DorjeM

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...