And they've done a great job with it so far.

Now, David has created a new sourcing Wiki, eSourcingWiki. What's a Wiki, you ask? According to Wikipedia, the online "open source" encyclopedia, a Wiki is "a website that allows visitors to add, remove, and otherwise edit and change content, typically without the need for registration. It also allows for linking among any number of pages. This ease of interaction and operation makes a wiki an effective tool for mass collaborative authoring." David bills his Wiki "as open content community of strategic sourcing and procurement best practices ... [It] is intended to be a dynamic document that constantly adjusts and transforms to current trends and thought leadership in supply management ... [We are asking] global contributors to assist in the ongoing documentation and knowledge building that is essential to creating useful information for supply management professionals."

In other words, Wikis like eSourcingWiki allow readers to actually contribute to a collective body of knowledge and research. Imagine, for example, if a whitepaper on sourcing decision support was not written by a single vendor or analyst firm, but a collective body of the best minds in the market. And think about how that whitepaper could become a living document that was continuously evolving based on reader input and criticism. That's a Wiki. And that's the framework that David has created which allows others to come in and modify and contribute content as they see fit (with a few restrictions, at least in some areas of the site).

Currrently, eSourcingWiki has three "whitepaper"-type document available for reading, download, and editing. The first is on e-Sourcing Best Practices. The second is on On-Demand / SaaS applications platforms. And the third is an introduction to Spend Analysis and Opportunity Assessments. In addition, David is showcasing other third party content that is not available for editing but is free for download (with no strings attached and no registration required). So what are you waiting for? Get yourself over to eSourcingWiki and start learning -- and participating, if you wish -- today!

- Jason Busch