There are many ways of improving the quality and value of intranet content. To progress discussions on this topic, we've produced a mindmap that brings together almost a hundred ideas. Download the PDF (72kb), and print it on a big piece of paper.

This can be used in a number of ways:

• Highlight on the mindmap all the activities and ideas you are already doing, and identify where the gaps lie.
• Conduct further research into potential ideas and approaches, using the mindmap as a starting point.
• Clarify team and individual responsibilities relating to intranet content.
• Help the team to break out of old habits, giving an opportunity to consider new ideas.
• Gather together the intranet team and decentralised authors, and use the mindmap to discuss the current situation, and possible improvements.
• Demonstrate to management the work that the intranet team does to help deliver good intranet content.
• Compare notes between intranet teams, using the mindmap to identify differences and similarities.
• Use as a framework to structure discussions and activities at intranet conferences and other gatherings.

This is version 1.0, released in the spirit of helping all intranet teams. It's also helped us to get all our ideas on a single piece of paper. Please do send us a message if you have any comments, suggestions or ideas. We'll then incorporate these, and released updated versions when appropriate.]]> Content management 2008-05-16T13:24:10+10:00 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002866.html Jane McConnell has just opened up the 2008 Global Intranet Survey for submissions from organisations. This is the single most important survey conducted on intranet management and aspirations, and the results produced are of great value for all intranet teams.... 2866@http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/ Jane McConnell has just opened up the 2008 Global Intranet Survey for submissions from organisations. This is the single most important survey conducted on intranet management and aspirations, and the results produced are of great value for all intranet teams.

It will only take 45-60 minutes to complete the survey, and I'd strongly encourage every intranet team to enter this year. Most importantly, teams who submit get a free copy of the final Global Intranet Trends report (see a sample).

(I'm a huge fan of Jane's work on intranets, particularly of her unique models on global intranets.) ]]> 2008-05-16T13:02:05+10:00 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002865.html Joe Lamantia has published the fifth article in his series on dashboards and portals. To quote: Portals gather and present content from a wide variety of sources, making the assembled items and streams more valuable for users by reducing the... 2865@http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/ Joe Lamantia has published the fifth article in his series on dashboards and portals. To quote:

Portals gather and present content from a wide variety of sources, making the assembled items and streams more valuable for users by reducing the costs of content discovery and acquisition. By placing diverse content into close proximity, specialized forms of portals, such as the dashboard, support knowledge workers in creative and interpretive activities including synthesis, strategy formulation, decision making, collaboration, knowledge production, and multi-dimensional analysis.

WIPA is presenting an afternoon seminar on the use of the latest eyetracking technologies and the challenges of ensuring usability when an Agile Development process is used for developing websites. The two speakers are Dr Peter Brawn and Dr John Eklund, who are both experienced and respected experts in their field. More information available on the WIPA site:

wipa.org.au/events/display.cfm?event_id=13

Afternoon tea will be provided.

Cost

$50 for WIPA Members
$90 for non members

Dates

Canberra: Friday 23 May, 2008, 2.00 pm - 4.50 pm.
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia

Sydney: Wednesday 4 June, 2008. 2.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Where: Y Hotel Hyde Park, Whitlam Square where Wentworth Ave meets Liverpool St.

Brisbane: Thursday June 12, 2008. 2.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Where: Riverside Hotel South Bank (To be confirmed)

Registration
wipa.org.au/registration/

Maybe we distribute information so that people can become better informed. But what are these things we want people to become better informed about? And why aren't these things we want people to become better informed about connected with productivity or collaboration?

Meetings are an especially good place to start. Plan agendas using a wiki, then record minutes & notes, and action items. Between meetings, you can update the status of items, and this sets the stage for deeper wiki uses, like project management.

[Thanks to Michael Angeles]]]> Collaboration 2008-05-13T14:29:59+10:00 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002860.html 2860@http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/ Avi Rappoport has written about "search tools junk". To quote:

Search logs contain a lot of weird things, and some of them can have a significant effect on search log analysis. Having looked at tens of thousand lines of search log entries, I offer this first attempt at defining some of the weirdest and least useful kinds of log entry, which I call "Search Log Junk". Here are the types of junk that I've seen most frequently.

In the earlier article titled Intranet authoring: a hobby?, the role of intranet authors was explored, highlighting that many are required to maintain their content 'on the side', with little training or support.

Most intranets struggle to deliver consistent, accurate, readable and valuable content. Despite this, the goal of many intranet teams remains to deliver universally 'good' content.

This briefing will discuss common approaches to improving content, focusing on those that have failed. Suggestions will then be made on ways to target efforts for best effect.

Failed: content cleanups

Many teams attempt a content cleanup on a regular basis, perhaps every year or two. These involve reviewing most sections of the site, and the content contained within.

These reviews are looking for ROT (redundant, outdated or trivial), generating 'hit lists' of content that can be removed.

While these very easily remove hundreds or thousands of pages, the long term impact is negligible. As fast as content is reviewed by the central team, more is published by decentralised authors.

The process drains the energy of the intranet team, and often frustrates content owners. Even after a major cleanup, the intranet rapidly accumulates more content problems, and reverts to its previous state.

[CM Briefing 2008-06, read the full article]]]> Content management 2008-05-12T08:45:51+10:00 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002858.html The rise of enterprise search has put an increasing focus on searching ever broader collections of content and documents within organisations. While enterprise search projects generally start with simple intranet search, attention quickly moves to searching document management systems, collaboration... 2858@http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/ The rise of enterprise search has put an increasing focus on searching ever broader collections of content and documents within organisations.

While enterprise search projects generally start with simple intranet search, attention quickly moves to searching document management systems, collaboration tools, business systems and fileshares.

Underpinning this work is the belief (or hope) that business value will be delivered to users by deploying a more extensive search tool.

Unfortunately it is often the case that searching more is not better than searching less.

This briefing will look at some of the challenges involved in implementing enterprise search, and provide practical tips on how to proceed.

Relevance and value

The fundamental goal of any search tool is to provide users with useful and relevant search results.

Within the enterprise, this means finding valuable information across the many different repositories, sources and systems.

The difficulty is that increasing the amount of information being searched almost always reduces the relevance of search results. Once called the 'Altavista effect', this was seen in the millions of hits generated for any set of terms entered into that search engine.

This is equally significant within an enterprise, and the challenge is to maintain (or improve) relevance as the volume of information grows.

Consideration also needs to be given to user needs and expectations. What types of queries are being entered into the enterprise search, and what sorts of results are expected? Gaining a deeper understanding of these questions helps to shed light on what to search, and how.

[CM Briefing 2008-05, read the full article]]]> Information management 2008-05-12T08:34:27+10:00 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002857.html So you're sitting at your desk and you have to redesign your intranet (or design one from scratch). Where on earth do you start? By any measure, this is no easy task. The multitude of factors that need to be... 2857@http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/ So you're sitting at your desk and you have to redesign your intranet (or design one from scratch). Where on earth do you start?

By any measure, this is no easy task. The multitude of factors that need to be taken into account can be overwhelming.

Over the years, we have published a vast amount of information on intranets, offering the benefits of our experience and giving practical advice on intranet management, information architecture and content management.

In this article, we attempt to wrap up all the activities that form part of an intranet (re)design into one concise checklist.

Along the way, references will be given to our most popular articles, giving you more detail on particular topics. The goal is to give you an excellent starting point for undertaking an intranet (re)design and also to provide support throughout the process.

User-centred design methodology

As a basic framework for this article, a simplified intranet (re)design process has been devised, illustrated in Figure 1.

Before going through each of the steps in order, it's important to point out that best practice for designing interactive information systems -- such as intranets and websites -- involves using a user-centred design (UCD) methodology.

This simply means that input from the people who will actually use the intranet is given equal weighting with the business objectives and the information (aka content).

[May KM Column written by Patrick Kennedy, read the full article]]]> Intranets 2008-05-12T08:00:32+10:00 http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/002856.html Pale cross (I) This is a photo I took late at night in the cemetary at the top of Wellington city centre. A beautiful and haunting place, even after they put the road through the middle of it. The... 2856@http://www.steptwo.com.au/columntwo/
Pale cross (I)

This is a photo I took late at night in the cemetary at the top of Wellington city centre. A beautiful and haunting place, even after they put the road through the middle of it. The highlight was created by a small LED torch I happened to be carrying.

By the way, I'm posting this photo from my new Flickr account, which I'll be using to share just my best work. My old account will still be in place, and you can follow this for my work-in-progress shots.

(I don't know whether having two Flickr accounts is sensible or practical, but I guess I'll find out over the next couple of months.)

Social tools require much more than just the tools for their implementation to be successful. Tool selection is tough as no tool is doing everything well and they all are focussing on niche areas. But, as difficult as the tool selection can be, there are three more elements that make up what the a successful deployment of the tools and can be considered part of the tools.

As ever, for the record, these were the "big questions" raised by participants at the beginning of the workshop:

• Homepage policy?
• Intranet vs document management?
• Process for delivering a business-effective intranet?
• Intranet redevelopment process?
• Conducting needs analysis?
• Collaboration tools?
• Web 2.0?
• Getting the launch right?
• Project management methodologies vs intranet team?
• Keeping momentum going?
• Governance?
• Managing scope?
• Working more effectively with business units re content?
• How to find the right "activities" to add to the intranet?
• Different needs for each area?
• Analysing research results? And choosing the right activities?
• Obtaining business buy-in?
• Usability testing and information architecture?
• Trimming fat?

That is why the new report from J. Boye, titled Wiki in the Enterprise is so valuable. Many have written about the potential value of wikis, but this work talks about what has worked in real-life (and what hasn't).

Drawing upon research done in a number of organisations, this report discusses the reasons for deploying wikis, the cavets, and how wikis meet reality.

Most importantly, this reports a range of practical and pragmatic recommendations on how to setup and use wikis. These will give teams a valuable leg-up when approaching this new publishing technology.

A recommended addition to the dialogue on wikis, and I'm looking forward to future reports from J. Boye. ]]> Content management 2008-05-07T14:40:54+10:00