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There’s quite a bit going on in the intranet technology landscape. Three trends I’m seeing are: Many “out of the box” intranetplatforms are popping up Organizations are using combinations of platforms to fullfill employee needs Organisations are outsourcing functional and technical maintenance, and hosting Standard intranet solutions I don’t where you live but where I live, in the Netherlands, many standard intranet solutions are popping up. This is understandable if you see how many intranets, that have been developed on cms’s, have failed. Many are so sick and tired of the failed intranet projects that they flee to intranet platforms that can be set up quickly and are well-designed. As much as I understand this, I’m also intrigued by it. Over the last 5-10 years almost all companies have left their custom developed intranet (cms) behind and have moved to standard cms’s, like Drupal and SharePoint. Two of the main reasons to do so was the lack of innovation in these tail...

As I did yesterday , I'm sharing my (rough) notes with you all. Please find them below. Others are live-blogging the conference. Please follow them as well. I pointed to their blogs yesterday. Dave Snowden , The organization as a loosely coupled network About systems, cognition and the patterns of those. Three functional types of systems: Ordered: Order is cool, but after success we get seduced by it. Chaotic: no boundaries or structure Complex adaptive system (co-evolution): We’re moving away from content to linkages that are defined by people. These systems work in very different ways. Illustrates this with the ‘7/8 year old children party’ . Refers to the Cynefin framework , a sense-making framework. Some remarks Dave made related to the framework: If you’ve done two interviews you already have a hypothesis that is hard to give up. Complexity requires more management than in the ordered domain, but the management is different. It’s about creating sa...

I'm attending the 2015-edition of the IntraTeam Event in Copenhagen . It the 10th time it has been organized and it's my first time at the event. I'm writing along with the talks that I attended and will share my rough notes with you below. These are the notes from day 2 (- Day 1 was the workshop day. As I had to give a workshop I don't have any notes on Day 1. The slides for my/our workshop can be found here ). James Robertson , How design thinking is transforming Intranets could do more with design. There are several tools to design intranets like: Cardsorting Tree testing (for instance by using  Treejack ) Wireframing Usability testing James stresses that we should designing intranets that engage. Intranet should not only be useful (as he thought in the past), but also be beautiful. Employees look at it every day. It should delight employees. He shows several examples of intranets that do this: Accolade Calgary Board of Education (based on Sharepoi...

Personalization of intranet homepages has been a big topic for years now. Recently s ome results from a survey were shared and analyzed by Andy Jankowski , I was most surprised by the data about personalization (and left a comment there). According to the research from the Worldwide Intranet Challenge personalization has a negative impact on the way employees value their intranet. My intranet I know there is research that says only 20% of the employees personalize their intranet when they can. But the above-mentioned conclusion is contrary to all my experiences. When we do intranet strategy and design work for companies, almost all ask for some form of personalization. This doesn't have to mean they will use it, I think. I think employees says this when they ask for personalization: the intranet is fundamentally mine, so I want to be able to tweak it in such a way that it fits my daily needs, not Communication's or IT's needs. Levels of personalization What k...

I’m on my way back from my visit to Stockholm. I was honored to speak at one of Kristian Norling’s Intranatverk conferences . I’ll share my insights from the conference in another post and start with sharing my slides and the story around the slides with you. Please find my slides here: The importance of Why for intranets and digital workplaces #intranatverk from Samuel Driessen Surprise My talk was about the importance of Why for intranets and digital workplaces. The reason to talk about this topic is my surprise about how often organizations don’t answer the why question and just focus on the what, when and where of intranets. (Research on Swedish and Finnish intranets underlined this. I’ll share more about this in a following post.) I think this is problematic and leads to intranets and digital workplaces that don’t have (enough) value. Endless debates When we talk about ‘why’ we could easily get into endless philosophical, demographical or cultural discussions. About ...

It struck me again recently while I was reading the latest edition of Jane McConnell’s ‘digital workplace’ report . There are an amazing number of aspects to intranets or digital workplaces! Intranets and intranet projects are complex. Intranets touch the hart of organizations. Intranet managers This is also what you hear when you talk with people who are responsible for the intranet. Their role implies they have to master a broad range of skills, if they want to do their job successfully. So is intranet management one of the or the most complex jobs in the world? Intranet disciplines Let's see which skills a successful intranet manager has to have. I have conducted the following list. Intranet managers need to know: The organization and processes: how does the organization work and what are the key business processes? This is also important because the intranet needs organization (governance) that fits with the overall organization of the company. An intranet man...

In my previous post about Jane’s report about the Digital Workplace I focused on what the report said about adoption, challenges and business scenario’s. In this post I’m zeroing in on the survey results about mobile intranet, search, and the scorecard. Mobile intranet I hear quite some organizations talk about mobile intranet. The report shows only 10% actually have a mobile intranet. And 30-40% have plans to develop one in 2014. To me this is somewhat disappointing, although it does relate to my consultancy work. Mobile intranet is still far away for most companies. Many are (still) working hard to get the 'basics' right. Search Quite some attention is paid to ‘search’ in the report. Clearly search is not done well in most intranets. I do find it surprising hardly any companies get search right. My experience is this usually has more to do with governance and content design than with technology… Scorecard Together with an Advisory Board a Digital Workplace ...

As mentioned in my previous post I wanted to write some more about Jane McConnell’s research report about ‘the digital workplace’ . I can’t and won’t discuss the whole report. I thought I’d highlight some parts of the report and hopefully this will get you to buy and read the report yourself. If you haven’t already, I highly recommend you to. Adoption and challenges I searched the report for ways in which organizations promote internal social networking and support adoption. What I found was that most just let it grow (‘viral adoption’), promote it with official communication, and make sure senior management is involved and gives a good example. I think it would be great if more is shared about how organization support adoption of internal social networking (and digital workplaces). My experience is that many organizations have a hard time growing internal networking and workplaces. This also relates to the interesting chapter about ‘The new workplace. Challenges and conce...

Well, Jane McConnell’s yearly report about the Digital Workplace has been out for some time now. At that time I read the report ( like I do every year ), but didn’t have (or make?) time to share my thoughts on it. But I’m sharing them now. Must-have Jane’s report, ‘ Digital Workplace in the connected organization ’, is the most comprehensive report about the digital workplace. It’s her 8th report and it again contains loads of information and interesting insights. As I’ve said before: It’s a must-have for every person interested in or working the intranet, digital workplace and social business space. By the way, Jane regularly shares insightful nuggets from her research and extensive experience over on her blog. Extra valuable This year’s report clearly has extra value compared to previous editions. The report contains an enormous amount of valuable information. More than ever before Jane gives guidelines how to go through the report, with a short and longer version of...

Jane McConnell shares the results of her yearly - and great! - Digital Workplace survey. This is part of the expertise panel about digital workplace concepts and trends . Jane defines the digital workplace as the intersection of people, tools and organization. The two main drivers for the digital workplace are: increasing organizational intelligence; gaining efficiency & cost savings Key to transformation Jane found in her latest research is that the top management and operational management are twice as involved in strategic decision-making with respect to the digital workplace. Much more was shared in her slides. Too much, too fast to keep up. I focused on studying her slides instead of blogging... Sorry. Next up  Michel Ezran about the research Lecko does on the adoption of enterprise social networks. They try to measure the level of engagement in 15 organizations. Some findings: a few transversal communities generate most of the ESN value deplo...

As you may know I work for Entopic . We organize several conferences about topics such as intranet, content marketing, Facebook marketing and SharePoint. I’m happy to say these conference are attended by a large number of people and are well received. Recently we published the first version of the program for our next Intranet conference on March 17 and 18. The structure of the conference will be the same as previous editions: 4 keynote by experts in the fields and 3 breakout rounds with talks from practitioners. The main topic of this year’s conference is the digital workplace and the future of work and the organization. I feel privileged to say the following speakers have agreed to speak at the conference: Paul Miller, Sam Marshall, Ross Dawson and Lee Bryant! With respect to the breakouts we have several large and smaller organizations from different areas of business that will share the intranet experience. Some will talk about intranet strategy, others about design a...

I recently posted my notes on the 1st masterclass of the SharePoint conference we organize. The 2nd masterclass of the SharePoint conference is by Andrew Wright . His talk is about ‘contextual intranet’. I'm sharing my summary of the masterclass below. I think I'll also post one or two more posts on the conference itself. But first Andrew Wright's masterclass about 'contextual intranets'. What is a contextual intranet? Wright’s definition is: An intranet that facilitates the development of content – both qualified (signal) and unqualified (noise) – that supports continuous improvement, efficient operations and employee engagement and delivers this content in a meaningful context to the employee. Characteristics of the contextual intranet The contextual intranet exists of the following elements: Content development Business imperatives (continuous improvement, operations (tasks), employee engagement) Content delivery (context provided by meta dat...

Intranets have been around a long time, but not necessarily well loved. SharePoint brings huge opportunities for intranets. But new technology does not make problems go away. So, how do we deliver SharePoint intranets that are really great? This is the question that James Robertson will answer in the 1st masterclass at the SharePoint conference 2013 . Great intranets in words We start out with the question: what words describe great intranets? The audience says: connected, collaborative, accessible, social, information value, support daily work routines, usable, fast, mobile, task-based, updated, interactive, single-point of trust, attractive, innovative, easy to maintain and affordable. Purposes James goes into five purposes of intranet: content, communication, collaboration, culture and activity. James shows many examples of intranets that fulfill these purposes. Content We need to deliver usable and valuable information. We quite ‘good’ at this and we have way too ...

First of all we should be clear what a digital workplace is. Mark’s definition of a digital workplace is: work is something you do not a place you go to. In a digital workplace you can: work from any location or while mobile  have the same or similar online experience collaborate, search, and complete tasks online  choose what tools you can use to do this  feel comfortable whenever you are using  feel comfortable whenever you are using it  be confident you can use it when you need to have a better work/life balance The real difference between the intranet and the digital workplace is that you can get work done with a digital workplace. It's not just a content and publication platform, but a place where you can get work done. It's collaborative, it's task-focused. So, how do you develop a digital workplace strategy? Mark shares several points with us: it should align with your other strategies is wider than an intranet strategy is for the...

On March 18 and 19, 2013 the next edition of the Dutch Intranet Conference will be held. We hope to meet you there! But let me give you some idea of the program and main topic of the conference. In the intranet space lots of discussion is about choosing the right technology and selecting and providing the right features for your organization. Also, we talk about intranet governance. What is the right governance model for my organization? How can we keep our intranet interesting and vibrant? Soft skills What I hardly hear is the skills intranet-related people need to do intranet right? What skills does an intranet manager or owner need? For this reason we thought we’d focus the keynotes on this topic: the skills of the intranet manager and more specifically, the knowledge worker. Because that’s what most modern intranets are for: to support knowledge workers in their daily work. Keynotes We invited 3 keynote speakers to give their view on this topic. These are: Euan Semple : The inter...

Most people know the history of the intranet . And if you’re older you will have experienced its history. Many organization that have had an intranet for years are looking for ways towards a modern and future-ready intranet. But what is the future of the intranet? Many intranet experts and organizations are thinking about this question. Are we eventually going to be apply to wear the intranet? From intranet to social intranet  There’s lots of talk about using social media within organizations. In short this is also called the ‘social intranet’. The intention is to have an intranet that is more than most are used to: news, procedures, who-is-who and the restaurant menu. A ‘social intranet’ should make us forget the old intranet. The old intranet that often hardly supports the way employees do their daily work.  From intranet to digital workplace  For this reason the new intranet is also called the ‘digital workplace’ more and more. A new name to help us forg...

What is the best way to benchmark your intranet? How can you learn from other intranets? Comparing intranets There are many ways to find intranet inspiration. Among others you can: Have your intranet assessed by an intranet expert Read a good book about intranet Visit organizations that have a (beautiful) intranet Visit a conference or workshop about intranet Join online or offline intranet networking groups This list doesn’t mention listening to your users, because I assume you're already doing that… Digital Workplace Survey 2013 Another way to learn from others is to join intranet surveys. The most well-known survey is Jane McConnell ’s. Jane is a well-known intranet expert. Jane’s internal research on intranet has been going on for years now. The scope of her research used to be intranet and has broadened to the digital workplace. Many organizations participate in her research. The survey is broad and deep. Filling out the survey takes about an hour of ...

“Why can't we use LinkedIn for our intranet? At least it works, our intranet doesn't .” Maybe you considered this or heard it in your organization. The question intrigues me and I think we will hear it more and more in the coming years. What do you say in response to this question as internal or external consultant, Communications or IT manager? I'd like to share my thoughts in this post. Dissatisfied about IT The intranet is changing rapidly. The internet provides all kinds of free tools, like Dropbox, Yammer and Google Drive. More and more people are getting used to sharing (versions of) documents, online collaboration, sharing short messages, setting up and maintaining a personal profile, etc. Employees are often dissatisfied about the internal IT-tools and content-focused intranets. These tools cannot compete with the functionality we have on the internet. Free tools as intranet More and more employees are openly, and sometimes secretly, using free internet too...

And finally my last post about building your social intranet. The final step might even be the most important one. It’s a step that is often skipped. For some reason people still think you just have to give technology to the organization and the employees will jump on it. Over and over again this has proven to be false (although the technology adoption barier is very low in most internal social platforms). The last step is about cultivating your community. A social intranet is not alive in itself. It needs to be keep alive and fibrant. Potentially a social intranet supports most of your organization: the network-side of the company. If so, it is extremely important to make sure it can actually do so and continues to do so. This is even more important because sharing and collaborating with your employees is different than with your friends. Some say: Well, it works automatically on Facebook, so it should on our internal networking platform. I wish it were that easy. (And I don’t th...

In the last couple of weeks I wrote some posts describing steps that help you build your social intranet. I’ll round up this series of post in two final posts. The last two steps towards a social intranet are: measure and cultivate your community. This post will address measuring. As we know from many intranet studies measuring is almost always forgotten . Not many organizations have metrics to know how well their intranet is received and used. In my experience the same goes for social intranets or elements of social intranets like microblogging. This is often directly related to the fact that these intranets don’t have a goal to start with… I advise you to make sure you measure as much as possible. This is the way to check whether the goals you set are being reached. It also helps you sell the social platform within your organization. Managers will like to know what the return on investment is. Sceptics might be convinced to join if you show them hard numbers. Etc.  ...