DorjeM

Recently I've been thinking about Governance for intranet sites, SharePoint and intranets as a whole. Earlier this year I was lucky enough to present alongside some great folks from Telcom NZ, The department of Transport NZ, and NZ Parliament. The team from NZ Parliament have come up with a governance structure that works really well for them in a very technically, politically and legally complex environment. I talked to Tracy Parsons from NZ Parliament recently and she outlined what the force was that drove the move to this structure and the benefits they derive from it. Originally the governance structure was setup quite differently. Large web site and intranet development projects were initiated and resulted in very project - focused governance structures being put in place. The projects transitioned form implementation to work as usual, this highlighted how project focused governance structures don’t suit work as usual operations. The two senior business owners, who had...

It's that time of year again and together with BrightStar we've got a great Intranet conference for all those New Zealand Intranet folks, starting next week. For those of you who may be following the action in the alternate channels I thought I'd post the Agenda and the hash tag for everyone to use Monday and Tuesday next week. I've had a hell of a couple of weeks so I'm really looking forward to seeing some great presentations, hearing some super questions and learning a lot. James Robertson of StepTwo designs is giving the key note, so expect to be challenged. Hash tag for the event # nzIntSum 09 - looking forward to your blog and twitter posts Agenda 9th Annual Strategic Intranet Summit Day One, Monday, 31 August 2009 9:00am Opening Remarks from the Chair Dorje McKinnon, Intranet Overseer SUNGARD SYSTEMS NZ LTD 9:10am Keynote Address: Building Momentum for the Intranet Team James Robertson, Managing Director STEP TWO DESIGN PTY LTD 10:00am CASE STUDY: R...

Jane McConnell has asked me to remind you there are only a few days before the 4Th Annual global intranet strategies survey will close, at the end of August. I’ve worked with Jane on this for a couple of years [Disclosure: I have helped, unpaid, Jane improve the report by being an opinionated fellow from across the sea] and can highly recommend participation. If you fill in the survey you get a free copy of the Trends Report, Jane’s analysis of the data. It is really great material and helps with many aspects related to running an intranet. How to sign up to participate this year http://tinyurl.com/lmrsxh Some preliminary findings: - The intranet as the single point of entry into the online workplace is beginning, with approximately 15 % of the organizations saying this is already the case. - Home pages are primarily news-based (60 %) versus navigational or work tool-based. - Social networking applications (such as Facebook) are still rare, existing in fewer than 15% of the organizatio...

Recently I was asked " What are the top 10 points you think are important to get across to staff at all levels in an organisation about Yammer? " My initial reaction was "Tough ask", mainly because I've seen great write ups on what organisations get out of Yammer but very few that talk directly to the user benefits. Many articles give the usual cop out "users can't see the point, until they get it" I admit I was in that boat when I started using Twitter, a public micro blogging platform. But just like they said "once I used it I got it". What they didn't say was that it took a while and it suits certain people better than others. So as with all things in the social media space, be aware that culture change not the technology may be your biggest challenge. So what does Yammer, a microblogging platform for organisational use , do for real employees that is compelling enough for them to spend the time to "Get it" ? First off Y...

Yep cost per year for screen saver running 24 hrs a day 365 days a year was US$122,000. Our organisation was looking for cost savings and a new corporate screen saver came out at about the same time. There was some comment about how much it must have cost, even though it looked good and everyone felt part of the team now they had it. I got to thinking, how much is it actually costing for everyone in our division, about 800 people, to run this new screen saver. So I opened up a power cord, got out the volt meter and measured 10 or 12 monitors and 10 or 12 different PCs to find out how much power they were using. It took a few lunch times worth of work but by the end of the week I had some numbers. I was looking to contibute something to our whole organisation, about 8000 people at the time so I was hoping for multiplier effects. What I found was very interesting but did require some assumptions due to our division and the organisation being spread all round the globe. My hypoth...

My Edmonds cookbook The following is one of the many ways of "influencing" those you need on side to do intranets well! It is also great for those folks that help you out with paper prototyping and usability studies, I bake mine in muffin tins so that I can give each participant one. Edmond's Banana Cake (Page 18, of my book) Add the ingredients to a bowl in the order listed, mixing constantly 125g (4oz) butter (soft, or part melted) 175g (6oz) white sugar cream together 2 eggs 2 mashed bananas (we put brown ones from the fruit bowl in the freezer until you need them and then use those) mix ingredients Put two tablespoons of full fat milk in a cup and boil in the microwave. Add 1 teaspoon of bicarbonate of soda. Mix till mixture is frothy. Add frothy bicarb/milk to the main bowl. Add one teaspoon of baking powder to 225g (8oz) white flour, sift into the mail bowl of ingredients Mix well. Bake in muffin or cake tins at 180 degrees Celsius (350F) ...

Photo by hoyasmeg "Revolution doesn't happen when society adopts new tools, it happens when society adopts new behaviours" Clay Shirky www.usnowfilm.com The organisations we manage intranets within serve institutional societies. Delivering benefit to the organisations intranets serve requires that we as intranet managers provide the tools, that provide the opportunity for behaviours to change. The changed behaviour delivers benefit to the organisations we serve. How do you facilitate changes in behaviour by the members of your organisation ? Share you highs and lows.

Photo by MrHayata My recent post on intranet profiles elicited a comment from Adriana Beal of 2wtx consulting . Out of that I accepted her invitation to provide 2wtx's user centered design blog "It's Broken" with a guest post. Adriana originally asked me to talk about the difference a well designed intranet could make, having looked at "It's Broken" and taken a stab at the audience I wrote about closing the Intranet feedback loop . This is a topic that I've been wrestling with recently. Many of the requests that come across my desk have great planning, lofty goals and real organisational benefits but no feedback mechanism. No way to ensure, that if the solution isn't quite right, that the users of the system have some way of initiating improvements. Take search for example - I've done quite a lot of work trying to improve search by analysing the log files I've got our search engine to create. I've got best bets, I look at the top 50...

Today one of the people I follow on Twitter asked the following question. @ChristySeason Asking all #intranet tweeps: Does your company publish employees' titles on your employee directory/look up/phone book? In following Intranets Live I've been lucky enough to see some great intranets. As such I was able to reply to Christy with the following Nokia do Deloitte do (see the end of the post) Christy's question also prompted me to document my own intranet's profile page. The following image is from the view other's get of my profile. When I look at my profile I see every item that is recorded. I'll save you from that, another post perhaps, if you're interested. DorjeM PS a couple of Vendors I've been reminded of, thanks Crhis and Carolyn, also have screen shots of their profile pages on the web: ThoughtFarmer - intranet software - slideshow of screen shots and Intranet connections - software solution

I'm priviledged to have, and have had, exceptional friends and loved ones during my life. I've not always taken the opportunites presented, to let them know how I feel about them and how much I appreciate their support respect and love. Despite my father's sage advice to do just that. An autumn night... don't think your life, didn't matter Matsuo Basho

Serendipity Thanks to staff within my organisation (BR) and people like Chris Brogan , Cairo Walker and James Robertson the past couple of weeks have been very interesting for me because they've drawn togeather ideas I've been exposed to for a while. I think they've clicked. The following is the true story of how serendipity helped save elephants - believe me it does relate to social media within the firewall. “Moses lives in Africa, works for a large global organisation and is responsible for elephant human conflict resolution. Abraham lives in India, works for the same large global organisation and is also responsible for elephant human conflict resolution. Moses grew up in the African bush, where there is a kids story that a bee (rather than a mouse) can scare elephants. Moses noticed that those villages who kept beehives had less elephant conflict events than other villages, all other factors being equal. To test his theory he put beehives in those villages with the m...

Hi team, I'm putting the finishing touches on my materials for Managing and growing your intranet 2009, training I'm giving for BrightStar , to intranet professionals in Wellington New Zealand 8 - 9 May. I'm posting this now so that those who attend and would like to follow the conference can do so http://tinyurl.com/mangrow09may takes you to a google search for 'managing and growing your intranet' The hash tag for the event is # mangrow 09 if you want to follow or tweet on Twitter Use the same tag for any of your other favorite social services ;-) I'm citing my sources for the event using Delicious with the same tag And for those of you hanging out for the Intranets Live coverage for the past two months - don't worry I'm still juggling processing the screen shots, computer crashes et el . Big thanks go out to Chris Brogan for very timely tweets and sharing his thoughts on his blog. And on that note . . . ( ellipses thanks to @ jonthegeologist of ht...

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...

MOO - the BBC's creative network Until now I've been unable to blog about Shane's great work at the BBC which I first saw as an attendee of the Intranets Live Feb 09 event. During Intranets Live Feb 09 Shane Samarawikrema, Experience Designer at the BBC , delivered a great presentation on MOO the BBC's new creative network. Boy have these guys get done some cool stuff. "MOO - ideas you can milk" is the BBC's creative network - the vision was to increase innovation, creativity and collaboration across the organisation. An intranet based training initative for sharing creative techniques and informal education horizontally across the BBC. Vision was from the top, goal was to engage bottom up. Overall the project was commissioned by the Creative Audiences Training team - a "big up" to them for having the vision and desire to see MOO through to what is becoming - a great resource for the BBC. Andy Tedd (consultant) identified that the audience was p...

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...

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...

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...