Articles by Month: February 2008

What's most important for success with enterprise 2.0?

Andrew McAfee has written a piece on success factors for enterprise 2.0. To quote:

I spoke earlier this week at the FASTForward conference in Orlando, and used the opportunity to toss out some conjectures about the factors that differentiate successful Enterprise 2.0 deployments from unsuccessful ones. These conjectures were not developed from any rigorous or comprehensive research, but instead are the inductive result of my work over the past two years to understand the use of emergent social software platforms in pursuit of business goals. I can’t claim that they’re complete, 100% correct, or ‘better’ than anyone else’s hypotheses. I present them at this point primarily to get the ideas out there, to stimulate discussion, and perhaps to provide some guidance.

Posted by jamesr at 08:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Personas and the role of design documentation

Andrew Hinton has written an article on personas and design documentation. To quote:

In User Experience Design circles, personas have become part of our established orthodoxy. And, as with anything orthodox, some people disagree on what personas are and the value they bring to design, and some reject the doctrine entirely.

Posted by jamesr at 08:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

Open challenge to CMS vendors

CMS products have come along way in the last five years in terms of functionality and usability. They now (mostly) deploy quickly, are reasonably easy to use, and are a lot cheaper. This is all good.

As I've discussed many times, the usability of CMS products is crucial, and there is a lot more to be done on this front. In particular, CMS products should match the "mental model" of authors and site managers, something that they often don't do. The confusion of different terms, concepts and philosophies doesn't help.

This is still not enough. I want to present an open challenge to all CMS vendors:

Content management systems need to much closer match the reality of how content is created, managed and published. They must also do more to help resolve the fundamental challenges that led organisations to purchase CMS products in the first place.

Despite the profusion of content management systems, each with its own ideas and models, there is surprising similarity in how they operate at a basic level. The concept of "workflow" is more-or-less universal across products, as is metadata, review and expiry dates, and the like. Underpinning this is the idea of a "publishing process" in a traditional sense, replicated from print to the online world.

The problem is that this doesn't actually match reality. As I've said in the past, workflow doesn't work, organisations still struggle to manage their content even with a CMS, and few manage to capture the metadata they require.

Indeed, it is questionable whether installing a content management system really resolves the problems it promised to. One of the reasons is that vendors haven't really put in the effort to really design their products to best help authors and site managers. Rather, they are happy to simply follow the "way things are done", even if these ways demonstrably don't work.

My challenge to vendors is therefore to conduct user research to deeply understand how their clients are working with web content, and to revise their products to better match this reality. This will dramatically improve the success rates of CMS projects, which in turn helps the vendors.

Let me give some examples to put some shape around my rantings:

• Content reviews

  One of the fundamental challenges is to keep web content up-to-date, particularly in a decentralised authoring environment. The standard way CMS products endeavour to meet this need is via a "review date" for each page. This may be fixed to yearly (bad idea!), a chosen date, or a selection of possible periods (three months, six months, a year, never).

  When the review date is reached, an email is sent to to the author of the page, who may or may not be the actual content owner. The hope is that the author will then review and update the page (if required). Site managers may get a report listing pages overdue for review.

  The problem is that none of this really works in practice. Authors often ignore the reminders, and site managers need much better tools to track and manage the review process. How can we do this better?

• Metadata

  It's notoriously difficult to get decentralised authors to enter metadata. It's even harder to get them to enter good metadata. In practice, metadata quality is mixed, with basic problems such as a mix of singular and plural terms (for example).

  Site managers are generally given no tools to monitor, manage or improve metadata at a site level. There is no single list of metadata terms that allows global changes and cleanups to be made. Authors are given little help in entering useful metadata terms.

  Professional indexers and taxonomists have been asking more functionality for years. Why haven't they got it?

• Workflow

  I've said a lot about this already. So all I'll say: why haven't we implemented a publishing model that actually matches how content is created and released?

(These are just a few simple examples, and other similar situations can be found across every aspect of content management systems.)

Note that I'm talking about improving the core design of content management systems. Yes, web 2.0 and enterprise 2.0 provide valuable new ways of looking at all of this, but the basics still need to be right.

I ask again of vendors: please do the work needed to make your products work better in the real world, even if it means challenging some of the ways "things are done".

So, thoughts and comments? (As usual, in the continued absence of commenting, please email me and I'll post the highlights.)

Posted by jamesr at 07:27 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Collaboration is about people

| View

I've just uploaded the presentation I gave today at a KM Roundtable meeting in Melbourne. A great group of people, lots of good questions, only just scratched the surface in the time we had available.

(I think there's huge amount of value in all these types of groups. The simple act of getting together and sharing information face-to-face is immensely valuable. So if you're into KM, definitely look into the KM Roundtables, held in Victoria and NSW.)

Posted by jamesr at 03:02 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Knowledge management

Can social bookmarking improve search?

Daniela Barbosa explores the question: can social bookmarking improve search? To quote:

"Bookmarking Improve Web Search?" includes eleven experiments using del.icio.us designed to evaluate "different aspects of social bookmarking and their impact on web search". The main end results lead to the issue of needing critical mass which is still not here- the paper's authors estimate that only about on tenth of the web has been bookmarked and tagged in del.icio.us and therefore (at least when using only this domain) tagging is not yet ready to make a significant impact on search results.

Posted by jamesr at 10:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0, Information architecture, Search tools

Clarify. Simplify. Implement.

Nathan Wallace has written about his clarify - simplify - implement approach to information management. To quote:

Relentlessly question, review and challenge the processes and solution being developed. Drive for consistency. Search for well-known models or applications you can copy. Don't be afraid to change basic assumptions, where simplicity can be enhanced. Always challenge the value of edge cases and try to eradicate them. Work hard to remove every single process, click, page view, icon, etc until you have something so simple that it feels right to everyone involved. (This is the primary value adding activity for IT.)

Read this post several times, as it contains important insight. Nathan is a CIO with a deep technical background and a thoughtful approach to everything that he does. In these three words, he outlines a radically different approach to designing and deploying enterprise solutions. Great stuff!

Posted by jamesr at 07:01 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Enterprise 2.0, Information management

Designing your information architecture for content reuse: five best practices

Amber Swope has written an article on content reuse. To quote:

The increasing popularity of Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) means that more users within an organization are looking to repurpose and reuse content across the enterprise. To realize the promise of reuse with DITA, you must optimize the mechanisms it supports and understand how to implement it. When considering the implementation of a reuse strategy, consider the following five best practices.

(Note: this article is pretty technical, and assumes fair bit of background knowledge of DITA. Not for the web content management folks.)

Posted by jamesr at 09:55 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Knowledge management lessons

Shawn Callahan has shared his knowledge management words of wisdom. To quote:

View every knowledge management initiative as a change initiative, which means helping the leadership group to imagine what it will be like when it's done and after imagining it, they want it. It also means getting the employees engaged in working out how it's going to work and then getting people to volunteer to work on it. It will also involve a recognition that most KM initiatives are affected by culture (actually, what isn't) and culture is never completed, done, ticked off the list of things to do. Consequently, a continuous improvement approach is needed.

Posted by jamesr at 09:12 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Wiki markup: the followup

It seems that despite my inflammatory post arguing that wiki markup must die, I haven't yet been tied to a stake and set fire to. In fact, I've received quite a few emails strongly agreeing with my position, and in lieu of working commenting, I'll share a few in this post.

Wiki developers take note: there's limited patience for wiki markup, and a very real marketplace demand for something better!

And the comments:

I absolutely agree with this. I would only dream of using a non-WYSIWYG wiki with geeks. It should be like using Word - but, y'know, collaborative. And simpler. Matt Moore

Love it and totally agree - something I have been grumbling about for ages - even tho it flies in the face of what geeks demand.

The only statement that seemed odd was: "Wikis are about making creating and editing content trivial". I'd be more inclined to say "easy"... Or something, rather than trivial. But I am probably splitting hairs. :)

Russ Weakley

You are my hero. Thank God someone with an audience finally said this.

Couldn't agree more!

Kevin Crossman

I agree wholeheartedly!

If the history of computing, word processing and web has taught engineers and programmers anything it should be that most people don't want to become programmers - and shouldn't be forced to.

I'm a big fan of the WYSIWYG approach.

Craig Thomler

I suspect you're only partly right. WikiMarkup is pretty pointless if you're just writing prose, but thats not all that some Wiki's do.

TWiki for example has an application language that allows the user to define data schema's, and applications directly in TWiki topics.

The other odd thing about your post, is that as far as I know _most_ Opensource Wiki's have wysiwyg editors available - TWiki has several options, starting with TinyMCE as the most robust (and newest addition), Kupu as the previous attempt, and then Wikiwyg and others.

We are also looking towards adding a Wysiwyg editing tool for the application development.

Sven Dowideit

I just want to say thank you for your article on wiki markup. It provides a good summary of why wiki can be a content management issue. Your list of editing requirements is also very useful.

I've discovered myself that wiki content is a deadend. We've been running Mediawiki here at the Council, and unfortunately someone put a great deal of content into it that should really be in HTML pages.

Now I found it is very difficult to automate the process of getting the content out. Even copying and pasting from the browser doesn't work, because it collects the navigation with it. There appears to be many tools and pieces of software available to convert content into a wiki format, but I have not found anything useful to go back the other way. Perhaps people just don't do this?

We're now manually moving the wiki content back into our WCMS, which, being Interwoven Teamsite, will mean it is in XML format at least, and reasonably easy to move into other systems in the future.

Greg Comfort

Posted by jamesr at 08:22 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

The RFP is dead! Long live the RFP!

Seth Gottlieb has written an entry on effective RFP processes. To quote:

There has been an interesting thread on the CM Professionals mailing list discussing the efficacy of an RFP. Many participants cited frustration with an RFP process that wastes people's time with unnecessary formality and the pretension of an even contest. I think everyone who has been in business has witnessed the act of an RFP being distributed after the contract has been awarded. The RFP process, as it is commonly practiced, suffers from four major flaws.

(This is a followup to my original post on the topic.)

Posted by jamesr at 08:21 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Wiki markup has no future

Ok, I'm going to confront the elephant in the room: wiki markup has no future. I know I'm going to burnt at the stake by all the wiki fanatics, but let me give a few reasons...

Back to the future

Back in the bad old days, you needed to know all those strange HTML tags in order to publish a web page. Recognising that this wasn't desirable, we've worked very hard to develop publishing tools (FrontPage, Dreamweaver, content management systems) that eliminate the need for this knowledge.

While these tools are still imperfect, they have done much to open up the web to non-technical authors and publishers. Certainly in any serious situation, WYSIWYG is expected, and often demanded.

So along comes wikis, and voila, a new set of markup to learn! Suddenly we're back to putting stars for bullets, three equals signs for a horizontal rule, etc, etc. How is this a forward step?

It's about the users

Wiki markup is not easy, and it takes some learning. I'm a former developer, but even I have to have a reference sheet handy when I start to use a new wiki tool.

The lack of WYSIWYG editing is a big barrier to adoption within organisations, and on the wider web. There are only a limited number of users that have the time, skills and inclination to learn wiki markup. It's a fundamental usability problem, and the spread of wikis will always be niche as long as wiki markup remains.

They're all different

It doesn't help that all the wikis have invented their own set of special markup. Similar, but different enough that each wiki needs to be learnt separately.

Yes, I know there are moves towards coming up with "standard" wiki markup, but that misses the point. There's no future in wiki markup, so who cares if it's standardised!

It's not about the markup

It was never about the markup anyway. Wikis are about making creating and editing content trivial, about creating structure as you go, about tracking changes and activity (plus more). The "wiki way" never demanded the use of strangle little text commands.

It could even be argued that the wiki way is all about usability, so wiki markup is actually opposed to the core principles being pursued. What could be easier than just typing straight into the wiki, with buttons for formatting?

WYSIWYG

What I want to see in the wiki editing environment:

• Full WYSIWYG editing
• Simple, locked-down formatting (bold, italic, paragraph styles)
• Point and click image insertion
• Simple table creation and editing
• Easy mechanism for creating links
• Seamless cut-and-pasting from Word (stripping out the rubbish)
• Spell-checking
• Multiple levels of undo

In other words, all the basics that you would expect in any editing environment, online or desktop. Note that this isn't changing any other aspects of wikis, that's the good stuff, it's just fixing the editing environment.

Into the future

I'm not surprised that open-source wikis don't have WYSIWYG editing, but that's no excuse for commercial offerings. This needs to be resolved immediately, and taken seriously by wiki developers. More than just an average WYSIWYG editing tool, this needs to work extremely well.

I would go one step further: don't deploy a wiki for a broad audience (or within the enterprise) if it doesn't have WYSIWYG editing. That will start to put some pressure on the developers, and should help to speed the permanent death of wiki markup. RIP and long live wikis.

(As ever, apologies for the lack of blog commenting. The site redesign and upgrade now has light at the end of the tunnel, so hopefully soon! Feel free to email me in the meantime.)

[Followup: I've posted some of the comments I've received on this topic, seems like I've struck a chord with some.]

Posted by jamesr at 03:04 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Enterprise 2.0

NSW Department of Primary Industries intranet demonstration (Sydney)

Kate Needham from the NSW Department of Primary Industries is very generously sharing details on their award-winning intranet. Forwarding the details:

The NSW Department of Primary Industries intranet, InSite, was recently named one of the 10 best in the world for 2008 by Jakob Nielsen, an internationally renowned web usability expert and principal of the Nielsen Norman Group.

On Wednesday, 12 March 2008 we will be giving live demonstrations of the intranet, and explaining some of its key features, background and future plans.

Please feel free to forward this invitation to anyone you think might be interested in attending the demonstration.

When & where

Wednesday, 12 March 2008

Session 1: 1:00pm - 2:00pm
Session 2: 2:30pm - 3:30pm
Session 3: 4:00pm - 5:00pm

The 30 minutes between sessions will be available for questions and answers, if necessary.

Conference Room 6.2
Level 6, 201 Elizabeth Street, Sydney (see map)

RSVP

Please RSVP, indicating the session you are interested in attending (including number of attendees), by Thursday, 6 March 2008 to:

Kate Needham
Manager, Internal Communications
E-mail: kate.needham@dpi.nsw.gov.au

Kate and her team have done some great work on their intranet. They've also run into, and worked through, the challenges felt by many other teams. So this is a wonderful nuts-and-bolts case study to learn lessons from...

Posted by jamesr at 08:22 AM | Permalink
Categories:

Narrative Techniques for Business (Melbourne, Canberra and beyond)

Anecdote are unquestionably the leading thinkers (and doers) in Australia on narrative techniques. Drawing on the best thinking from around the globe (and their own insights), they've done a lot of very interesting work. They are also great folk just to spend time with.

So it's worth mentioning that they have a number of workshops scheduled over the coming months:

• Narrative Techniques for Business
• Storytelling for Business Leaders
• Starting and sustaining communities of practice

PS. workshops are running in Melbourne and Canberra next week, so you'll want to move quickly!

Posted by jamesr at 01:18 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

The trouble with web 2.0

Alexander Wilms has written an article on the trouble with web 2.0, from an enterprise context. To quote:

We have seen that there are differences between the Web and corporate environments. While the Web is a deregulated environment, with millions of users contributing and easy access to data, corporations have to restrict their users for many reasons, thereby limiting the potential of the Web 2.0 patterns. While Web 2.0 patterns work well in the Web there might be obstacles and issues when they are implemented in a corporate environment without adaptation. "Might" because every company is an individual organization and there are no easy, "one-size-fits-all" solution. On the other hand the Web 2.0 patterns have been proven to be too successful to be ignored.

Posted by jamesr at 08:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

Death to the RFP?

When I posted my recent article on Time needed to select a CMS to the CM Pros mailing list, it generated a lot of discussion. This included a number of people who questioned whether organisations should be going through a RFP/tender process at all. I thought I would post my thoughts here, as well as replying on the list...

The dislike of RFPs not surprising. For my own part, I have seen more pointless, wasteful, poorly constructed, and poorly thought-out RFPs to fill an entire life!

The gut reaction is therefore unsurprisingly to reject them entirely. I'm going to argue against this.

There are a lot of products in the marketplace, 140+ in Australia alone with an estimate 1,000 globally. I've often said that these are only 30% similar and 70% entirely different in how they operate. (Even if all the marketing brochures read the same.)

It's a complex marketplace, and it is far from easy for organisations to be confident they are selecting the right product. Where there is a lack of experience or clarity around the needs, this is even worse.

I like a lightweight RFP/tender process for helping resolve these issues, even where it isn't formally required.

It does several things:

• it ensures that requirements are thought through and documented
• the scope of the project is clarified and communicated
• vendors are asked to "put themselves on the line" in their response
• it helps organisations to make informed decisions in cutting down the list to a final few
• it ensures that organisations spend some time thinking and learning about products (and their own requirements!)
• it gives internal stakeholders an opportunity to be involved
• it builds confidence in the final outcome

We do a lot of work helping organisations select a CMS, in both the public and private sectors. We help organisations write good requirements, and provide an initial list of potential solutions (5-7 in our case). Written responses then quickly drop this to 3, for the vendor demonstrations.

In my personal experience, the greatest amount of time is lost when an informal or poorly-defined selection process is followed, leading to lots of wandering around and head-scratching.

I also don't believe it is ethical for me as the "expert" to say "here, pick this!". Life is simply too complex for that, and it ignores the many compromises that will need to be made. (We would also not be truly vendor neutral!)

Frankly, if we go through anything less than this, picking a product becomes no better than "rolling the dice and hoping your number comes up".

So, death to the awful RFPs, and long live sensible, structured selection processes!

Further reading:

• Top 10 mistakes when selecting a CMS
• Using scenarios to select a CMS
• What is the purpose of a CMS tender?
• Requirements-focused CMS selection

Posted by jamesr at 07:09 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

In-house workshops

As you're probably aware, we've got a pile of upcoming workshops planned throughout Australia. We've put a lot of work into designing these, and they have been very well received by past participants.

For some years now, we have also been providing in-house workshops for organisations. We've been fairly quiet about these, but they too have been working well. So it seemed like a good time to raise the visibility of this option, as it gives a great way for organisations to build up their internal knowledge and expertise (something we have as a key goal for all our activities).

Standard workshop topics include:

• Intranet strategy: provides intranet teams with a set of tools and models to plan the redevelopment and growth of their intranet, including the 6x2 methodology for intranets.
• Intranet management: helps intranet teams review the management of their site, and provides new tools for planning, including the Intranet Hive.
• Intranet alignment: brings together all the internal intranet stakeholders for a day of facilitated discussions, with the goal of building a consensus on how the intranet should proceed.
• Usability and information architecture: gives hands-on experience with key usability and information architecture techniques, such as card sorting, paper prototyping and usability testing. Great for building up in-house skills in preparation for a website or intranet redesign.
• Selecting a CMS: shares best-practice insights into the content management marketplace, and how to go about selecting a new CMS.
• Collaboration and knowledge management: explores practical insights and approaches into making these things a reality within modern organisations. Includes a number of unique models and methodologies.

All of these workshops can be tailored or mixed-and-matched, and we are happy to construct one-off workshops to fit specific circumstances. (We can also run these workshops internationally, as part of the regular trips we make throughout the world.)

Download the one-page summary (PDF) to get the prices and practical details. Then if you'd like to know more, or would like to book an in-house workshop, contact Catherine Grenfell.

Posted by jamesr at 06:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

How many people does it take to screw in a content management system?

The CMS Myth have posted an item on the roles needed in a CMS project. To quote:

I'm the first to agree with limiting the number of cooks in the kitchen, yet it's hard to ignore the fact that building websites today does require more specialized skills (and processes that can effectively integrate them). In fact, when it comes to CMS implementations, I've found that many projects go off track when the wrong people do the wrong tasks (i.e. Developer doing information architecture).

This prompted the question of 'how many people does it take to screw in a content management system?' A cynical myth buster may say 'you don't screw them in, they screw you' – but we're staying positive here.

Posted by jamesr at 06:40 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Intranet migration: 5 questions before moving day

Paul Chin has written an article on intranet content migration. To quote:

Intranet owners, like these migratory tenants and homeowners, must occasionally go through the very similar and unavoidable process of system migration. Intranet migrations are undertaken for a variety of reasons, the two most common being site consolidations and modifying or upgrading system architecture . But before packing up all your digital belongings and carting everything from one location to another, there are five key questions intranet managers need to answer.

Posted by jamesr at 06:00 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Better living through taxonomies

Heather Hedden has written an article on taxonomies for websites and intranets. To quote:

Large websites and intranets can benefit from improved methods of search and navigation. These include site maps, A-Z indexes, sophisticated search engines, and generally improved navigational design -- and playing a potential role in all of these methods is well-planned taxonomy.

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Component content management: what is it and why does It matter?

Paul Trotter has written an article on component content management. To quote:

In this article, I will try to explain what content management is and how it can help your organization more efficiently write higher quality and more effective documentation, re-use and share content across documents, have strict control over standards and branding, publishing that content to print, help, and web formats, and significantly reduce the cost of localizing your content.

Posted by jamesr at 06:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Search patterns

Peter Morville has brought together a collection of search patterns. To quote:

I'm working on a new book (and talk) about the future of search, and I've created a seed collection of patterns and examples to support my research.

Posted by jamesr at 06:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Gaining intranet stardom

Being an intranet star isn't easy, as any intranet manager overwhelmed with the underwhelming response from authors and managers will agree to. Nevertheless with some fearless counsel and a good measure of bravery on the part of intranet managers it can be done. There is precious little guidance on the necessary behaviours in this area. This briefing seeks to redress this shortfall.

Seize power

It can often be the case that in all matters intranet, the organisation just doesn't have the 'right' kind of focus. When I was much younger, a particularly well-weathered project management veteran, to whom I was grumbling, told me to get over myself and said "power's not given, it's taken". He was right, it was up to me to take the initiative. Often we expect others to take the initiative in and to know how to go about doing things, yet we are the experts. The organisation looks to its intranet staff to provide that expertise and leadership. If knowledge is power and intranet managers have this knowledge then it follows that they have also have the power.

[CM Briefing 2008-02 written by Cairo Walker, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 09:12 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Time needed to select a CMS

It will always take longer than hoped to select a new content management system. While an 'accelerated' approach can be taken, the reality is that somewhere between 6 and 12 months will probably be needed, from beginning to end.

To help clarify this statement, this briefing provides a breakdown of the individual steps and the amount of time needed for each. Use this to set appropriate stakeholder expectations, and to develop a realistic project plan.

Selecting a CMS: step-by-step

[CM Briefing 2008-01, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 09:04 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, James' articles

Exploring the Intranet Hive (part 1)

Those managing an intranet will find they are in a unique role in their organisation, as there are few if any others who touch the corners of an organisation the way those on the intranet team do. From the CEO to the staff member at the front line, everyone has a stake in the intranet. While this certainly provides great opportunity and insight into the organisation for the canny intranet manager, it also brings its own unique set of challenges.

On any given day, an intranet manager may spend time wrangling with content authors, working out how best to support the organisation's latest strategic initiative, communicating the CEO's latest message, training new content authors and developing new intranet functionality. Just as there are few other roles that cut across the organisation, there are few who will be asked to deal with the same degree of complexity and diversity as an intranet manager. In order to be successful, intranet managers must work across strategy, design, content, change and communications, technology and team.

Teams are often skilled in one or two areas and lack expertise and awareness elsewhere. The Intranet Hive is a new concept that can provide awareness of all the activities that need to maintained. Most of the literature to assist teams with the ongoing running of intranets has focused on the maintenance of the information architecture and the various technical components of the site, such as search. Whilst these are certainly important, there is a great deal more to running a successful intranet; the Intranet Hive recognises this and puts forward a more complete model for intranet management.

What is the Intranet Hive?

The Intranet Hive is a model that outlines 36 activities that underpin the ongoing management of an intranet. This article provides an overview of these activities in order to raise the awareness of intranet teams of the many activities that must be undertaken.

The Intranet Hive is being developed into a suite of products that includes heuristics for self-assessment so that teams can identify where they are today, a tool kit for each area so that teams can build their skills and an overall model to identify blind spots.

This is the first article in a two-part series on the Intranet Hive.

[January KM Column written by Cairo Walker, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 07:49 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

How to successfully moderate a conference panel, a comprehensive guide

Jeremiah Owyang has written an article on successfully moderating a conference panel. To quote:

Sadly, the value of most panels are really poor, and this is mostly due to the lack of moderation. Just yesterday, I heard that one nervous moderator asked the panelists to introduce themselves, then went directly to Q&A, providing little structured value to the audience. On the complete opposite end, I’ve seen one self-important moderator answer questions from the crowd, when it was his job to field questions to the panelists.

Posted by jamesr at 02:00 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Content managers: extract the full benefits of structured authoring

Eric Kuhnen has written an article on structured authoring, focusing on DITA in particular. To quote:

DITA's design for content reusability is akin to an interchangeable part in manufacturing. In industrial manufacturing, a part is considered interchangeable if each and every copy is identical to the original. In content manufacturing, an interchangeable part is a reusable, self-contained topic. When the topic is needed in a new publication, the writer inserts a pointer to the archived original; no cut-n-paste; no editing to fit context. DITA gives technical publication managers one of the key technologies to establishing a true content assembly line: the interchangeable part.

Posted by jamesr at 01:18 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

What’s my scene -- user roles and needs in social computing

Matthew Hodgson has written an article on user roles in social computing. To quote:

Do you allow people to comment, review, rate and ask questions on your website's articles? If you do, you'll be enjoying the fact that your own users are helping others know what information is valuable on your website. It's also valuable feedback because it helps you improve the quality of your information. Over the last month, I've been working on a strategy for a client to help them introduce this sort of user-to-user and business-to-user interaction. My client though, has until recently, thought of their users in the same way they do their print magazine.

Posted by jamesr at 09:02 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Information architecture, Usability & user-centered design

The top ten mistakes of web CMS projects – and how to avoid them

Michael Silverman has written an article on the top ten mistakes of web CMS projects. To quote:

Maybe you are beginning to think about developing a content management systems for your organization's website. Or maybe you are just about to start a CMS project. In either case, you are probably wondering how to improve the chances of a successful outcome, considering the large investment at stake.

This is a good article, and it sits well alongside my Top 10 mistakes when selecting a CMS article, published last year.

Posted by jamesr at 07:07 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

IA is not just about navigation

Patrick Kennedy has written an entry highlighting that IA is not just about navigation. To quote:

I am always quite surprised, after one of my workshops, when someone remarks "I didn't know there was so much to it! I thought IA was just about coming up with the nav".

Whilst I've written recently about the many faces of IA, I think there is more to such comments than just a different definition of IA being expressed. Probing a bit further, I found that these remarks were based on a rather superficial view of the work involved. It wasn't obvious, until I ranted for a whole day, that it takes a bit of effort to whip up the navigation for a site.

Posted by jamesr at 07:30 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture

Creative thinking rules

Scott Berkun has posted an article on creative thinking rules, as written by Sister Corita Kent. To quote:

1. Find a place you trust and then try trusting it for a while.

2. General duties of a student: pull everything out of your teacher, pull everything out of your fellow students.

Posted by jamesr at 07:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Knowledge management

Six month workshop calendar

We've now published our full set of workshops for the coming six months. Note that most of these will only be run twice in 2008, so you'll want to book early!

Posted by jamesr at 05:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Search behavior patterns

John Ferrara has written an article on search behaviour patterns. To quote:

Search behavior varies with domain expertise and technical knowledge, cognitive style, goal, and mode of seeking. All of these factors will interact in complex ways to influence a user’s actions. Even then, behaviors will vary depending upon whether at that moment the user is under pressure, in a good mood, or any number of other idiosyncrasies.

Posted by jamesr at 05:03 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design

Complete Intranet Management (Melbourne, May 9)

We've just launched a brand-new workshop that introduces a unique model for intranet management: the Intranet Hive.

The Intranet Hive was first created for an intranet team within a large Australian financial services organisation. Led by an experienced intranet manager, the team was effective and successful. They recognised, however, that they had ‘blind spots’, and some areas were being managed better than others.

From within the team, it was hard to identify these strengths and weaknesses. We were therefore asked to create a model that would help the team to conduct a self-assessment of their ongoing intranet tasks. Some months of thinking later, the Intranet Hive was born. Since that time, the model has been steadily evolving based on the input of the whole Step Two team.

While a comprehensive information pack will be released in due course, we felt it was important to share the model sooner rather than later, to better help teams in their day-to-day management of intranets.

Cairo Walker is therefore running a one-day Complete Intranet Management workshop (featuring the Intranet Hive) in Melbourne on May 9.

I'm really excited to get this live, and we'll only be running this workshop twice in 2008, with the second venue yet to be determined. So you won't want to miss out!

[Full workshop details]

Posted by jamesr at 03:47 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets

Innovative Information Management Planning (Sydney, April 2)

Cairo's Innovative Information Management Planning workshop is a truly unique event, giving a fresh approach to planning information projects. We've just lined up a date in Sydney on 2 April, and this is not far off (the early-bird date closes on 2 March). At a glance:

To be successful, information management initiatives must quickly become valuable to the business, delivering tangible and visible benefits. This can be challenging in complex organisational environments with many hurdles to overcome.

Cairo Walker shares her on-the-ground experience working with some of Australasia's most prominent private and public sector organisation's information management strategies, plans and initiatives. Don't miss this opportunity to hear Cairo share her thoughts and insights on making information management work.

[Full workshop details]

Posted by jamesr at 11:10 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Information management

2008: the year web 2.0 hits the enterprise, says Forrester

ReadWriteWeb has posted an entry on enterprise 2.0 predictions by Forrester. To quote:

According to Forrester Research, there will be "strong demand" for web 2.0 tools in the enterprise in 2008. Even though 42% of enterprises say adding web 2.0 tools is not on their agenda, according to a Q3 2007 survey, Forrester expects that half of those will change their mind and embrace web 2.0 tools by year end. In the report "Top Enterprise Web 2.0 Predictions For 2008," analyst Oliver Young gives three reasons why he thinks 2008 is the year that "IT departments will take their heads out of the sand and embrace web 2.0 technologies."

Posted by jamesr at 07:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Enterprise 2.0

Brisbane intranet managers get together 20 February 08

Our Brisbane office, run by Rebecca Rodgers, is holding its second informal get-together for Brisbane intranet managers. Details as follows:

Date: Wednesday, 20 February 2008
Time: 10am - 12noon
Place: Suncorp Centre, Level 17, 36 Wickham Tce, Brisbane
Topic: Intranet Innovation Awards
Cost: Free

The Intranet Innovation Awards are global awards that celebrate new ideas and innovative approaches to the design and delivery of intranets. The goal is to find these ideas (whether large or small), and to share them with the wider community. Uniquely, these awards recognise individual intranet improvements, and not intranets as a whole. The presentation will go for approx 1 hour with time to network afterwards. A big thanks to the intranet team at Suncorp for hosting the event.

If you would like to meet other intranet managers and see what it takes to have an award winning intranet, email Rebecca by Friday, 15 February 2008. Numbers are limited and attendance will be on a first response basis.

Posted by jamesr at 07:26 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets

Consistency at heart of award-winning Australian intranet

Melcrum have written an article on the award-winning Department of Primary Industries intranet. To quote:

Despite a difficult beginning – the challenge of a 4-department merger in 2004 dictated the need for a centralized channel to keep information flowing – InSite's strength is in its usability.

“Some standout features include the simplicity of its design, a consistent look and intuitive, topic-based navigation,” says Needham.

Posted by jamesr at 08:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Pain in the SaaS? When your traditional software vendor hosts your application

Tony Byrne has written an article on software-as-a-service models for CMS products. To quote:

As a buyer you should understand that contracting with a supplier simply to host and customize traditional software is not the same thing as working with a well thought-through, "native" Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution that was built from the ground up by a company dedicated to providing such a service. There is a case to be made for outsourcing application hosting and support, as well as a case for true SaaS. Just make sure you know the difference -- and know what you're getting in either case.

Posted by jamesr at 06:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management