Comments on: Publicising the launch of ‘Boris’ at City of Casey

By: Recommended Reading for Intranet Professionals - Week 03/2009 at Intranet Matters

Fri, 16 Jan 2009 13:47:08 +0000

[...] Publicising the launch of ‘Boris’ at City of Casey In this interview, Website Coordinator Michael Cleland explains why the City of Casey’s intranet was named ‘Boris’ upon its launch in 2006. The site has proved hugely successful, winning an Intranet Innovation award in its first year. Michael says the site’s success is due in large part to its usefulness, but also the creation and powerful, consistent promotion of the intranet’s brand. « Effective Meetings and Decisions – not just for Intranet Teams [...]

By: Lansera med en seriestrip « e24 Intranätgruppen

Lansera med en seriestrip « e24 Intranätgruppen — Wed, 14 Jan 2009 12:59:27 +0000

[...] 2009 Posted by Jesper Bylund in Uncategorized. trackback Jag har i ett tidigare inlägg nämnt Boris, intranätet med eget namn, utseende och seriefigur. Trelleborg har provat att lansera sitt intranät med en seriestrip, något som föll väl [...]

By: Michael Cleland

Michael Cleland — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 11:13:51 +0000

James is correct. I have developed the CMS that runs both the Boris intranet and the City of Casey’s website – they run pretty much from the same code base. Have a look at Casey’s website and you’ll get a feel for how Boris navigates – of course they are completely different ‘flavours’ of website, targeted to their audiences differently.

Both have evolved over the years and there definitely are pros and cons as James suggests.

The benefit is that I can make whatever changes I like as they are required without much expense. But developing can take time. I’m not a full time coder, but develop all aspects of both websites, from interface, graphics, HTML, CSS, database, scripts, content etc..

By: James Robertson

James Robertson — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 21:15:05 +0000

Hi Jason, I believe that Boris is published using a in-house developed CMS. As always, this has big strengths and equally big weaknesses.

By: Jason

Jason — Mon, 05 Jan 2009 00:30:50 +0000

Kind-of on topic, what CMS does Boris wear? (A serious question).
Jason

By: Vad heter ditt intranät? « e24 Intranätgruppen

Vad heter ditt intranät? « e24 Intranätgruppen — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 08:15:50 +0000

[...] trackback Vad heter ditt intranät? Bara “Intranätet”, eller har det ett namn? Jag såg just en artikel om staden Caseys nya intranät, kallat “Boris”. Detta intranät har en egen seriefigur, följer inte stadens grafiska policy [...]

By: Sean Fishlock

Sean Fishlock — Thu, 18 Dec 2008 05:42:39 +0000

Some interesting thoughts there Alex. Michael can benefit from the fact that he’s been there for a while and probably hasn’t had to deal with much staff turnover in his department. The company I work for was involved in a similar exercise with the City of Boroondara’s intranet here in Victoria back in 2005. Branding was identified as part of our strategic consulting for the project. To help promote their Intranet, through their consultation process they came up with a character called “Webby”. He/she is a googly eyed spider with gangly legs tangling their way through the web with a tagline of “Get Caught Up in the Web”. The image was intended to portray the Intranet as both interesting and comprehensive and a “home” for staff. The launch of Webby was very successful and with the benefit of integration into the council’s key applications the Intranet has since gone from strength to strength. However despite the character “webby” has never been the name of the intranet. Instead, council staff are still encouraged to call it the “intranet”. I think giving the Intranet a personality is great to publicise it, but actually going to the extent of anthropormorphizing it can have some real dangers, especially during the pain of re-branding. I think that although the majority of users are primarily non-technical, they do need a basic understanding of what the underlying technology is and does to be able to use it effectively. There is a good reason why Ask.com dropped Jeeves from “Ask Jeeves” and for “Google” becaming synonymous with “Internet Search”. In the end, the intranet is a computer application – a powerful tool. So simply telling new staff to “Ask Boris” can be confusing for obvious reasons and does not help them where to find the “intranet” or know what it does – especially if their career ends up taking them to another council. A character is great to introduce a concept, but not to replace it. Anyway, thanks for listening !