infoarch

It’s a priveledge to work with many different people and organisations. One reason why organizations work with us is to bring “external reference” to the table. So they want us to share with them what others are doing and what the trends are in the market. I enjoy this role. I find it very important to stay in touch with what’s going on in my area of work (and even the broader context of my work). And sharing our insights is a way to stay in touch. There are others different ways to do this as well: talk to people from other companies visit conferences read books read trend and research reports read newspapers read news and updates on the web work for many different organizations etc. The good thing about today is that there are many tools to help you keep your “trend periscope” up. For instance, I use Feedly for RSS feeds, Pocket for storing and reading online articles and getting recommendations for this to read from followers, Twitter - still one of the best platforms for trend watc...

The last 3 years I've had the honor to give a guest lecture to a group of around 30 students. They are in their 2nd year of college. The class they are taking is about ‘consultancy’ and I was asked to share my consultancy experiences in the intranet and enterprise 2.0 field. I really enjoy lecturing for and discussing with them. They hardly have any feeling for working in mid-sized or larger organizations. They really keep you grounded by their straight-forward approach to projects and problems. This year I used a case from one of my clients, described the case and asked them to ‘solve’ it. How would they address the client’s assignment? I thought it was a lot of fun and we had a lively discussion about it. Trends in social media use But what I wanted to share with you is which social media they use and how they use it. The previous years I also shared these numbers with you . I think it gives an interesting insight into social media usage patterns. The group is quite small ...

I find Mary Meeker's reports on internet trends very interesting. They're packed with interesting data and insights. I've been following her work closely. She recently published an updated overview of 2012 and I thought I'd share my highlights with you at the end of this year. sheet 9: stunning slide showing shipment of iPads, iPhones and iPods over 10 years compared. This slides is old(er), but it just underlines the interesting times we live in sheet 10: You thought the ramp up of Apple products is huge, well Android ramp up is 6 times that of iPhone sheet 12: 30% of US adults own a tablet, less than 3 years ago that was 3% sheet 17: mobile advertising is growing rapidly; $0.7 billion in 2008, $19 billion in 2012 sheet 18: 24% of online shopping was done via tablets on Black Saturday, versus 6% 2 years ago sheet 20: we are in the midst of a huge change powered by new devices + connectivity + UI + beauty . Meeker highlights the effects for the pc, photography, ...

Sometimes I read a post that really gets me thinking. Anil Dashes' recent post 'The web we lost' did it this time. I think reading the full post is well worth your time if you're interested in where the web is headed. Two fragments from the post triggered me the most: We've lost key features that we used to rely on, and worse, we've abandoned core values that used to be fundamental to the web world. To the credit of today's social networks, they've brought in hundreds of millions of new participants to these networks, and they've certainly made a small number of people rich. But they haven't shown the web itself the respect and care it deserves, as a medium which has enabled them to succeed. And they've now narrowed the possibilites of the web for an entire generation of users who don't realize how much more innovative and meaningful their experience could be. (...)  The first step to disabusing them of this notion is for the p...

What social tools are young people using ? As a (internal) social media advisor for several companies I'm very interested in the answer to this question. So, when I get a change to talk for students, I'm honored, but also very curious what they will tell me. Recently I was asked to guest lecture for students at the Radboud University of Nijmegen . It's the university I went to years ago. I was asked to share my experience with using social media concepts and tools inside organizations. I basically used a shorter version of the slides I use for my guest lectures for a college , but spent more time on the conceptual, philosophical if you will, side of 'social'. I also asked them which social tools they use and why they use them. What did they say? Here's what I learned (there were 40+ students attending my lecture): None use Google+. Why? Nobody/none of their friends is there. All except 3 use Facebook. The 3 that didn't use FB, just didn't see t...

Recently I had the privilege to give a guest lecture at the Hogeschool Arnhem & Nijmegen (college-level) about Enterprise 2.0. Just like  last year  I asked the students which social media tools they use and why. I like asking them this question, because it gives me some insight in adoption rates of tools and usage patterns. Last years results can be found here . I'll share this year's results below. Of the 24 students I had in my classes: 24 have a Twitter account, 6 actively use it and 2 others only consume tweets. 24 have a Hyves account (Dutch social network, comparable to Facebook), 1 uses it actively and some go there every now-and-then. Facebook is clearly taking over Hyves, with 20 accounts in the classes and they use it actively. 14 only consume Facebook updates. Only 2 have a Foursquare account and use it actively. 6 have a Google+ account and none of them use it. LinkedIn: 16 have an account, 5 use it actively. They all have to blog for these class...

There's one great place to go if you want an overall update on the intranet and digital workplace state-of-the-art and that's Jane McConnell 's yearly Digital Workplace Trends Report . Just like in previous years I read the report and would like to highlight parts of the report for you in two posts. In another post I'll reflect a bit on this year's findings . I hope this will trigger you to buy and read the report for yourself. There's much more in the report than I can write about here. From intranet to digital workplace This year more than 400 organizations participated in Jane's 6th survey. The title of the report shows how much development there is in the intranet landscape. We are moving from intranet to digital workplace. And Jane has been documenting this trend for several years. I think this year is the first year I hear more people talk about the digital workplace than intranet. Of course this broadening of the scope of Jane's surve...

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...

There is one presentation I love watching every year. It's loaded with data and just sets the agenda for the coming year. It's Mary Meeker's talk at the Web 2.0 Summit . You can watch it here:  And find the slides here . As I said, it loaded with data and insights. I'll highlight just a few. Striking is the international growth of the internet. It's definitely not the US-only in the internet. And Africa and South-America are continents to pay attention to. Another thing is the speed of adoption of new communication technology is increasing, even in recession. The speed of adoption of the iPhone was fast compared to the iPod, but just look at how quickly the iPad took over the market. The next big thing according to Meeker? Everything that has to do with our ears; Sound/audio. And, of course, the continuing growth of mobile.

How do you evaluate your intranet? There are lots of ways to evaluate. Interviews with users, intranet analytics, internal polls, scan by a consultant, etc. Participating in an international survey is another way. For this reason I'd like to advise you to join Jane McConnell's Global Web Workplace Survey . By participating you get access to the survey results containing a huge amount of information about intranet trends but also the state of affairs of intranet in the world. Last year 440 companies participated. It would be great if even more would participate this year! Just to give you an idea of the survey results, check out my posts about the survey reports of the previous year. As you see the survey questions can be used to evaluate your intranet. Did we miss important features and/or trends? And what are other intranet managers doing that inspires us to do so as well? Jane also collected some statements from participant here as well. So I hope you will join, it's wo...

Pretty proud to be Dutch: The Netherlands Ranks #1 Worldwide in Penetration for Twitter and LinkedIn . Impressive numbers.

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 ...

Mobile and the mobile web is huge . Lots of the discussion about mobile and the mobile web is about mobile and the Internet. Until recently not much attention was paid to the implications of mobile for the intranet. But this is changing rapidly . More and more interesting posts and reports are being written about mobile intranet. One of them was published not to long ago. It is written by Martin White and is titled 'Focus on Enterprise Information Mobility' . This is a first paper giving an overview of what's happening in this place. It summarizes and structures lots of information about mobile enterprise. So, if you want to get up to speed on this topic, I encourage you to read it. But let me give you some highlights from the report: The GMSA Mobile Congress has a Mobile Enterprise track for the first time this year (March). "Enterprise mobiliy" usually refered to some employees using their cell phone and/or connected devices remotely. This has changed. En...

Next talk (no slides!) by John Hagel about Cascading Change: Small Moves, Smartly Made, Can Set Big Things into Motion. We are moving to a world of increasing returns. This world is very different from the world we were in, the world of decreasing returns. This movement can be typified by moving from business as stock to flows. Stocks was about: build up knowledge, protect it aggressively and capitalize on it. But in a world of excelerating change, these knowledge stocks rapidly diminish in value. (Except for companies like Coca Cola.) New opportunities are in the area of knowledge flows. And this is where social tools come into place. Not only used insides companies but also over institutions. There are even more values between institutions than inside them. Some say we should move fast here. But Hagel's approach is: move slowly so they trigger cascades and are sustainable over time. Social software adoption approaches: bottom-up, starting in teams deploy it in a section ...

What is the future of intranet technology? Looking at the cheap social tools, what should intranet teams invest in? And what does mobile mean for the intranet? These were just some of the questions Tony Byrne addressed in his keynote at the Intranet Conference ( Congres Intranet ). Byrne advised the audience to focus on a light-weight application architecture for the intranet. Lots will change in the coming years and is changing. Making the architecture lighter will give room to respond to new technology, changing business and user needs. One central intranet platform is not (going to be) enough. Make sure the elements and functionality of the intranet can be clicked together and mixed. Organize for mashups. Another theme in Byrne’s talk is the social layer. We should add a social layer to the intranet. Make the technology more human through social. Integrate the elements of social everywhere in your intranet, like tagging, commenting, social networking, location, etc. Byrne als...

Techcrunch ran a very interesting series of posts about the history of social networking . They were written by Mark Suster ( @msuster ). I think you should go ahead and read all the posts, but I'll pass on some highlights here to get you started. Marks posts are about the “6 C’s of Social Networking” – Communications, connectedness, common experiences, content, commerce & cool experiences (fun!). He stresses that social networks exists before they were hyped in our time they just work better now "and there are more people doin’ it." And a bit further on: "Yes, social networks of 2010 have much better usability, have better developed 3rd-party platforms and many more people are connected.  But let’s be honest – they’re mostly the same old shit, reinvented, with more people online and trained. But less considered is the fact that the success of the Web 2.0 companies versus the Web 1.0 ones were enhanced because they coincided with hardware that allowed us to c...

This is why I love the blogosphere! And it proves the blogging is not (just) for dummies and show-offs. There's some real deep thinking and interesting interaction going on on blogs. Need proof? Read this post by Tim O'Reilly about 'The State of the Internet Operating System' . What a great piece! It gives a very interesting and inspiring overview of what the Internet is now and what it can do. Here are some highlights if you're still nog interested in reading it all: Ask yourself for a moment, what is the operating system of a Google or Bing search? What is the operating system of a mobile phone call? What is the operating system of maps and directions on your phone? What is the operating system of a tweet? Interesting questions, eh?! O'Reilly goes on to take a look at the competing Internet Operating Systems or The Information Operating System. An Information Operating System because: The underlying services accessed by applications today are not ...

Nice video by Michel Cartier titled "Are you ready for the 21st century?" (Found via Luis Suarez on his blog - thx!) Are You Ready for the 21st Century ? from Michel Cartier on Vimeo .

4th keynote at Intranet 2010 by Peter Hinssen . Will intranets be around in the future? 4 fundamentals: content (old, put stuff somewhere) intelligence knowledge collaboration (newer, share things) The trash bin is not used a lot in IT. We are drowning in information but are starved of knowledge - John Naisbitt. Is information still of strategic value? Paperless office Consumerization of IT. Leading to new behavior wrt information. Information behavior is key. It's moving quicker than hardware development. Digital is the new normal. We are half-way there. Let's take this to the limit. It's not information overload, but it's filter failure. Show me your folders and I will tell you who you work for. The depth of information will go to infinity. The price of information will go to 0. Privacy, we will live in a fish-bowl society. Patience is also going to 0. Users don't want to fill things out again and again. And the internet will be real-time. Now refl...