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Just a short post to celebrate my blog's 7th birthday (which was officially yesterday...). 7 years... I must say time flies . I still clearly remember when and why I started blogging . And how scared I was to publish my first post. As mentioned the previous year wasn't my best blogging year and I hope to do better this year. In any way I still enjoy blogging. It's a great thing to me that we have platforms to easily share what we think with each other and that we can interact with anybody in the world who is willing to read what your write. Thanks to you all for following, reading and commenting on my blog!

Oh how I love blogging, but what a horrible blogging year I’ve had… Just 24 posts in 2013 … What happened? Well, I’m happy to say I’ve been very busy. I think 2013 was my busiest year ever. My personal life has been busy. Little David was born in August and my two others boys are growing bigger of course. Furthermore we have plans to move to the middle of Holland, sold are house and are looking for a new one. A lot of time and energy went into my new role at the company I work for, Entopic . It was my first (complete) year as ‘manager Projects’, responsible for the people in Projects, ‘acquisition’ of new assignments and actually working on them. I really enjoyed the previous year, but found it left little time for reflection and slack . On the other hand I learned a lot for the work I did for clients. You should see the draft section of my blog: many one or two line draft posts about topics I’d like to share my perspective on. Topics like: intranet strategy, intranet des...

Remember me? I'm the guy who used to blog regularly here, but has been silent for some time. Man, what is going on? Happy to say I wasn't silent on Twitter and Google+ ... But I must say not blogging feels bad. For some time I was wondering if I was out of ideas to share. I know this is not the case. I have many draft blogposts waiting to be finalized for publication. Bu the main reason for not publishing them is time. I never put blogging in my schedule. I would just blog whenever I felt like it and had time to think and write. But my working (and private) life has changed lately. Not just in the number of projects I'm doing, but also juggling them in my head. I think that's the most important reason for not blogging. I need time and brain cycles to churn out posts. And it was not there or I didn't make sure it was there. Maybe I need to underschedule more? Anyway, I plan to blog more regularly. I'm simply inserting time to blog in my schedule and see if ...

It’s that time of the year again when we look back and evaluate the year that has passed by so quickly. And lots like to make predictions for the year to come. I don’t want to share my predictions and my ponderings on the previous year. It has been an exciting year for me though. Many interesting projects, many interesting interactions with colleagues, customers and you. I moved from being a senior consultant to manager, visited interesting conferences, had discussions about and changes to the company I work for, etc. I’m just happy to have a great job, in times when many are looking for a job. I would like to thank you for the previous year. For reading my blog, thinking about things I’ve shared with you and the interactions we’ve had here and elsewhere. I’m looking forward to 2013 and hope you are to. I wish you and all your loved ones happy holidays!

My first post this year is to celebrate my blog's birthday! Wow, 5 years ago I started to blog . And although blogging (who said it would be...?!) hasn't always been easy I still enjoy it. I started blogging to have a way to think out loud. To write my thoughts and ideas down and connect with other writing elsewhere in the blogosphere or on the Net. My main goal was to speed up my learning by not only reading interesting books, articles and posts, but also by publishing my thoughts, questions, doubts and learnings based on my reading. And I must say it really helped. It definitely also helped to become more connected and visible in the communities that I'm interesting in. Social media in general, and social networking especially. But also: communities, social business, enterprise 2.0, knowledge management, intranet and content management. One thing I'm wondering about is if a blog truly is a conversation platform. I know there are blogs that show it is. But my b...

How is the blogosphere doing? Several post have been written in 2011 about it being dead . At the beginning of the social media revolution everyone was told to start blogging. Now, most think microblogging is enough, it seems. Twitter has become a popular why to (micro)blog. And other types of blogging are showing up, like Posterous and Tumblr . As well as photo blogs, like Instagram . Since 2004 Technorati publishes an overview of the State of the Blogosphere. Recently ‘The State of the Blogosphere 2011’ was published. I’d like to share a summary of this interesting report with you (as I’ve done in previous years). Who are the bloggers?  4114 bloggers were surveyed for this report (about 3000 less than in 2010). According to the research 75% of the bloggers are 25-44 years old. The level of education of blogger is high, mostly college and university level. Technorati distinguishes four types of bloggers: hobbyists (60% of the respondents), part-time and full-time prof...

McKinsey has been following the social business movement for some time now. And they're following to see if it can live up to the expectations. Recently they published the results of their 5th annual survey under 4200 global executives. The polled them how their organizations use social tools. The finding of the report are interesting. There's clear progress: social tools are being used more and more and in more effective ways. When adopted across the networked enterprise and integrated in work processes of employees, clear benefits are seen. There's a boost in financial performance and market share, which relates to the results of previous surveys. However not many companies are fully networked, meaning they are internally and externally networked. One of the most interesting things I read in the report was the fact that executives believe if organizational barriers to social tools diminish, they could transform the core business processes. This is a big stateme...

I enjoy following Seth Godin 's blog. He has as inspiring way of pushing out short(er) blogposts and getting me to think. One blogpost about 'Talker's block' struck me recently. It struck me for two reasons. It related to the situation I'm in every now-and-then: writer's block. I'll have several draft posts, almost ready to be published, but they stay in the draft folder for too long. The other reason is: It's part of my work to get others to blog. And to my regret I see people starting to tweet and use Facebook, quite easily. Blogging, however, is a step too far for most of them. No, blogging is not for everybody. But some people don't start to blog because they fear writer's block. Or they're insecure about their writing skills. Or they fear for the comments others will have on their musings. Godin challenges you and me to get over it. He says: Writer's block isn't hard to cure. Just write poorly. Continue to write poorly,...

Giving a guest lecture is great fun, I find. I recently had the chance to interact with about 60 college students. They were in their second or third year. The topic of the lecture was social media use within company. So, Enterprise 2.0 or Social Business. My slides can be found here (in Dutch...). I kicked off my lecture with some open questions. I'd like to share the answers to one question with you. I was curious what social tools they use themselves to get things done in their lives. With all the talk about millennials being digital natives (or aren't they ), easily moving in the social space, organizing their life and work with these tools, etc I thought I'd see if this if the case in practice . I shared what I got from the students on Google+ . In sum, this is what they told me. Of the 60 students: 40 use Twitter Almost all use Facebook Just over half use Hyves (Dutch social network) 1 uses a bookmarking tool 2 blog 0 have a wiki (although all have ex...

Wow, sometimes it takes forever to get a blogpost ready for publication... This is one of them. Sorry for the late post about 'the State of the Blogosphere 2010' , hope you enjoy it anyway. I've been blogging what I learned from the SotB for a couple of years now. Technorati's report on how the blogosphere is doing is   lengthy and rich. To my knowledge it's the largest piece of research on the blogging community. They started back in 2004. Besides collecting general data about blogging, this year's focus is on the female bloggers. Blogs are in transition, they say. The line between blogs, microblogs and social networks is blurring. Mobile blogging is the key trend this year. Based on the results of the survey and interviews they see great optimism about blogging. More and more blogs are generating revenue, more frequent blogging and more blogs are planned and more and more people say the go-to resource for news will be blogs. The trust in mainstream media ...

It's been 4 years now since I started this blog . 4 years! That seems like a very long time. All I can say is I really enjoyed blogging and will continue to do so in the future. I hope and plan to do more blogging. Some of them will be short (but not as short as my tweets ...). And some will be longer. I really want to share some of my deeper thinking with you and would like to hear what you think about them. I'm also looking for ways to reshare older posts. I don't want to push them at you, but my readership has grown and I'd like to hear from them what their views are on those posts. If you have any ideas on this, please let me know. I still collect bookmarks and comment on them in Diigo. I don't share them here anymore, but you can find them easily . Finally I want to thank you for reading my blog, commenting on posts and sharing them with others. Thanks a bunch, it really means a lot to me! And if you have any comments about my blog or blogging, e.g. tips to im...

Wow, that’s a whole mouthful! This is the first presentation at Employee Portal Evolution Masters 2010 in Berlin. I’ll be live-blogging through this conference. The subtitle of the conference is Strategic business approach for employee portal lifecycle management and integration of social media in rapidly changing digital environment’. Another mouth-ful! Mark Morrell , Intranet Manager of BT has the honors of opening this conference. The title of his talk is the title of this blogpost. BT’s intranet is about 16 years old. It started in 1994. It’s available to 140.000+ employees including 3rd parties. All information and applications are online. They can access it wherever they want. They use it for collaboration online too: blogs, wikis, podcasts, RSS, Twitter. Their intranet was also a push towards a more paperless office. They benchmark their intranet through the Intranet Benchmarking Forum. And they’re one of the best… Why did they start using social media? Social media is techno...

Today is Blog Action Day ! If you don't know, the idea is very simple. A theme is selected and bloggers join in to right about this topic. By talking, writing and thinking about one topic for one day, hopefully more awareness will be created around this theme, hopefully leading to change. Even the White House is joining in this year. Let's prove Malcolm Gladwell is wrong ! ;-) This year's theme is 'WATER' . Coming from a country that, if it weren't for dikes, would mostly be under water, I understand the importance and the danger of water. In the previous years we've seen all kinds of disasters relating to water. Just think back to hurricane Katrina and New Orleans. Or the floods in Pakistan. And now the dike that broke in Hungary. But we can also relate to the way water is being and has been polluted. Just relate to the BT oil platform that pumped huge amount of oil into the Gulf of Mexico. We can't even imagine the damage that as done to the sea (...

Do you blog? If so, I hope you too will be blogging on Blog Action Day 2010 . It's for a good cause. This year's focus in: Water. Blog Action Day 2010: Water from Blog Action Day on Vimeo .

I love pointing to new good blogs! Regularly friends and colleagues start a new blog. My friend and colleagues Jan van Veen just made the leap. He started his blog called 'Corporate Internal Communications' . Jan is an expert in (internal) Communications. He's also very interested in what the Internet, especially social media, is doing to Communications inside and outside companies. Jan and I have been collaborating heavily in this area. I hope you all go over to his blog and subscribe to it. Leave a comment to welcome him to the blogosphere! His first post is about the end of the intranet . His second is about how simple publishing on the web has gotten . Good to have you in this space, Jan. Go for it!

I was planning to write two more posts today and this evening, but I decided they can wait. I really wanted to write about two things that I'm really hyped up about: Andrew McAfee's book Enterprise 2.0 . Great read, great book. Really good overview of the Enterprise 2.0 landscape for people that are new to this interesting field and even for the experienced early adopters. I'll share my review in September. Lots of debate has popped up quite recently about Enterprise 2.0 and business processes. I was working on a post, based on all the older and newer posts that I've collected . Great stuff and very deep thinking going on there. But 'vacation first'. I'm heading to Germany, near Trier , and hope to be there with my family. Really looking forward to it! So, blogging and tweeting will be slow! See you later.

I've been looking around at how companies use blogs. I see several types of blogs: A company blog, sometimes a blog per country (written in the local language) A page with an overview of official company bloggers. Usually these blogs are focused on product or market areas. Some of these companies have several more bloggers, but they are not listed on the official blog page. These bloggers often clearly state they work for a certain company, but 'the musings on my blog are strictly personal'. For some reason I find this strange. Why aren't these blog posts (with disclaimers) also listed on the page with official blogs? I think this has something to do with the old style of 'managing' communication. The official company blogs are basically controlled posts, somewhat different from official press releases (they have comments...!), but still pretty much the same. In this model it would also mean that all our talk about our work and the company we wo...

Well well, I finally had time to finish this post. It's been a while ago since the 'State of the Blogosphere 2009' (SofB) has been published. I'd like to share the things I learned from this great yearly report. I'll start with something I missed in the report: the number of blogs related to the number of active blog (bloggers posting at least once a week). It is mentioned that the levels of active bloggers has remained similar to 2008. This report underlines that the Blogosphere is still strong. Although there has been some discussion if blogging is dead or old-skool, the SofB says the blogging world is changing, but very alive and kicking. The report revolves around 4 types of bloggers: hobbyists, part-timers, self-employeds and Pros. The Hobbyists are the largest group, but the Pros is more influential every year. Another trend is the blog is taken ever more seriously by mainstream media. Interestingly the large part of the bloggers is highly educat...

Today is my blog's birthday! Man, time does fly. Three years ago I thought I'd give it a go. Never looked back after that. I still enjoy blogging. My blogging has changed over the years. In the first year I blogged a lot. In the second year I blogged less, and wanted to focus more on quality. I hope my readers think this worked out OK. Concluding from my growing number of readers I think the answer is 'yes'. My reasons to blog have not changed. It's a great way to connect to people also interesting in information architecture, information management, knowledge management, web 2.0, enterprise 2.0 and innovation. Although the conversation about blog posts has almost completely moved to Twitter, writing up my thoughts is still very helpful. It helps me structure my thoughts and test my ideas. I also like the fact that I can share these ideas and thoughts at times when people need them. They're on my blog, but you don't need to read them right away. It can m...

Today is Blog Action Day ! I just went over to the Blog Action Day site to see how many people have registered. At this time 8,103 sites have registered, resulting in 11,788,878 readers. Wow! This year's Blog Action Day is about 'Climate Change'. A big topic these days. And I'm happy it is too. The number of times we talk about 'it' at home, at lunch, at the coffee corner or in the carpool with colleagues clearly shows: this issue grips lots of us. However, because it's such a big topic and lots of people are talking about it, I'm also sensing that lots of people don't really know what to do about it. It's too big for me to really make a change. I don't agree, but I do understand. Is the fact that I'm doing all these small things in my personal life really making a change for our climate and the future of this world? This question is a serious one and should be answered regularly. I know all kinds of websites and organizations are pr...