Several weeks ago we invited people to contact us if they were interested in being a guest blogger on wikinomics (and importantly, if they had an interesting story to tell). Today we are pleased to present our first guest blogger, Stewart Mader, the author of Wikipatterns (which Amazon just so happens to report is most frequently bought with wikinomics). Below is the first of a four-part series by Stewart that we will be publishing over the next few weeks:

I believe you can love what you do at work.

When I look at the sore subjects of work – email overload, unfocused meetings, and the confusion & misunderstandings that drag down projects – I see opportunity. A grand opportunity to take a step back, get a clear perspective on what really matters, and fix these things so that work can become meaningful and fulfilling.

Hi, I’m Stewart Mader, and I’m pleased to have been invited to guest blog with the Wikinomics team. That paragraph above is from my blog Grow Your Wiki, and it’s my call to action to people inside organizations who feel disempowered by existing tools and business processes.

I’ve been working with wikis for five years, ever since I built my first wiki community for collaborative science curriculum development, and I think the paradigm shift it represents – direct user editing of the content on a web page – is as significant as the Internet itself. When Tim Berners-Lee created the WorldWideWeb, he envisioned it as a “creative space to share and edit information and build a common hypertext (info.cern.ch)” and wikis enable people to do just that.

Growing wiki use in your organization is worthwhile because it creates an environment where everyone is empowered to directly make things happen, which gives people a deeper sense of purpose and accomplishment. That’s not something I can say for most other tools, like email. It’s essential if you want to build a successful new venture, or ensure the relevance and success of an existing organization in this rapidly changing world.

This is the first in a series of guest posts, and in the next one I’ll discuss how a wiki can address the growing problem of lost productivity because of interruptions during work. Have you ever said this? “I just can’t work in the office because there are too many interruptions and distractions.” If so, my next post might be able to help.