Teaching an old wiki new tricks

Last week I did a wiki training session that included one of the senior managers in our company. As I walked him and the others through the options for doing work on the wiki, he asked me if we could use the wiki to do customer focus groups. Yes, customer focus groups.

Now, our wiki is primarily intended as a resource for internal use only, but when Ted and I considered this proposal, we found a way to make it happen using a 'sandboxed' instance of the wiki. In the end, we hope that this customer-facing wiki will not only save time by avoiding countless conference calls with clients, but that it will become a place where we can educate thought leaders in the industry about all of our other social media activities. And that's just for starters.

This is exciting stuff, and it goes to show that the old saying is true: You can teach an old wiki new tricks. Or something like that.

Have your wiki users surprised you with unexpected uses for your corporate wiki? Please share your story.