User:Darenwelsh

Daren Welsh

Extravehicular Activity Flight Controller & Instructor, KBR, NASA JSC

Let's do something awesome today.

About me

I want information at NASA to be at my fingertips like using a Google or Wikipedia search. Jamesmontalvo3 and I introduced Semantic MediaWiki at NASA's Johnson Space Center to solve massive knowledge management problems within the EVA community. Now we're expanding that to other organizations across the agency. This requires both technical implementation and a cultural movement, but it wouldn't be fun if it was easy.

My work

My day job is at NASA. I train astronauts how to perform EVAs (spacewalks), I write procedures for those EVAs, and I help astronauts execute their EVAs as an EVA flight controller in MCC. Sometimes I help astronauts fix problems. Learn more in my AMA.

Contact me

E-mail: darenwelshgmail.com
Twitter: @darenwelsh
Github: https://github.com/darenwelsh.

Software

While most of my focus has been on implementing a wiki network at NASA JSC to foster improved information sharing and integration, I have made time to develop some extensions for MediaWiki. Some of my extensions are not shared since they integrate our wiki with other NASA servers, but the following are available publicly:

Masonry Main Page

Allows users to format the body of a wiki page using Masonry blocks.

Links: (on MediaWiki.org) (on github)

Summary Timeline

Create a graphic representation of a timeline. This is still very customized for use at NASA, but you could use it to generate overviews for things like a conference agenda or any other event spanning several hours.

Links: (on GitHub)

Meza

I was also a co-creator and contributed heavily early on to the Meza platform, a MediaWiki administration program which enables the easy install and maintenance of MediaWiki and several powerful extensions.

Links: (Meza on MediaWiki.org) (on GitHub)

User Journey

I am fascinated by using analytics to measure user participation and then finding ways to incentivize them to increase participation. Of course, the problem is determining what kind of contributions are "valuable" to the org using the wiki.

Links: (on GitHub)
See also (this repo on GitHub) where I led a challenge to a student software team to address the same concept

Semantic Actions

This is an action/issue tracking system modeled after GitLab, including the ability to portray the actions in a kanban board

Links: (on GitHub)

Sync Wiki Content

A script that synchronizes common content to multiple wikis

Links: (on GitHub)

Watch Analytics

I only contributed to this in the form of ideas and testing, but I like to share it because it is so powerful

Links: (on GitHub)

Outreach

As a co-founder of EnterpriseMediawiki.org, I hoped to connect users and organizations who employ MediaWiki in "corporate" environments. While this did not exclude public and non-profit organizations, the focus of this group was on an environment much different than that of Wikipedia. In an organization where members or employees are expected to contribute, it takes a different approach to stimulate user contributions. EMW also hoped to foster collaboration between organizations on new extensions to improve the usefulness of MW as an open-source knowledge management system in an enterprise environment. While the name "Enterprise Mediawiki" is still used to represent this effort on GitHub with a collection of MediaWiki extensions and a platform installer (Meza), that name has also become the new face of the North American version of the Semantic MediaWiki Conference. Another group, the MediaWiki Stakeholders' Group, has taken the front face of representing "third-party" MediaWiki users. As this community continues to evolve, I try to find places where I can contribute. I find myself somewhat useful in contributing directly to code, but often I'm more useful in the cultural side now that I have several years' experience in growing our wiki community at NASA. If you think I can help your organization change to the wiki way, please reach out to me.

How NASA Started Using MediaWiki

During my initial training in the EVA group, I was appalled with how difficult it was to find documentation and training materials. When I did find relevant information, it was outdated and often-times presented in duplicate sources with conflicting statements. Coming from a prior job in software development and testing, I couldn't believe how little effort was put into search-ability and revision control of these documents. Anyone could easily modify or even delete critical information without any documentation. There had to be a better way. Why didn't they do it like the rest of us? When we want to learn something, we search on Google and Wikipedia.

After years of trying to find the right people who could envision the same system as I had in mind, and even being called "insubordinate" in one of my attempts to start a wiki, Jamesmontalvo3 joined the cause and helped make it happen. Since the fall of 2011, we have been developing and using an in-house semantic wiki using MW and several extensions. Once we had a critical mass to demonstrate how powerful this tool can be, we gained approval and support. In 2013, the Flight Operations Directorate (FOD) EVA group officially declared the wiki as the core of its knowledge management. Our system grew to a wiki network of over 10 wikis integrating the knowledge store of all groups within FOD. Eventually we realized fewer wikis are better when trying to establish a single source of data to prevent conflicting data, so we merged several wikis into a single ISS wiki. We're also working on how we could make this tool available to astronauts aboard the ISS using some method of offline sync.

On November 12, 2019, Christina Koch made the first contribution to a wiki powered by MediaWiki from space, during her mission aboard the ISS. This edit was to the NASA firewalled "ISS Wiki". On November 17, 2019, Christina made the first contribution to Wikipedia from space. Now humans can contribute to the world's collective knowledge from off the planet.

Media About NASA's Use of Mediawiki

Papers

EVA Wiki – Transforming Knowledge Management for EVA Flight Controllers and Instructors. 46th International Conference on Environmental Systems. ICES-2016-405. 10-14 July 2016, Vienna, Austria. Link to publication

Articles

Interviews & Podcasts

Episode 6 of Between the Brackets with Yaron Koren

Videos

Here's to engineering (promo for WP blog article)
History of the EVA Wiki (SMWCon Fall 2014)
Meeting Minutes & Group Communication (SMWCon Fall 2014)
Wiki Accountability and Culture Shift (2015 Houston MediaWiki Meetup)
Semantic MediaWiki Demo and Closing Remarks (2015 Houston MediaWiki Meetup)
The EVA Wiki - Accountable Knowledge Management (Explaining to another group at NASA how our wiki is more accountable than any other knowledge management system)
The EVA Wiki (Presentation at SGT Technology Day 2015)
NASA Wikis: Increasing the Awesome (EMWCon Spring 2018, with link to slides)
Wikis and bias (EMWCon Spring 2019, with link to slides)
State of the MediaWiki Ecosystem (EMWCon Spring 2019 panel discussion I moderated)
Knowledge Management Done Right
Success from wikis (EMWCon Spring 2020)

Presentations

Wiki Pages

5 Year NASA Wikiversary - a page I originally created on the NASA wikis to celebrate 5 years of wiki use at NASA. Now I am able to share this with the wiki community as an example of how to motivate users by sharing analytics and testimonials.

Exploration

Follow my adventures as I explore amazing places, using expeditionary skills from my job:

Music

Sometimes I spin music: