With 2012 rapidly unfolding, we’ve just announced our full workshop calendar for the coming six months. This includes sessions on SharePoint, intranet design and governance. It also introduces a brand-new workshop on “writing for the intranet”, especially for decentralised content owners and authors.

And not forgetting Intranets2012, the mega-event for Australian intranet teams!

With the first workshops in late March, you’ll want to register quickly:

Building on my best-selling book Designing intranets: creating sites that work, I’ve run full-day workshops around the globe. These are a lot of fun to run, and pack in a lot of practical techniques, real-world insights, and screenshots from many organisations.

If you haven’t seen me speak at a conference, see the video above for a sample of what I’ll be covering at the workshop.

There are a number of workshop dates coming up worldwide:

• London (Tuesday 6 March)
• Singapore (Friday 16 March) — watch this space for details
• Sydney (Friday 18 May), as part of Intranets2012
• Canberra — date to be announced shortly

Conferences shouldn’t be just about sitting in a room filled with people who do just what you do everyday, listening to the “best in the business” tell you “how they do things at their place”.

This is what we think makes a great conference programme:

• Relevant and current content, giving people insights they can bring back to their intranets, and ideas on how they can solve their current challenges.
• Breadth and depth, from curiosity-driven “sneak peaks” to in-depth insights into leading intranets.
• Good mix of interactivity, that break up the intensive sessions, with relevant and enjoyable opportunities to meet new people and to form useful relationships.
• A sense of community, from feeling welcomed and comfortable when first arriving, to the social activities that build career-long connections.
• Great speakers, whether confident professional speakers or real-world intranet managers with a passion for their work.
• Fun and buzz, such as networking activities with a serious prize (can you say iPad!).
• Local and international speakers, drawing on the best ideas wherever they come from.

What does all this look like in practice? Check out the very well balanced Intranets2012 programme.

This includes a Designing intranets that work masterclass in London, on March 6th. This is a great one-day session, covering key design techniques and sharing screenshots from a wide range of organisations. It’s also a unique opportunity to uncover ideas, approaches and best practices to ensure that your intranet project is a success.

This workshop will answer many common questions, including:

• What should go on the intranet home page?
• How to determine the right structure and navigation?
• How important is the look and feel of the intranet?
• What designs can really help staff find what they need?
• What techniques will help to deliver a great intranet?

More information (and register online)

PS. I have a very small number of free days that week, so please do get in touch if you’d like a day of in-house workshops, mentoring or consulting.

Last year we launched a brand new conference for Australia: Intranets2011. The first true intranet conference in the region, it was a huge success. Never before has there been such a buzz about the future of intranets.

This year, Intranets2012 (May 16-18) will be even bigger and better, with another extraordinary mix of local and international speakers.

Registration for Intranets2012 opens today, with a great early-bird rate.

See leading experts such as Martin White (UK), William Amurgis (USA) & James Robertson (Australia) keynoting the event, with a myriad of well respected practitioners taking to the stage throughout the event. We’ve already published a draft conference programme and details on the post-conference workshops.

See you at the conference!

To whet your appetites, we’ve announced our three keynote speakers for Intranets2012. Martin is one of the true worldwide intranet gurus, William is a remarkably successful intranet manager with two awards under his belt, and James is our local intranet expert.

William Amurgis (USA) is the director of internal communications at American Electric Power (AEP), a large electric utility serving 5.3 million customers in the United States. His group manages the corporate intranet, AEP Now, which received an Intranet Innovation Award in 2009 and a Nielsen Norman Group award in 2007.

Martin White (UK) is the author of the Intranet Management Handbook and three other books. Over the last twelve years most of his work has been developing long-term intranet and information strategies for companies in the UK, Europe and North America.

James Robertson (Australia) is the author of Designing intranets: creating sites that work, the first textbook for intranet teams, along with What every intranet team should know. James is a passionate speaker who presents a clear vision of the future of intranets.

Last days for the call for papers

Would you also like to be up on the stage at Intranets2012? If so, our call for papers closes on December 1. All are encouraged to submit, across a wide range of intranet-related topics.

It honestly doesn’t seem that long ago that I founded the business, initially as a software development house specialising in XML and web publishing. In 2000/2001, we shifted direction to our current focus, as a pure-play consultancy. We also cemented our serious passion about intranets, and have kept building our depth in this space ever since.

It’s been a great journey, made enjoyable by our wonderful team, both present and past. We’ve also done a huge amount of work for a long list of clients, and have been involved in some truly fascinating and challenging projects.

Looking forward, I think it’s a great time to be in the intranet space. Some are arguing that intranets are dying (or are already dead), but this is rubbish. In the same way that we still use “the web”, but it’s vastly different from ten years ago, intranets will live on for many years yet, but will transform completely in their nature.

A lot of new energy is coming into the intranet space, witnessed by the flowering of blogs, tweets, events and online discussions. We’re also seeing a new generation of intranet folks, who have learnt from the experiences of the past, and are ready to take intranets into the future.

We’re in this space for the long term, continuing to play a leadership and mentoring role, combining a focus on both innovation and ruthless practicality.

So thanks again to all those that have made the last 15 years possible, and let’s make the coming years just as good.

This is how it works. Book in an in-house workshop for a date in January 2012, and lock it in this year, and we can offer:

• A discounted price of $2,800 + GST (20% off the normal rate of $3,500).
• Two copies each of Designing intranets: creating sites that work and What every intranet team should know, worth $190 (one for the team, and one to share with stakeholders or content owners).

We can run workshops throughout Australia, and up to 20 staff can attend. There are heaps of great topics to choose from, and we’d be happy to tailor further to meet your needs. Current workshops include:

• Writing for the intranet – provides intranet content owners with practical skills to deliver better online information, with plenty of hands-on activities.
• SharePoint for intranet teams – build your knowledge of the technology platform that underpins many new intranets, preparing you to work with IT to deliver a great intranet.
• Designing intranets – helps teams deliver an intranet that works for staff, sharing key usability and information architecture techniques, and best-practice insights.
• Intranet governance – get the foundations for a successful intranet in place, and spend time working on key governance documents.
• Intranet alignment workshop – bring stakeholders together into the one room, to clarify where the intranet is at, and where it should go.
• The future for intranets – a forward-looking day that explores the best that intranets can be, and what this means in practice for your organisation.

To get your workshop locked in, or to get more information, email contact@steptwo.com.au or ring Rebecca Joseph on 02 9319 7901.

An international call for papers is a key part of this, giving practitioners working in every organisation a chance to submit their ideas.

We encourage submissions from across Australia, New Zealand and internationally. Once we assess the submissions, we’ll finalise the mix of local and international presenters.

The call for papers closes on 1 December 2012

Each year, we run a free roadshow throughout Australia, where you will hear all about the winning entries, see screenshots and hear what set these entries apart from the rest.

These afternoons will be presented by James Robertson, Australia’s own intranet expert. With teams from every type of organisation attending, it’s also a great opportunity to make connections that will last.

Dates:

• Brisbane: 25th October (register online)
• Canberra: 2nd November (register online)
• Sydney: 8th November (register online)
• Melbourne: 30th November (register online)

Since these are free sessions, book fast before places run out!

Writing for the intranet

Good quality intranet content is integral to the success of an intranet. These full day hands-on writing for the web workshops will equip intranet authors with the skills and knowledge to improve their intranet content for scanability and usefulness.

Topics modules can include:

• the purposes of an intranet
• writing for the web key principles
• understanding your user and their needs
• common pitfalls for intranet content
• elements of great content (with specific ideas to help you improve your content)
• tests for quality content
• top tips for improving intranet content
• let’s write: hands on activity to re-write your content

With up to 15 participants per workshop, participants will learn the key principles and good writing techniques. There will also be an opportunity to write or re-write existing content within the workshop environment which means content is ready to go when it comes time to migrate content or launch the new intranet.

For a full details (including costs), and a list of other courses, see our in-house workshops page. Get in touch with Rebecca if you’d like to learn more.

Why am I telling you this? Because there will be a unique opportunity to meet the UK’s award winners in a relaxed setting, as part of the upcoming Intranetters session in London. The session will feature:

• presentation by Nigel Williams of ROMEC
• intranet walkthrough by James Mullan of Field Fisher Waterhouse LLP
• the low-down on this year’s award-winning entries (presented by me)
• an informal awards ceremony
• chatting at the pub afterwards

That’s a lot of great stuff in one afternoon (especially one that costs nothing!).

The session has been kindly hosted by The Crown Estate, and there’s only so many people that can be squeezed into the room.

Key details:

When: 1.30pm (for a 2.00pm start), Tuesday October 11

Where: The Crown Estate, W1S 2HX

How much: free!

RSVP’s essential: email rod_mclean@hotmail.com

PS. don’t forget I’m also running my one-day Designing intranets that work workshop in London on Monday October 17, and there are still places available. This is a great fun workshop to run, and to attend, so don’t miss out.

KM Singapore 2011 was a great conference. As is often the way for community-run events, it was underpinned by a depth of knowledge about the subject, and a passion for delivering a great event for participants.

One of the unusual aspects of the conference was the Twitter wall. Unlike other events I’ve been to, it wasn’t to one side, or in the public area. As the photos above show, it was front-and-centre, directly behind the speaker, with the slides shown on screens to one side.

As the opening keynote, I was a little apprehensive. What would the audience say? Would it all go wrong, like some notable incidents of the past?. As the speaker, it wasn’t possible to see the Twitter wall, so I’d have to wait until the end of my talk to see if I was liked.

In the end, it was a huge success for the event. The Twitter wall software, developed by local Singaporean agency JamiQ.com, was interesting but non-intrusive.

It was great to see how the Twitter wall was incorporated into the conversations during the conference. It was like a real-time chat space for participants, posting a mix of speakers’ comments, photos, commentary and social chit-chat. Very different from the “back channel” role that Twitter normally plays at an event.

Much of the success was probably due to the topic of the conference (knowledge sharing!) and the sense of community amongst the participants. Nonetheless, it would be great to see similar approached tried at other events.

So congratulations to iKMS for a bold approach, and a great success.

It was my great pleasure today to be the opening keynote at the KM Singapore conference organised by iKMS on 1 September 2011.

My key points:

• Intranets need to move beyond being merely “useful” to becoming “essential”.
• In the KM space, technology has had a poor track record.
• Technology has changed (for the better), and we’ve now got the wisdom to do great things.
• Intranets can support KM, for both explicit and tacit knowledge.
• Intranets of the future are smart.
• Intranets of the future join the dots.
• Intranets of the future understand people.

And a “blip video” recorded straight after the session, touching on some of the more controversial points…

The workshop will be run by James Robertson, author of Designing intranets: creating site that work and What every intranet team should know, the world’s first textbooks for intranet teams.

This workshop will answer many common questions, including:

• What should go on the intranet home page?
• How to determine the right structure and navigation?
• How important is the look and feel of the intranet?
• What designs can really help staff find what they need?
• What techniques will help to deliver a great intranet?

This will be our only workshop in London this year, so you don’t want to miss out!

Full workshop details