Mobile Intranets

At Intranets Live I listed ‘Mobile Intranets’ in my ‘top 10’ of subjects, particularly the talk from Elliot Masie. Here are some notes I made on the issue.
  • leverage of technologies to rapid behaviour change in the workforce
  • mobile devices get you from the hand, to the pocket, to the purse
  • mobiles are extenders within an organisation – extends the reach
  • Motoblur – is this a future intranet? Built for the way people communicate
  • Caution includes delayin enabling all of the workforce
  • increases digital divide – a 2 tier intranet. One mobile, one laptop based
  • text collaboration will be hard to store
  • issues around security, search, indexing

Top 10

Had another enjoyable session on Intranets Live yesterday. Presented a highlights package of the best of Intranets Live. My top 10 were:

10 – Finding People (a tour from Thomson Reuter’s People Finder)

9 – Mobile Intranet

8 – Search (tours from Google and E&Y)

7 – Communities – Intranet tour from Aviva

6 – Social Media (tours from The Hospitality Company and Nokia)

5 – First 100 days of an Intranet Manager (session from Pacific Gas & Electric Intranet Manager)

4 – Global Trends Survey – Jane McConnell

3 – Technology Roadmap – tour of Capital One intranet

2 – SharePoint – Shell, Deloittes and Martin White

1 – Intranet Live community.

I’ll write more on each area over the next few days

Checking out of the hotel

Was chatting with our external website content manager yesterday looking at the future and value of the corporate website. Another campaign site is being developed away from the main corporate site, allowing greater freedom to seed and begin conversation in related sites.

Future for basic corporate site looks bleak (obviously not referring to media and news sites here). Most are used as front doors to our graduate recruitment programmes or as a online office directory. Little value is derived, in terms of generating business, influence or contacts from the main corporate domain.

Also read that marketing gurus are calling this festive season a “Twiter Christmas” as retailers use social networks to tweet their special offers or post discounts on Facebook pages, encouraging users to pass on the news.

Nothing rarely happens within the ‘4 walls’ of the corporate site. All the fun and value is outside in social spaces.

I liken it to a hotel in a happening city. Your hotel is where you have to stay (sleep etc) but all the memories, fun and excitment happens in other parts of the city. A corporate website is the same. You can manage the publications or locations but all the value is in other sites. A website managers future roll is not to manage the hotel but maybe to tell the guests (content) where they can get the best of times.

Another one on its way

Monthly e-newsletter now sent out to our intranet publishers and knowledge stakeholders. Newsletter divided into 3 sections.

First section looks at operational activity (statistics, technical issues, best practice etc).

Section 2 looks at tips and guidance to building knowledge communities.

Third part looks at best practice outside the firewall.

It attracts around 400 views once launched so hits most of our publishing community. Its part of our adoption programme mentioned in previous item.

We have guidelines not rules

Love this piece from anecdote – ‘rules are made to be?’

as it sums up our approach guidelines, compliance and rules on our intranet.

‘Rules are for the guidance of the wise and for the blind obedience of fools’. For a good content publisher we provide compliance rules as guidelines. For a new, or unmotivated, uncaring content publisher, we provide and enforce them as rules.

You may ask why do we have unmotivated, uncaring publishers. Sometimes we have to work with whoever is appointed.

The Caretaker and Thomas the Tank engine

In the London Evening Standard tonight there is an article about ‘Why footballers are like middle managers’ (something about cheating and the France – Ireland World Cup play-off). What can we compare intranet and knowledge managers to? 

Using my analogy of the intranet (or any collaboration environment for that matter) as a school  

http://digitaldivide.posterous.com/the-value-is-in-the-playground

 I guess intranet managers are the caretakers and the knowledge workers are the classroom assistants.  

When my son was at toddler stage I tried to explain to him what I did. The best analogy I could think of was Thomas the Tank engine. I played the part of the Fat Controller – making sure the network runs smoothly and all the engines have coal before Diesel (or Diseasel) played some naughty tricks (this being  the content publisher who deletes half their site before calling you)

 

All quiet on the career front?

Been having a chat with 2 of my intranet colleagues on the question of where careers are heading. Everyone says the intranet role is changing. Jane McConnell stresses this in 2010 global trends and on the ground I see rocky times ahead. It looks like intranet careers are being driven down 2 pathways. Either embedd in IT or a future in communications. When intranets first started to develop I’m sure the majority of the early adoptors had a knowledge background. This appears to be forgotten.

With so much top down communications, and even bottom up I see the niche area being able to develop the horizontal channels – good old knowledge and collaboration between people who need to work together.

However, I wonder if the collaboration piece may also be a fad. In a few years will we see it as leaders washing their hands or responsibilty by asking all to collaborate. Return of authority and gatekeepers may be the trend for 2011?

Getting the community ready

This weekend sees the final content loading for one of our new online knowledge communities. Next week the site goes for stakeholder sign-off and then a week of user testing. Training is being organised for the 12 appointed content publishers. Subject to no major issues being reported the area should launch on 7th December. Nearly 20% of the community has been involved in its development, therefore we already have a core group of stakeholders eager to seed the site within the infrastructure of the community. Once the site is bedded into the stream we then look at the physical and social aspects of their knowledge networking and sharing.