Intranets aren't owed a living, and we must demonstrate their value if we're to get the resources and support we need. As the technology landscape changes, this will become more important, not less. We've been talking about this for a while now. I recently argued that "minutes saved" on the ...
Monthly Archives: October 2008
October 29, 2008
2007 to 2008 social technographic data indicates increase In adoption
Jeremiah Owyang reports on the recent Social Technographic survey from Forrester, looking at behaviour amongst the US general population. To quote: He points out that inactives (people that cannot be reached through social technologies) has reduced from 44% to 25%. This means that three fourths of the US online users ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, social networking
October 29, 2008
Context is everything with intranet content
Richard Dennison discusses how to incorporate user-generated content into an intranet. To quote: One of the things that I can’t tell people enough when talking about user generated content in an enterprise setting is that users MUST understand the context of the information they are consuming. For example, they must ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
October 28, 2008
Are intranet teams feeling the pinch?
The "managing an intranet during a recession" topic seems to be popping up all over the globe, and we covered it at last week's Intranet Leadership Forum workshop in Melbourne. Interesting, when we asked for a show of hands from those feeling the pinch due to the economic conditions, only ...
Categorised under: Intranets
October 28, 2008
A scenario-based approach to evaluating social software
Tony Byrne has written an article on their scenario-based approach to evaluating social software. To quote: Explicitly or not, different Social Software products target different use cases. Understanding the business scenarios that fit better or worse for the different packages enables you to see deeper into their relative strengths and ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Collaboration, social networking
October 27, 2008
Why web 2.0 doesn’t work in the enterprise (yet)
Allen Huish looks at why web 2.0 doesn't work in the enterprise (yet). To quote: 1. Not enough people in your company understand it You would not believe the number of people who I meet who don't know what a blog is, haven't tried facebook, or used a wiki (although I'd ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, web 2.0
October 27, 2008
Intranet Innovation Awards Roadshow: Brisbane
We've now organised a Intranet Innovation Award Roadshow event for Brisbane, providing a free afternoon session sharing insights and ideas from this year's winners. Discover approaches that can be reused in ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
Tags: awards, brisbane, innovation, Intranets
October 27, 2008
Intranets are not just intranets anymore
Shiv Singh writes about some of the assumptions about intranets, and how they may be changing into the future. To quote: I spent the better part of yesterday locked in a brainstorming room with a client and my team as we discussed what a next generation intranet should look like. ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
October 24, 2008
The intranet innovations I would like to see in 2009
Now that we've got this year's Intranet Innovation Awards out of the way, my mind starts to turn to next year. Intranets are continuing to evolve and grow in scope, and this is what I'd like to see entered into next year's awards: Enterprise 2.0 functionality seamlessly part of the ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
Tags: awards, intranet innovation awards, Intranets, winners
October 24, 2008
Do public social networks have a place in government offices?
Craig Thomler asks: do public social networks have a place in government offices? To quote: With these mediums we put appropriate policies in place, sometimes train people on acceptable conduct and rely on trusting individuals to do the right thing, to act in their own self-interest (continued employment) and back ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Collaboration, social networking
October 23, 2008
Study Confirms Our New “Connectedness” Is A Mixed Blessing
Sarah Perez reports on the latest Pew Internet & American Life Project report on connectedness. To quote: To all those who feared that technology pulls people apart, a new report from the Pew Internet & American Life Project on the American family reveals the opposite is true: today's families are ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Collaboration
October 23, 2008
Enterprise software: focus on user adoption, not features
Jason Rothbart has recommended that enterprise projects focus on user adoption, not features. To quote: Effective user adoption is the absolute best predictor of enterprise software success. That was one of the key takeaways for me from the OpenAir User Conference this week. According to a study done by the Sand ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Information management
October 22, 2008
Intranets & Social Media Workshops for Communicators (Sydney, October 28)
Just a quick note to say that it's not too late to sign up for the intranet workshop I'll be running in Sydney on October 28. Organised by Melcrum, this will cover intranet strategies from a comms team perspective. Topics covered include: understanding intranets understanding staff needs delivering successful intranets innovative intranets your intranet questions ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
October 22, 2008
Selling UX
Daniel Szuc, Paul J. Sherman, and John S. Rhodes have written an article on selling user experience (UX) within organisations. To quote: At some point in your career, you’ll be called upon to sell UX to someone in your organization. You’ve probably already done it. Perhaps you’ll need to justify ...
Categorised under: Usability & user-centered design
Tags: selling, usability, user experience
October 22, 2008
The importance of metrics
Allen Huish has written a timely post about the importance of metrics. To quote: I met up with some intranet managers the other day and there was a lot of talk of metrics. How many page views, how many users, who had clicked what and so on. The conversation swiftly turned ...
Categorised under: Intranets, Metrics & ROI
Tags: Intranets, metrics, statistics, usage
October 22, 2008
What makes a Wiki?
Gadgetopia has written a post asking: what makes a wiki? To quote: Way back in the day, when wikis were new and I was messing around with early versions of Twiki (we had to GlueWordsTogether to make links…), wikis had some prety clear differentiators. I agree that the lines between wikis ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Content management, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Collaboration, wikis
October 21, 2008
Positive feedback on Intranet Innovation Awards
We've had some positive feedback on the Intranet Innovations 2008 report, which shares the winners of this year's Intranet Innovation Awards. Recent comments include: "In a time where most organizations are forced to cut costs and going through difficult budget decisions, the Intranet Innovations Award provides numerous examples of innovative ...
Categorised under: Intranets
October 21, 2008
25 reasons why saving time on your intranet is a bad metric
We've all heard the argument: if we can save staff 2 minutes a day looking for information on the intranet, we can multiply this out by the number of staff and the days in the year to get a huge productivity benefit. This can then be used to justify the ...
Categorised under: Intranets, Metrics & ROI, Usability & user-centered design
Tags: findability, Intranets, metrics, time saving, usability
October 20, 2008
Don’t forget external collaborators
Collaboration tools are now being deployed widely within organisations, with a particular focus on team and project collaboration. What is all too often forgotten, however, is that there are potential collaborators outside the organisation as well. Two worlds of collaboration Most of us are now involved in some form of collaboration on the ...
Categorised under: Collaboration
Tags: Collaboration, external, security
October 20, 2008
Three ways to update the staff directory
Internal phone directories and staff directories are only useful if the details in them are complete and accurate. This is not easy, and a mix of approaches will be needed. In general, there are three ways of keeping staff directories up to date: centralised updates self-service updating integration with other systems Centralised updates One common approach ...
Categorised under: Intranets
October 16, 2008
Janssen-Cilag: Juice
Janssen-Cilag are a leading parmaceutical company within the Johnson & Johnson Family of Companies. They are also a Gold award winner in this year's Intranet Innovation Awards for Juice, their innovative intranet solution for ordering IT supplies. We recorded ...
Categorised under: Intranets
October 15, 2008
Intranet Innovation Award Roadshow: Canberra
This is the first of the Intranet Innovation Award Roadshow events, free afternoon sessions sharing insights and ideas from this year’s winners. Discover approaches that can be reused in your organisation, ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
October 13, 2008
Rendering knowledge
Dave Snowden has expanded his three rules of knowledge management to become seven principles. To quote: We only know what we know when we need to know it. Human knowledge is deeply contextual and requires stimulus for recall. Unlike computers we do not have a list-all function. Small verbal or ...
Categorised under: Knowledge management
Tags: Knowledge management
October 13, 2008
Scottrade: Competitor Wiki
This year we held the awards ceremony for the Intranet Innovation Awards at the KMWorld & Intranets conference in San Jose. That gave me an opportunity to hand over more of the trophies in person, which is always ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Intranets
Tags: awards, innovation, intranet innovation awards, Intranets, scottrade, wikis
October 12, 2008
Intranet 2.0 survey: benefit from being involved
Toby Ward from Prescient Digital Media has kept open his intranet 2.0 survey, to ensure that the widest possible coverage is obtained. This is a very timely piece of research, and well worth being involved in, as 10 minutes of your time will give you a copy of the full ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
October 10, 2008
Micro-blogging in the enterprise: an idea whose time has come?
Ross Dawson asks whether the time has come for micro-blogging in the enterprise. To quote: So something like Twitter combines elements of the best of both worlds. It’s like email in that it’s broadcast, though you choose who you receive messages from, and you don’t need to read everything. You ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
Tags: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, twitter
October 10, 2008
The business case for Enterprise 2.0
Oscar Berg has written about the business case for Enterprise 2.0. To quote: Travel (and environmental) costs will decrease as a lot of face-to-face meetings can be replaced with virtual meetings Efficiency and productivity will increase as we get faster access to the information we need to carry out our tasks ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Metrics & ROI
Tags: business case, Enterprise 2.0
October 9, 2008
Start here: intranets
Over the last decade, intranets have grown to become a must-have tool for most organisations. Often built as a repository for key corporate information, they now play an increasing role in supporting the daily tasks of staff. We have published over 200 articles on intranets, along with best practices reports, presentations ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets, methodologies, resources
October 8, 2008
British Airways: Crew Community Forums
At the beginning of my recent round-the-world trip, I went straight from touching down at Heathrow to the British Airways head offices nearby. Ignoring 24+ hours of jetlag, it gave me an opportunity to hand over the trophy for ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Intranets
Tags: awards, british airways, Collaboration, forums, innovation, intranet innovation awards, Intranets
October 3, 2008
Building a better Vic whole-of-government intranet
Craig Thomler has written about the Victorian Government's whole-of-government intranet, CentralStation. To quote: Being the only state government in Australia I am aware of with such a tool, I was surprised to learn that it had been originally created in 1996. To my knowledge that makes it one of the ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
October 3, 2008
Enterprising times – a case for search best bets
Nic Price has written a post on search engine best bets, in an intranet context. To quote: The top 25 search terms accounted for half of all searches. The top 50 terms accounted for 75% of all searches made. We tried searching for the top 10 terms, including “training”, “expenses”, “ariel” ...
Categorised under: Information architecture, Intranets, Search tools
October 1, 2008
Cut costs by expanding your intranet
Craig Thomler has written an article on cutting costs by expanding your intranet. To quote: It may seem counter-intuitive to some, but I often advocate increasing intranet funding during cost cutting exercises as a lower cost channel for engaging staff and sharing information. However for this to get traction, there are ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
October 1, 2008
Intranet names
Stephan Schillerwein has written a post about intranet names used in a wide range of organisations. To quote: Here’s a little collection of Intranet Names. Please feel free to add any intranet names your company might be using or that you know of by using the comment function on the ...
Categorised under: Intranets
