2009 will mark the third year of the Intranet Innovation Awards coordinated by Step Two Designs, and we're hoping to see even more fantastic intranet work from organisations far and wide. Uniquely, the Intranet Innovation Awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole. The awards are ...
Monthly Archives: January 2009
January 30, 2009
Intranet Innovation Awards 2009
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: awards, innovation, intranet innovation awards, Intranets
January 30, 2009
Intranet Innovation Awards come to Sydney (23 February 2009)
The Intranet Innovation Awards are unique in recognising individual improvements to intranets, not sites as a whole. Winners show how new approaches to designing and delivering intranets can help staff and ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
January 29, 2009
Robertson’s rule of CMS usage
We're just wrapping up a review of the content management system within an Australian government agency. Their story is typical: Lifecycle of a CMS Some years back, a CMS was purchased to manage the websites and intranet of this agency. This was a powerful and complex product, produced by a small vendor. ...
Categorised under: Content management
January 28, 2009
Improving your intranet – keep it sustainable using kaizen
Patrick C. Walsh has written about using kaizen on intranets. To quote: Kaizen literally means ‘good change’ in Japanese and has been translated into English as ‘continuous improvement’. It has become one of the primary and best loved approaches to improvement in Japanese industry and is not so much ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
January 28, 2009
What’s happening with mid-market CMS vendors in 2009?
The CMS Myth writes about the mid-market CMS vendors in 2009. To quote: 2009 in particular looks to be an interesting year for the mid-market CMS market. While we don't claim to have a crystal ball (and certainly aren't calling out specific vendors), we are observing some macro trends that may ...
Categorised under: Content management
January 23, 2009
Visiting Vienna for a day
In addition to the one-day masterclass I'll be running in London, I'll also be presenting a session in Vienna on 11 March 2009. There is some great intranet work being done in this corner of Europe, and there are already a number of interesting organisations who have registered. You ...
Categorised under: Conferences & presentations
January 23, 2009
Turning around undersupported intranets
Craig Thomler provides recommendations on turning around undersupported intranets. To quote: Where an organisation does not recognise the value of its intranet it’s likely that the intranet itself has suffered. There is limited investment, promotion or encouragement of intranet use. The intranet becomes a wasteland of outdated and useless content. Many ...
Categorised under: Intranets
January 23, 2009
The five stages of CMS grief
The CMS Myth writes about the five stages of CMS grief. To quote: While a unified CMS strategy can be smart for the organization, it takes control away from independent web authors, changing web publishing life as they know it forever. Dealing with the loss of total web authoring control and ...
Categorised under: Content management
January 16, 2009
Green IT versus blue sky
Kas Thomas has written an article on the challenges in centralising content management to save the environment. To quote: More and more these days, content lives at the edges of the network, on laptops and desktop machines and collaboration servers (and in SQL Server instances that support a group's SharePoint ...
Categorised under: Content management, Information management
January 16, 2009
Wiki myths, wiki reality
Dorthe R. Jespersen has written an articles on wiki myths, wiki reality. To quote: Although wikis have gained substantially in popularity since they first appeared some ten years ago, many enterprises still begin their wiki projects with unrealistic expectations. While researching the impact of wikis during recent work on the ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
Tags: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Intranets, wikis
January 15, 2009
Five intranet publishing models
I'm doing a lot of writing about authoring and publishing on intranets at present. As part of this, I've outlined five fundamental basic models. Sketching these in outline form: fully centralised publishing decentralised publishing publishing with review federated publishing end-user content contribution In a little more detail: 1. Fully centralised publishing A central intranet team is established, which ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: authoring, governance, Intranets
January 15, 2009
How to prioritise intranet developments
Allen Huish has written a piece on how to prioritise intranet developments. To quote: If you are anything like me you have an ongoing long list of people in your organisation who want something on the intranet. Whether it is a new workflow or some new content there is a ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: intranet 2.0, strategy
January 15, 2009
What should you look for in your CMS license contract?
Janus Boye provides practical advice on what to look for in CMS license contracts. To quote: Don’t accept the standard payment terms. Usually software vendors like to get their money up-front, but you can typically negotiate much better terms, e.g. a very small up-front payment, and then the rest when ...
Categorised under: Content management
January 14, 2009
Cancel your CMS maintenance contracts
Janus Boye controversially suggests that you cancel your CMS maintenance contracts. To quote: Here’s a tip that can save you some money in 2009: Cancel your maintenance and support (M&S) contracts with your CMS and enterprise portal vendors.
Categorised under: Content management
January 14, 2009
More on breadcrumbs as a design cop-out
Jared Spool continues to look at the problems with breadcrumbs as a navigation aid. To quote: Users don’t care about the hierarchy of the site. The thousands of users we’ve observed for the last 12+ years clearly tell us that users don’t care how the site is constructed. Users only ...
Categorised under: Usability & user-centered design
January 13, 2009
Intranets were never meant to be so centralised
Intranets were first created as a hobby project in most organisations, meeting some small need or targeting one group of staff. The potential benefits were quickly recognised, and intranets spread throughout their organisations in an organic way. Before long, intranets consisted of thousands or tens of thousands of pages, published ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
January 13, 2009
2009: efficiency, energy and voice on the intranet
Jane McConnell has written that 2009 will be the year of efficiency, energy and voice on the intranet. To quote: Management will look to the intranet as a way to achieve greater efficiency. Work habits and behavior are changing and will change even more, accelerated by the pressure of economic ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
January 13, 2009
Warding off evil web projects
Peter Erik Bang Nissen talks about warding off evil web projects. To quote: An “evil project” is a project that results in web features which are of benefit neither to the organisation, nor to the web site visitors. The purpose of such a project is merely to promote a specific ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets
January 12, 2009
Intranet 2.0 Q&A
Toby Ward has published a Q&A on "intranet 2.0", based on a webinar he presented. To quote: Q—What is the average cost for web 2.0 implementation? A—Total cost varies from free for open-source licensed solutions such as MediaWiki or WordPress (not including internal “brown dollars” for internal IT hours and support), ...
Categorised under: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
Tags: Enterprise 2.0, Intranets
January 12, 2009
CoPs 101
Kim Sbarcea has pointed to some very useful introductory resources on communities of practice. To quote: Once again, I find myself in need of explaining CoPs (communities of practice) to people I’m working with. I’ve been working with CoPs since 2002 in the same organisation. There’s been the usual ups ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Knowledge management
Tags: Collaboration, communities of practice, Knowledge management
January 9, 2009
Hyper-personalisation of the intranet
Alex Manchester points to the hyper-personalisation of the intranet that is being attempted at Sun. To quote: WebNext will allow each employee to tailor their own site, relevant to them – but this is a big step away from the local portals and customizable homepages of old. The program is ...
Categorised under: Intranets
Tags: Intranets, personalisation
January 9, 2009
Social computing behind the firewall – best buy’s video case study
George Dearing has posted a link to a video case study of Blue Shirt Nation, the social networking initiative at Best Buy in the US. To quote: With all the talk about the inability to show demonstrable ROI in social computing, it’s refreshing to see a company lay out the ...
Categorised under: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0
January 8, 2009
Five common collaboration tool errors
Matt Moore has written about five common collaboration tool errors. To quote: The New New Thing Error. Deciding to deploy something because it is new rather than based on its merits to meet your purpose (N.B. You do have a purpose don't you?) Warning Sign:"One of our directors read about ...
Categorised under: Collaboration
Tags: Collaboration
January 8, 2009
User Interviews – analysis simplified
Alistair Gray has written about analysing user interviews. To quote: After interviews you'll find that you've lots of interesting thoughts and ideas bouncing around your head, but probably in no clear structure. The results will be much easier to understand and convey to others if they are ordered into a ...
Categorised under: Usability & user-centered design
Tags: needs analysis, user research
January 7, 2009
Trends that will affect enterprise collaboration
Shawn Callahan lists six trends that will affect enterprise collaboration. To quote: Increased complexity. The world is getting more connected in all sorts of ways. We know more people, we visit more people, organisations are partnering, flights are increasing, information networks are getting more joined up and so it goes. ...
Categorised under: Collaboration
Tags: Collaboration
January 6, 2009
Don’t expect CMS consolidation in 2009
Janus Boye argues that CMS consolidation won't happen in 2009. To quote: I don’t have enough insights into the North American web content management (WCM) marketplace to comment on local marketplace dynamics “over there”, but for the European marketplace, I don’t expect any significant consolidation among CMS vendors and CMS ...
Categorised under: Content management
January 5, 2009
Who loves the incumbent vendor?
Alan Pelz-Sharpe has written about the pros and cons of incumbent CMS vendors during a selection process. To quote: On the one hand, being the incumbent, Vendor X is at a real advantage to supply this new technology over anyone else. They have an existing relationship with the IT group, ...
Categorised under: Content management
January 5, 2009
Quick turnaround usability testing, part II
Paul Nuschke has completed a second article on quick turnaround usability testing. To quote: In Part I, I discussed how to make the first three steps of Quick Turnaround Usability Testing (QTUT)—Sales & Kickoff, Recruitment, and Preparation—as short and efficient as possible. In Part II, I discuss the final two ...
Categorised under: Usability & user-centered design
