Dilbert on Intranets

I came across this cartoon while waiting for an early morning flight to Melbourne and embarrassed myself by laughing rather loudly in the flight lounge.

When I went to the wonderful Scott Adams Dilbert site I was delighted to find many strips on the subject of Intranets. I am not sure how Adams is able to pinpoint the many issues we as Intranet Managers face with next generation Intranets and the emerging social and collaborative aspects they are introducing but he definitely seems to have his finger well and truly on the pulse.

Check out lots of Dilbert's Intranet related strips here.

All credit to Scott Adams - Dilbert

Sharepoint explained by Common Craft

I have always been a huge fan of Common Craft and their ability to make videos to explain new technology trend in simple and easy to understand ways.

This one is all about how Sharepont can be used in a business to make communicating and collaborating easier and more efiicient.

No need for more of my waffle. Check out the video and you will see what I mean.

People often feel overwhlemed at work and tools like Sharepoint can help
manage and organize all the messages, document and calendars in one place. This video focuses on these key points:

• How information overload keeps teams from being productive


• How Sharepoint helps to solve this problem by creating home for a team's collaboration


• How a team leader uses Sharepoint to identify team members, create a home for projects documents, calendars, etc.


• How the team can use Sharepoint to find resources that prevent them from having to reinvent the wheel

For more excellent videos visit Common Craft. You can follow them on Twitter @CommonCraft.
View the original posting for this video including full transcript here.

Get a free copy of the Digital Workplace Trends 2012 Report

Because Intranets are inside an organisations firewall it is difficult for Internet Managers to keep abreast of what other organisations are doing in their Intranet space. Jane McConnell's annual Global Intranet Trends report fills that knowledge gap.

In the last survey over 400 companies participated resulting in a snapshot of Intranet trends and strategies from around the globe for 2010. I was personally interested to discover how many organisations were testing the social intranet waters and the Global Intranet Trends Report 2011 provided me with the detail I was looking for.

Jane does a comprehensive job of preparing each years survey and report and the consistent result is an invaluable and relevant reference for every Intranet Manager in any sized organisation. Get a taste from the 2011 report here.

If you are an Intranet Manager and would like to get your hands on a free copy of the Digital Workplace Trends 2012 report all you need to do is join up to participate in the survey and Jane will send you a personalised link. The 45 minutes it takes to complete the survey is time well spend as you will be referencing resulting report you receive for the next 12 months.

The more participants the more beneficial the results so join up to participate today and help make this the best Digital Workplace Trends report yet.

Intrateam 2010 - Conference day one summary as viewed via Twitter

Intrateam 2010 is an International Conference about Intranet and Enterprise 2.0 currently taking place in Copenhagen. This event is THE place to be if your are interested in the future direction of Intranets and the people who use and manage them. International Intranet thought leaders like James Robertson, Jane McConnell, Michael Sampson, Mark Morrell and Martin White have been wowing delegates with their extensive knowledge and thought provoking presentations on day one. Needless to say I am green with envy at all who have had the opportunity to attend this gathering of Intranet gurus.

Now those of you who regularly use twitter to follow information on Intranets would have no doubt seen tweets from conference attendees in the past. I have never really been a huge fan of this practice. The tweeted comments on presentations usually lack context and seldom provide any value for people on the outside looking in. But that was before I started following the #IE10 comments posted from Intrateam 2010.

Following event proceedings last night from my home in Sydney was just fantastic. The tweets from #IE10 were gems of information. Thought provoking questions, insightful observations and valuable advise were coming thick and fast in less than 140 characters. I am now convinced that provided the person tweeting from the event has the ability to communicate key points and not just a stream of topics, following conference presentations on Twitter can be an entertaining and informative experience.

Here are some of the tweets from 4 of the English sessions on day one.

Future Intranet for New Ways of Working - Jane McConnell, Intranet and Portal Specialist
(Jane presented some of the key results from her Global Intranet Trends 2010 report)

• HR is a chameleon. Could be your best friend and worst enemy. @NetJMC #IE10
• 30% of ordinary employees have content publishing in their job description @NetJMC #IE10
• 60% are satisfied or very satisfied with search @NetJMC #IE10
• 10% is planning on optimizing mobile access @NetJMC #IE10
• 40% is planning access from home @NetJMC #IE10
• 20% have optimized commenting on intranet @NetJMC #IE10
• 45% have internal blogs and wikis today @NetJMC #IE10
• 5% use social media across the organization. More are testing and planning @NetJMC #IE10
  Correction - @NetJMC Advises that her presentation stated "60 % are using social media today with another 25% planning to do so.
  06 March 2010 - Thanks Jane
  Janes Correct data on Social Media within organisations here.
  

Building the Best Practice Intranet - Andrew Wright, Managing Director, CIBA Solutions and Stephan Schillerwein, infocentric research

• Andrew Wright and Stephan Schillerwein is arranging a competition about the most important for enduser @IntranetMatters @Roojwright #IE10
• Personlization was rated lowest by endusers. @IntranetMatters @Roojwright #IE10
• Winner was News - surprise @IntranetMatters @Roojwright #IE10
• Finding instuctions for completing work tasks was better than news. Judged by endusers - Sorry @IntranetMatters @Roojwright #IE10
• The best intranet in World Intranet Challenge is run by an IT-guy walking around talking to employees @IntranetMatters @Roojwright #IE10

How Newsdesk helped Shell save $5 million - by Rossen Roussev, former Shell Enterprise Portal manager

• Shell saved $15m on a budget that was 10% of that amount.#IE10
• Shell portal rolled out to 142k people in 142 countries #IE10
• Few users will personalise - most want content profiled for them #IE10
• Use words and phrases that help management achieve their business objectives. Rossen Roussev Shell #IE10
• More important than the (impressive) number of $ saved by shell's intranet was that it was done in a way that management bought into #IE10
• shell's savings came from overlapping media contracts being stopped #IE10
• Comms people were creating a lot of newsletters round the world. Replaced by centrally Newsdesk. Rossen Roussev Shell #IE10
• Contracts rationalization 73 contracts identified USD 17 million a year replaced by internal newsfeed Rossen Roussev Shell #IE10
• Think about your organisation. Value and perception. Walk and talk. Rossen Roussev Shell #IE10
• Don't explain to management how great the intranet is. They don't care. It's all about value and perception. Rossen Roussev, Shell#IE10
• "Get out there, talk to people, do your homework!" Rossen Roussev, Shell #IE10
  (PR - Loved this snipit - sometimes feel like shouting it at people)
  

Is your Intranet Ready for 2012? - Martin White, Intranet Focus Ltd

• Try to type "confidential" in your search box on the intranet. Scared? Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
  (PR-Tried this morning. Not as bad as I first feared it may be)
• Abandon hope for those enter here. Is that then welcome message on your intranet? Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• Information is not seen as a business asset. Why not? Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• You can't be an intranet manger for the rest of your life, you'll go insane! Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• Security gets blamed for everything. Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• The intranet is NOT an IT system The intranet is the only IT-system not having a specific purpose. Challenge? Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• Be more specific when asking about what employees do? Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• The value of your information is the sum of all salaries in the company and you are failing to manage it! Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• Collaboration technology gets rolled out without specifying collaboration requirements and goals. Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• Not many had made the requirements BEFORE installing collaboration tools. Not done with many other things! Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• Challenger launch decision. Good book about collaboration according to Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• We share information because we trust each other. Break trust and collaboration breaks. Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• What is the career path for intranet managers? (We can't do the one job for the next 20 years) @s2d_jamesr #IE10
• We focus on the media not the social. A social media guide does not make it social. Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• The biggest intranet challenge is where they bump up to ERP. Millions invested in ERP. Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10
• The future intranet has to be independent on location, language, department and technology. Martin White @IntranetFocus #IE10

I plan on following the #IE10 tweets from day two of this event tonight and am looking forward to another sessions from Jane McConnell, Step Two's James Robertson, Mark Morrell from British Telecom and Collaboration guru Michael Sampson. Does it really get any better than this?
If this event is on again next year I am going to pull out all stops to attend. Just the conversations during breaks would be well worth the price of the airfare from Australia.

What are the top 10 factors when implementing Twitter in your organisation?

Yesterday (Tuesday 4 August), the Canberra chapter of the Intranet Leadership Forum met for day one of a two day workshop and one of the items discussed was whether Twitter used inside an organisation added value. Though I was in another state and unable to attend, I was able to follow the debate via Twitter #CanberraILF. It appears that the room was split into 'For' and 'Against' camps with the 'Against' side slightly larger. There was a few undecided.

Some of the positives the 'For' team raised:
Emergency situations, have conversations within intranet author user groups, solve problems instantly.

Some of the issues raised by the 'Against' team:
Long term sustainability, potential to be a time waster, quality of information, low care factor, FOI (am assuming that was Freedom of Information), number of characters prohibiting getting message across and information overload.

Late in the afternoon the group decided to come up with a list in answer to the question "What are the top 10 factors when implementing Twitter in your organisation?".

The factors they considered were:
(In no particular order)

1. Governance for managing
2. Investigate security/technological requirements
3. Content
4. Team collaboration
5. Executive buy-in
6. Monitoring
7. Policy around guidelines for users
8. Solid business case
9. Who gets permission to tweet
10. Whether responses are trusted.
    

While the above list is by no means definitive, there are many inclusions that need to be carefully considered if an organisation intends to allow all employees internal access to Twitter.

Personally I think the ability to follow proceedings of events like this ILF workshop remotely and in real time is an overwhelming vote for the positive however the bureaucracy that exists within most organisations and breaking down the suspicions of management are realities that few have overcome.

Overall, an interesting and enjoyable debate and I would love to receive comments for things people feel should be included in the list, more arguments for the 'For' case as well as views of those in the 'Against' camp.

One final note, I came across this Template Twitter strategy for Government Departments made available by the UK Cabinet Office and have found it extremely useful. Thanks to @CraigThomler and @fanbloodytastic for tweeting the link to the template.

Thanks also to @RichardTuffin @readingroom_au @ACSnewsfeed @adriankhall @awmitchell @Alex_Manchester for contributing to the days discussions via twitter.