A Wiki is a fascinating thing, even though it may be initially a bit confounding.

I’ve written quite a bit on the topic this year. Last Monday I was in charge of the wiki portion of what amounts to the launch of the first open source business development plan in Sustainability, for Arizona. More about this here.

So  when I visited the new offices of Gangplank in Chandler, Arizona last week, to get a better sense of this remarkable ‘co-working’ environment I could not help notice the parallel.

If Gangplank is a piece of software, it would most probably be a Wiki!

It’s a a true collaborative space, whose ‘permanent residents’ (there are 13 independent businesses working out of  a cubicle-free environment) don’t pay rent. They get to use the utilities, conference rooms, wifi etc for absolutely no charge. I’ve known of several people who ‘office’ out of there. Why does Gangplank choose to give this space away?

Derek Neighbors, co-founder of Gangplank (who was our guest on the radio show last week), spoke about the only investment they require — an investment in ’social capital.’ Which is what Wikipedia is, when you think about it, since no one is paid to create content. And yet, approximately one million man-hours have gone into it, according to Clay Shirky.

Just step into Gangplank if you like to see a human equivalent of a wiki at work. Talk to some of the residents there and see how you might borrow some of its DNA to build a more collaborative workplace.