Startup mines for riches in collaboration software

CHOICES • AboutUs relies on wiki volunteer cadre as well as its own staff

By Jim Redden

The Portland Tribune, Mar 4, 2008, Updated Oct 30, 2009

KATIE HARTLEY / TRIBUNE PHOTOS

Vinh Nguyen (left) hits a pingpong ball with boss Ray King at AboutUs, a startup with offices in Portland and Pakistan that’s had no trouble finding interested, qualified workers – even volunteers.

Some employers are having no trouble finding new workers.

One of them is AboutUs Inc., a startup company that has created a Web directory using what’s called wiki software, which creates text that can be edited by anyone.

Dozens of local computer buffs and wiki fans show up for Wiki Wednesdays on the first Wednesday of every month at the company’s inner-east-side offices. Some have been hired to help build the firm’s Web site, which is intended to include individual pages on millions of businesses around the world.

Even the office looks different from a traditional business. The computer workstations are on wheels, allowing teams of employees to quickly gather for a specific project and then disperse when it’s done.

Founder Ray King also occasionally can be found playing pingpong with employees in an adjoining room.

AboutUs employs 31 workers in two offices, one of them in Lahore, Pakistan. Asked where he finds his workers, King looked puzzled, then said, “People we know.”

That reaction doesn’t surprise Ward Cuningham, a former Tektronix Inc. engineer who developed wiki software several years ago. The best-known application is Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia that’s collaboratively written and edited by volunteers who consider themselves members of a community — a community of wiki users.

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