At the back of the shed This was the second of the photos that I took in the deep in the night, in a deserted Hunter Valley field. Also a ...
Monthly Archives: May 2008
May 29, 2008
Express your interest in submitting for the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards
Having received a good crop of submissions for this year's Intranet Innovation Awards, we're now starting into the first round of evaluation and scoring. Since the closing date, however, we've had a few people get in touch to ask whether it's too late to get an entry in. This is ...
Categorised under: Uncategorized
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May 27, 2008
Shifting from content management to content delivery
The CMS Myth has written about moving from content management to content delivery. To quote: As vendors look to differentiate and provide more value, they are scurrying to deliver more ‘out of the box’ tools to deliver content and better overall user experiences. It’s important for the savvy web professional ...
Categorised under: Content management
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May 26, 2008
Photo: Glowing shell
Glowing shell Spent the weekend up in the Hunter Valley, and set aside a night to stand in the darkness in an deserted field (as one does!). I "painted" this abandoned shed with a million candle power light ...
Categorised under: Photos
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May 23, 2008
The Australian CMS marketplace [+ audio]
| View We do a lot of work helping organisations select a suitable content management system (CMS), ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations, Content management
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May 23, 2008
Content is not data
Seth Gottlieb argues that content is not data, and that "unstructured data" is not a very helpful term. To quote: Content has context. In addition to who wrote the content, where it appears also matters. We care greatly how content is classified and organized because we want to make it ...
Categorised under: Content management
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May 22, 2008
Growing the team at Step Two
Step Two has been growing strongly over the last few years, and we've built ourselves a global reputation in the intranet space (and beyond). We have staff in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, but the work is still pouring in. We're therefore growing our team, to further support our consulting, mentoring, ...
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May 22, 2008
Bite-sized UX research
Steve Baty has written an article on bite-sized UX research. To quote: Regardless of the cause for your company’s resource crunch, focus on getting small wins as often as possible throughout your involvement in a project. This is a fairly common piece of advice that crops up time and time ...
Categorised under: Usability & user-centered design
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May 21, 2008
21 days of wiki adoption
Stewart Mader has published a series of videos covering 21 days of wiki adoption. To quote: Your competitors are using wikis. Your customers are using wikis. So are other employees in your organization. You need to use wikis too. It’s where your future is. And I’ll show you how.
Categorised under: Collaboration, Intranets, Knowledge management
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May 20, 2008
Running a brainstorm session in virtual space
Michael Sampson has written an article on virtual brainstorming sessions. To quote: Be very clear that brainstorming rules apply. If the brainstorming work is being run through a wiki page, write clearly at the top of the page, "Brainstorming Rules Apply", and create a link to the page in the ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Knowledge management
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May 20, 2008
Intranet Innovation Awards: thanks for the great entries
Thanks to all those who entered this year's Intranet Innovation Awards. Just a quick note to say that if you had technical problems with submitting (such as overloading email servers), or haven't had confirmation of receipt, please do get in touch as we'd hate for you to miss out...
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May 19, 2008
Fixing appalling intranet search
Gerry McGovern talks about fixing intranet search problems. To quote: Intranet search is appalling because people don't want their content to get found, and the organization does not value the importance of finding.
Categorised under: Intranets, Search tools
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May 17, 2008
Photo: Panorama - Gold ship
Panorama: Gold ship I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. The fading light added definition to the clouds, and the street lamp behind conveniently illuminated the ship. If only the skyline was completely clean, but ...
Categorised under: Photos
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May 16, 2008
How to improve intranet content? (a mindmap)
There are many ways of improving the quality and value of intranet content. To progress discussions on this topic, we've produced a mindmap that brings together almost a hundred ideas. Download the PDF ...
Categorised under: Content management, Intranets
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May 16, 2008
Open for entries: 2008 Global Intranet Survey
Jane McConnell has just opened up the 2008 Global Intranet Survey for submissions from organisations. This is the single most important survey conducted on intranet management and aspirations, and the results produced are of great value for all intranet teams. It will only take 45-60 minutes to complete the survey, ...
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May 15, 2008
Enhancing dashboard value and user experience
Joe Lamantia has published the fifth article in his series on dashboards and portals. To quote: Portals gather and present content from a wide variety of sources, making the assembled items and streams more valuable for users by reducing the costs of content discovery and acquisition. By placing diverse content ...
Categorised under: Content management, Information architecture, Information management
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May 15, 2008
WIPA Usability and Eyetracking Seminars (Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane)
Spreading the word on behalf of the WIPA committee: WIPA is presenting an afternoon seminar on the use of the latest eyetracking technologies and the challenges of ensuring usability when an Agile Development process is used for developing websites. The two speakers are Dr Peter Brawn and Dr John Eklund, who are both experienced ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
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May 14, 2008
Intranets are not information dumps
Gerry McGovern has highlighted that intranets should not be information dumps. To quote: Maybe we distribute information so that people can become better informed. But what are these things we want people to become better informed about? And why aren't these things we want people to become better informed about ...
Categorised under: Intranets
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May 14, 2008
Only a few days to win an Intranet Innovation Award
It's now only a few days until entries close this year for the Intranet Innovation Awards. It should only take about an afternoon to put together an entry, and we had some strong winners last year. Looking forward to seeing what this year brings!
Categorised under: Uncategorized
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May 13, 2008
Sage advice on wiki adoption: keys to success
Stewart Mader has written about keys to wiki adoption. To quote: Meetings are an especially good place to start. Plan agendas using a wiki, then record minutes & notes, and action items. Between meetings, you can update the status of items, and this sets the stage for deeper wiki uses, ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
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May 13, 2008
A first taxonomy for “search log junk”
Avi Rappoport has written about "search tools junk". To quote: Search logs contain a lot of weird things, and some of them can have a significant effect on search log analysis. Having looked at tens of thousand lines of search log entries, I offer this first attempt at defining some ...
Categorised under: Search tools
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May 12, 2008
Don’t try to boil the content ocean
The phrase 'trying to boil the ocean' refers to tasks that are clearly and heroically impossible. This is exactly what most teams take on when they try to get every intranet page up to the same high standard. In the earlier article titled Intranet authoring: a hobby?, the role of ...
Categorised under: Content management, Intranets, James' articles
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May 12, 2008
Searching more is not always better
The rise of enterprise search has put an increasing focus on searching ever broader collections of content and documents within organisations. While enterprise search projects generally start with simple intranet search, attention quickly moves to searching document management systems, collaboration tools, business systems and fileshares. Underpinning this work is the belief (or ...
Categorised under: Information management, Intranets, James' articles, Search tools
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May 12, 2008
Intranet (re)design wrap-up
So you're sitting at your desk and you have to redesign your intranet (or design one from scratch). Where on earth do you start? By any measure, this is no easy task. The multitude of factors that need to be taken into account can be overwhelming. Over the years, we have published ...
Categorised under: Information architecture, Intranets, Usability & user-centered design
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May 10, 2008
Photo: Pale cross (I)
Pale cross (I) This is a photo I took late at night in the cemetary at the top of Wellington city centre. A beautiful and haunting place, even after they put the road through the ...
Categorised under: Photos
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May 9, 2008
Enterprise social tools: components for success
Thomas Vander Wal has written about achieving success with enterprise social tools. To quote: Social tools require much more than just the tools for their implementation to be successful. Tool selection is tough as no tool is doing everything well and they all are focussing on niche areas. But, as ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge management
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May 9, 2008
Intranet questions (Wellington, NZ)
The last two days I've been running a workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. A great group, and very vigorous discussions and debates. As ever, for the record, these were the "big questions" raised by participants at the beginning of the workshop: Homepage policy? Intranet vs document management? Process for delivering a business-effective intranet? Intranet redevelopment ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations, Intranets
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May 7, 2008
Wikis in the Enterprise
Wikis are spreading like wildfire within organisations, driven by their quick setup and comparatively easy use. As yet, however, little has been written on how to make wikis work well. That is why the new report from J. Boye, titled Wiki in the Enterprise is so valuable. Many have written ...
Categorised under: Content management, Intranets, Knowledge management
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May 7, 2008
Comment on pilots and avoiding training
Graham Oakes (based in the UK) emailed me a great perspective on my story about pilots and avoiding training. Here's his thoughts in full: One thing to consider behind this is what is the real corporate objective? A lot of this sort of training is done for compliance -- ...
Categorised under: Intranets, Knowledge management
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May 6, 2008
Farewell and thanks to Patrick Kennedy
We were saddened to say farewell to Patrick Kennedy last Friday, as he is heading onto new opportunities. Patrick has been a truly valuable member of our team, and a real pleasure to have in the office. He's also worked tirelessly for the benefit of our clients, and for the ...
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May 6, 2008
Highlighting two workshops (Melbourne, Brisbane)
Just a quick note to highlight two of our upcoming workshops: Complete Intranet Management Melbourne, 9 May 2008 Running in a few days, this is a unique opportunity to get "under the hood" of the Intranet Hive, our new methodology for managing intranets. This provides a view of all the ongoing ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
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May 6, 2008
User-centric UA and entry page strategies for better findability
Jane McConnell has written about the importance of intranet IA. To quote: 1. Define top level categories ( level 1 navigation) in user terms, not in terms of the source of the content. This results in categories defined according to subject or purpose (user populations who have similar needs). 2. Ensure ...
Categorised under: Information architecture, Intranets
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May 5, 2008
The four purposes of an intranet [+ audio]
| View As you may have noticed, I've been working steadily to capture some ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations, Intranets, James' articles
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May 3, 2008
Photo: Desert fingers (II)
Desert fingers (II) Flying out to Europe took me over central Australia in the middle of a sunny day. Whlie taking photos through the window of a plane is always fraught, the ever-changing landscape proved irresitable...
Categorised under: Photos
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May 1, 2008
User interface implementations of faceted browsing
Mike Padilla has written an article on the design of faceted browsing. To quote: Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list ...
Categorised under: Information architecture, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design
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