Skip to content

Back in Australia

Written by James Robertson, published October 6, 2009

Categorised under: Conferences & presentations

It’s nice to be back home, even if the weather is cold and wet, much like my last two weeks in Europe.

The last two weeks have been frantically busy, but enjoyable nonetheless. I started with two days in Switzerland, including presenting to a local group of intranet managers from organisations such as the Red Cross, WWF, WTO and UNHCR.

Then off to London for another intranet meeting, this time with a wide range of organisations from Amnesty to Environment Agency and Arup. The very first session of my new “Intranet design + redesign” workshop went well, with an active and engaged group of participants.

The second week was mostly spent in Copenhagen. Five presentations over two days for three separate conferences was good fun, including a brand-new session on improving intranet content. A two-day masterclass attracted good numbers, and this gave me a second opportunity to trial my workshop material on intranet design. Participants were kind enough (brave enough?) to send across some screenshots of their intranets, and this made for a practical and insightful discussion.

Last stop Amsterdam, for a one-day masterclass. Several major Dutch-headquartered banks were well down the road towards delivering successful intranets, and it was interesting to hear about the plans to deliver a single intranet site for the whole of the Dutch government.

What I took away from this trip:

  • The challenges of global (and fragmented) organisations such as Amnesty, Oxfam, Red Cross and WWF are considerable when it comes to intranets. The right starting point: what audience are we actually delivering to?
  • Early adopters of technologies such as SharePoint provide valuable lessons for those following. There is a lot of interesting work being done in Denmark that deserves greater visibility.
  • Yet again I came across literally dozens of nice ideas and approaches, many small, some big. I’ve said it before: there’s so much good work being done on intranets, we just have to bring it to light!

Now for a half-day in the office, and then back onto a plane to Canberra, to present at tomorrow’s IIM conference. Phew!