The Intranet Leadership Forum is the professional community for intranet teams in Australia. Sitting alongside the Intranets2011 conference, the ILF provides an all-year opportunity for networking and knowledge sharing. By participating in both you can look forward to a whole year of practical insights and usable ideas for your intranet.

Leading up to the conference, we are offering a combination package to become a member of the Intranet Leadership Forum and to attend Intranets2011 with a discount. This provides big savings:

This is a great opportunity to get all your management signoffs at one, starting with the biggest intranet conference Australia has seen, and then setting you up for the whole of the following year.

This offer is available from today, Monday 18th April until Monday 2nd May. To take advantage of this offer complete and fax the ILF membership form to us, marked “Intranets2011 combined discount“. We’ll then handle the rest.

Any questions contact catherine@steptwo.com.au or conference@steptwo.com.au.

In comparison, designing intranets is much harder. By definition they are hidden inside organisations, and teams struggle to find good examples.

This makes it much harder to learn from the experiences of others, and to cherry-pick elements from a range of other sites.

One of the key objectives of many teams is therefore to see other intranet screenshots. While hard, it is not impossible.

Broadly speaking, there are three main ways of getting access to intranet screenshots: from published reports, by connecting up with other teams, and by attending events.

Published resources

There are two major published resources that are invaluable for intranet teams, and both are end products of annual intranet competitions.

[March article, read the full article]

The ILF helps Intranet managers and teams to:

• Explore new ideas and industry best practice for their organisation’s intranet
• Have the opportunity to directly connect with other intranet professionals at workshops and at one on one meetings
• Access many new resources including the members’ only site, Fishnet, and “how-to” guides
• Get connected with international experts

In response to requests, Step Two is now looking to bring the benefits of the Forum to Tasmania. As such, early planning for a Hobart Chapter is in progress.

If you are interested in hearing more about the proposed Hobart ILF and would like to be on our mailing list for more information, then please provide us with your details: contact@steptwo.com.au

We’ve recently started running online webinars for ILF members. The first was on SharePoint, combining a case study with insight from a SharePoint MVP.

The next session, this coming Wednesday, will be with Martin White from the UK, and Jane McConnell from France. Close friends of Step Two, they are two of the leading intranet experts in the world. They’ll be participating in a question-and-answer session, sharing their insights from Europe (and beyond).

(This is just one of the ways that ILF members benefit from the time we spend overseas, making connections with the other leading intranet thinkers and seeing what’s happening in well-known organisations.)

This session is open to all ILF members across Australia, and it’s not too late to join up.

The future of intranets is something that I’ve been focusing a lot on recently. All of this came together for a keynote presentation at the IntraTeam conference in Denmark, about a month ago.

This hour-long presentation explored two day-in-the-life scenarios that described how Sarah would be working in 2015. Most powerfully, I shared a number of mock screenshots giving hints about what the intranet could look like, such as the sample above. These really connected with the audience, and sparked some great conversations about how else the intranet could be helpful.

For the first time in Australia, I will be sharing and discussing this thinking with members of the Intranet Leadership Forum in Melbourne at their annual two day intensive (May 11 & 12).

Some other topics at the two day intensive include, home page redesign, your personal brand, the journey of the TabCorp intranet by Peter Richards and usability testing.

It’s not too late to join the Intranet Leadership Forum, and for the price of a typical conference you’ll get year-long benefits. Browse through the details on the ILF site, or contact Catherine Grenfell

The annual 2-day intensive is being held at the Hyatt on 4th and 5th August. Some of the topics include:

• The Great Twitter Debate – Is Twitter useful within our organisations?
• Sneak peak at some of 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards entries
• Accessibility of sites
• Intranet case studies
• Building successful authoring communities

Some of the Canberra-based ILF members who will be participating in the two days:

• ACT Health
• DAFF
• DEEWR
• DHS
• DoFA
• FaHCSIA

Any questions, contact Catherine on 02 9319 7901 or catherine@steptwo.com.au. To join, complete the membership form and fax it across.

This is a great opportunity to use some of this financial year’s budget to position yourself for the year ahead. Join before the 30th June, 2009 and receive a complimentary copy of our new book, What every intranet team should know.

Keep up to date with local and global developments in intranets, and gain insights on what really works from people who are passionate about their intranets.

“The Forum provides me with an experienced network of colleagues who get what I do; who understand the challenges I face; who are always available to offer their support and advice when I need it” says Nadine McMahon from the The Guild Group, a current member.

Highlights from our upcoming workshops:

• Brisbane — See Queensland University of Technology’s new student intranet
• Canberra — Dept. of Agriculture Fisheries and Forestry share their new intranet and highlight what to watch out for when building a new intranet in SharePoint
• Melbourne — Explore the best and worst of staff directories to create their own standard
• Sydney — Commonwealth Bank shares how they are rebuilding their corporate intranet while balancing the needs of individual business units

Read more:

• membership benefits
• pricing

Contact Catherine Grenfell for more information.

By joining the Forum you will have access to real-life solutions for your organisation’s intranet issues from peers who have already found the answers, saving your organisation time and money. Some of the Brisbane members already signed up include:

• Queensland University of Technology
• Energex
• Blake Dawson
• Moreton Bay Regional Council

As a member, you also have access to members in the other chapters including TabCorp, Commonwealth Bank, Caltex, CSIRO, Railcorp and LaTrobe University.

It’s not too late to join the Brisbane chapter and if you do before the workshop next week, you will receive a free copy of the Intranet Innovation Awards report which celebrates the winners of the 2008 Intranet Innovation Awards, bringing together ideas from across the globe.

For more information or to join, contact Rebecca Rodgers.

When we first set up the forum, there was only individual membership, at $3,750/year (inc GST). Last year, we introduced corporate membership, allowing three participants to attend from the one organisation. At $5,750/year, this proved to be even more popular than individual membership.

What has been interesting for us is how these corporate memberships have generated unexpected value for member organisations:

• Where the intranet is split across multiple business areas (eg comms, IT), participants can come from each area. The facilitated workshops provide an extremely productive environment for building shared awareness, and planning concrete actions. It seems that being out of the office and the structure of the workshops are big factors in making this work well.
• Some teams have started inviting a business content owner to the sessions, to help them build their understanding of intranet issues. By bringing a different author/owner each time, the whole author community is empowered.
• Some members come from complex organisations, such as universities, closely-related groups of government agencies or large corporates (banks, etc). The corporate membership allows participation from multiple levels of the organisation, helping to coordinate the many intranet activities going on.
• Australia-wide organisations are using corporate membership to send participants to chapters in different cities. This allows remote teams to benefit fully from the knowledge, as well as helping to build up an even bigger professional network.

At the request of current members, we’ll be offering new options for larger corporate memberships, allowing 5 or 8 participants. Watch this space.

We’ll also likely be increasing costs in the near future, so this is a good time to sign up at the current rate. Contact Catherine Grenfell for more information. (At present, we have forums in Sydney, Canberra, Brisbane, Melbourne and Wellington.)