MentorNet Offers A Wiki For Mentors And Peers To Collaborate, Receive E-Learning And Mentoring

MentorNet, a program from the Australian Businesswomen’s Network, now offers a wiki for mentors and peers to collaborate and receive e-learning and mentoring. The wiki helps members connect and collaborate more effectively by giving each person a platform to introduce new ideas, comment on the work of others, and develop ideas from start to finish. While they have been around for nearly a decade, it’s only in recent years that wikis have become more mainstream and user-friendly.

The MentorNet program, funded under the Australian Government’s Building Entrepreneurship in Small Business (BESB) program offers a vital and rewarding program for women business-owners by matching them with highly qualified mentors that can help train and guide the entrepreneurs through the hurdles of business ownership. To help achieve this, Australian Businesswomen’s Network (ABN) utilises contemporary e-learning technology, including webinars, blogs, and teleconferences. Working with Atlassian Confluence, the enterprise wiki (http://www.atlassian.com/software/confluence), MentorNet is adding one of the world’s top collaboration tools to its program.

“It’s incredibly rewarding to see how our technology can be used to help out a community,” says Mike Cannon-Brookes, co-founder and CEO at Atlassian. “Seeing Confluence used by MentorNet as a means to train and connect their members around the world reinforces our commitment of giving back to the community.”

ABN demonstrates effectively how other non-profits can apply Enterprise 2.0 technology to help their members. The MentorNet wiki acts as an extranet that enables collaborative authoring. In addition, to enhance the portal and user experience, they have created “mashups” with other technology, including Flickr photo sharing, for example.

“From a learning perspective, the philosophical underpinnings of the MentorNet design are providing amazing results,” says Anne Bartlett-Bragg, who designed MentorNet for ABN. “We are seeing demonstrated evidence of the mentorees applying the business principles they’re learning on the wiki to their own contexts — and it’s only 2 months into the program! Not only is the technology of Atlassian’s Confluence providing an enriched experience, but the learning philosophies are enabling immediate application and improvement into their businesses. What more could we ask for?”

Atlassian Confluence is an enterprise wiki used by over 2,500 organisations in more than 45 countries to help them share knowledge and collaborate. Since the company was founded five years ago, Atlassian has given away more than 2,500 free non-profit and open source licenses.