DorjeM

I've just been up from 4am until 6am and watched the sun touch the harbour out the window. Yep yet another joy of living at the end of the earth - and why you ask ? Well today was the first IBF (Intranet Benchmarking Forum) Intranets Live event . I live blogged - thanks for the inspiration Michael Sampson - the event. A first for me so apologies to those who I was recording for any mistakes, they are mine alone. Overall an interesting session - shame it will cost so much to attend following sessions. Kellogs walk through Talk with Shiv Singh about intranet wiki Talk with researcher about wikis Intranet doctor takes a look at BT and Corus intranet issues CapitalOne intranet manager interview Interview with Yammer CEO , enterprise twitter 200 attendees from more than 20 countries, including a few hardy souls from the south pacific. There were several technical hitches that meant we couldn't see Shiv Singh's presentation and didn't get to hear Jane McConnell at all...

Talking to Yammer CEO - David IBF found that Yammar has helped glue IBF togeather David was COO of PayPal Then started Genie - family tree social networking site Got more than 30 employees so wanted a way to solve email overload and keep everyone connected. We liked twitter - but everyone sees your updates, very hard to limit to those with same email domain as you. IBF use skype and email as well as Yammer, 40 in team globally. Helps allow questions and feel a sense of community Nic Price - feels like a little bit of intranet outside the intranet on the cloud Q David what is the market for Yammer A We want Yammer to spread virally, make money off yammer as an enterprise product. Empower employees to communicate - free for users, enterprise can gain control by paying for admin tool access. Q What is the payment model ? IBF pay nothing at present A That is OK, effectivly it is a free trial period $1/user/month is what you pay for admin tools Q Some companies felt annoyed by users signing...

I've been asked to present a Live Intranet tour for the Intranet Benchmarking Forum's 24 hour event in a couple of days. I've blogged about the IBF intranet's live online meetings previsously, this time I'll be presenting for their second (I think, correct me if I'm wrong) Intranets 24 hour event. Over the span of 24 hours the IBF team will be hosting a huge number of world leading intranet live tours and a large number of intranet thought leaders. Interestingly they've adopted the "digital workplace" as a sub title for the event. This is a theme of web workplace or digital workplace was originally raised by Jane McConnell on her blog Globally Local and Locally Global. It is great to see because the term intranet is so far from the reality for many organisations in this day and age. Attendance is FREE and I'd highly recommend anyone with an interest in intranets attend. It is on 2nd and 3rd of June so SOON. For your free ticket to attend you...

Host Paul Millar from IBF First up Kelloggs intranet manager Stuard Cochrane 4 years as intranet developer 3 years as intranet manager 4 Intranets - by global region Stuart in charge of European intranet 5 Business partners / 4 Developers 4000 users ASP.NET CMS SQL Server Database Wikis blogs forums - possibly delivered by SharePoint 2009 Intranet sits within IT Strong HR and Corporate comms steering group NoticeBoard - fast moving changes (15 notices / week) corporate NoticeBoard - articles 1 or 2 / week, from Corporate comms Hot Links - Key strategic initatives / strategies - so staff are aware of these ideas everyday Products Promotions - three key initatives European Vacancies - so that staff can recommend their associates faster than via recruiters, very tangible return on investment K Values - our key corporate values Went live 1.5 weeks ago Will then survey via intranet Some usability via IBF SEARCH - Ashley Position was to design and develop new search Search wasn't on ever...

William Hudson of IBF shows intranet patients from Corus and BT Talking to Chris from Corus Working with consultants to turn portal into an intranet news / tasks / favorites Corus keen to get some expert advice from the Doctor William - double level navigation Problem with this type of navigation e.g. www.smart.com Mouse movement from one big to small nav means that second tab is accidentally moused over and that changes the menu items in the second level Problem is that people move mouse in straight line which causes the problem. All done with javascript - this causes problems with speach recogntion packages e.g. Dragon This means that Dragon doesn't work - so accessibility isn't good. Architecture needs to take this into account assistive technologies. Patient 2 - BT Problem - too much colour and too many banner ads BT Intranet manager - worried that banner blindness is an issue Paper by Benway + Lane (10yrs old now) but a real issue e.g. on BT page 'Yipee' and 'S...

Nokians (Nokia employees) and their intranet landscape were the focus of Intranets live in the first week of this month. The whole event continued it's move upward, building on the best of previous events, while leaving the things that didn't work behind. Close to 300 people attended this month. The technical hitches were fewer and less disruptive than in the past. Where they did occour was probably a good thing considering what they're responsible for, the UK Department of Defense who were to feature couldn't due to snow and a lack of access from home. This time round the co-host was Richard Dennison, Senior Manager Social Media for BT (British Telecom), who with Paul Millar (Host and founder of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum ) and Paul Levy did a great job of bringing some global overview to the topics that came up. February's Intranets Live event was dedicated to 2.0, with BT being in the vanguard of enterprise 2.0 Richard offered some very interesting insights...

Catherine Murphy (intranet manager) from CapitalOne Q How did you end up as intranet manager ? A Fell into it, knew person implementing portal and he gave me the job. Over time fell into overall management of it. Q CapitalOne intranet flavour A More interactive, representative of our culture open and collaborative. We have blogs, wikipedia. Looking for better way to connect people. Our portal helps support cultural integration [screen shot] Q Proud of ? A Ease of getting to things from the home page, people find things quicker and easier, they use search less Q Platform ? A Oracle web logic Q What bad things happen to Intranet managers ? A Getting caught up in intranet content, rather than being able to keep focus on strategic goals. I prefer to spend time on future design, usability, productive functionality. Part of the change where communication is opened up between staff an associates, means it's easy to loose focus. Q Economic crisis ? Had an effect on your role ? A In a warpe...

In part one of my Intranets Live Feb 09 event coverage I talked through Nokia's "News hub" front page, news item comments and Nokia's use of the Kyte platform to deliver video for multiple devices/platforms from a single source. I also talked through William Hudson's discussions of image use on intranet pages. Here in part two I'm going to cover Nokia's personal profile pages. Nokia Personal Profiles Angela Huffman from Nokia used the last segment of Intranets Live Feb 09 to share the personal profiles the intranet delivers for each employee. Angela outlined that the current look feel and functionality was being reviewed and there were plans to "share more information and improve searchability". Angela outlined how the interface was changing from tabs to "FaceBook like portlets". For Nokians the 'presence' indicators available via the intranet are very very important. The system draws information from multiple sources SAP, proj...

The third in the series of IntranetsLive events I have to say this one was much impro ved on the first one [notes on it by me ]. Very much more professional, snappier and very useful. Hosting were Paul Miller and Paul Levy. I took notes this time, rather than live blogging - hence the delay in getting my notes online. Infact so slow that the 4 th in the Intranets Live series is in about 6 hours time. This is a record of what occurred, for those who couldn't attend. It is also a record of some of the great work that has been done by the organisations IntranetsLive profiled in the third event. As always the mistakes and omissions are mine alone. I've posted screen shots, and where appropriate I've removed sensitive material - if you would prefer the screen shots are removed please contact me, I'm very happy to address any concerns immediately. 245 people joined in with this event. Phillips Healthcare First up for the new year was Candice Cahill from Phillips Health...

Emma Trent interviewed by Paul Millar talks about what a wiki is and how they're useful. Q why not a gimick ? A users of wiki's engage much more than using a CMS Q most successful wiki ? A Software development firm using Twiki, problem is very hard to get into companies to see how they're being used Q How do you get critical mass ? A Users with high technical knowledge find it easier, companies with cultures of collaboration find it easier Publish Post Q How do you keep it safe ? A You have to invest in management - many people have control of content so the work is shared Q Interesting Wiki questions currently A Getting users to participate and encourage collaboration - "Very very hard, and requires changes to culture"

Shiv Singh from Avenue A Razorfish 1.5 years ago redesigned Avenue A Razofish using mediaPedia Lots of staff were blurring lines between personal and work lives, so we actively encouraged it. Integrated Flikr into wiki - posting to Flikr with a specific tag means that the photo shows up on the work wiki page. We also integrate delicious - tag with a specific tag and it automatically gets shared with the organisation Anyone can edit any page - HR very concerned pages would get vandalised "none of that happened, if you trust your employees they will do the right things" There were a lot of page edits - in any month pages are edited around 10,000 times 6000 visits / month 100,00 - 120,000 page views / month We provide all the standard intranet functionality - plus flikr and delicious plus editing which all means the intranet is their own. About 2500 staff, 7 countries, 20 cities Question from Paul Millar (Host) - financial crisis causing you to question social aspect of intran...

Aaron Resting in a recent post on A list apart http://www.alistapart.com/articles/mappingmemory gives a very thought provoking look at the framework we view what it is to be intranet professionals through, and what it could mean to change that framework. How do you see yourself ? architect or cartographer ? Or something in between perhaps ? Aaron's musings tie well with the last sentence of an article by Elizabeth Marsh (IBF) from July http://www.intranetlife.com/intranet_benchmarking_for/2008/07/employee-direct.html In it she muses, in the last sentence, on how formal the term intranet is, compared to the reality of what intranets as concepts / things actually achieve. The area of language and how our ability to document in words what it is we, intranet professionals, do is something that I feel has importance for us all. If we can get our heads around the words then we'll find it easier to articulate the value we deliver to those who control the organisation...

HSBC UK's intranet is change personified. Natalie Bogos, with help from Gerry McGovern and his team at Customer Carewords, and some of her own team's great ideas is moving HSBC UK intranet to a task based model. HSBC UK's intranet is moving from thousands of new pages a week to content that serves the work staff do. Slides and a recording of the webinar are available from www.customercarewords.com This month Gerry McGovern and Natalie Bogos of HSBC UK provided the best Customer Carewords webinar that I've attended. No spin on Customer Carewords products or services, just a great case study of how to get a large organisation to change it's ways. A couple of things did strike me though - Gerry McGovern, or who ever prepares his slides really really needs the help of Garr Reynolds and www.presentationzen.com - at the very least join istockphoto.com and spend 20 or 30 pounds for some new images for tools / timber and a workman. Unfortunately the US changed to summertim...