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Archive for digital life
June 9, 2010 at 2:41 pm · Filed under digital life, Intranet, linkedin
One line of conversation at the recent IBF24 event that really struck a chord was provoked by a simple one line tweet “The intranet is dead”. At a time when so many organisations, including my own, are investing in their intranets, it was a striking comment.
Alex Manchester believes that the name ‘intranet’ certainly carries too much baggage but that conceptually, it’s hard to say if intranets are dying a slow death to be replaced by the digital workplace.
Pragmatically, what’s in a name? It doesn’t really matter what you call it, what it does is what really matters. I think the intranet is not yet dead, but the current and previous expectations of what one must deliver certainly is.
I believe that a great intranet is a communication, collaboration and transactional/executional workspace, accessed through useable, accessible beautiful interface that both reflects and drives corporate culture. Intranets that are not this already in some way are already dead or dying and intranets that only do this in 5 years time will go the same way. Intranets are not destinations, they’re journeys – evolve or expire.
The story of consumer electronics in the last few years has been one of convergence. Consider your mobile phone — 10 years ago you could place voice calls and, possibly, text messages. Now, it’s your music repository, your camera, your internet access, your satellite navigation, your games console, your pocket library and if the iPhone 4 is your bag, a video conferencing device. The story of intranets is also one of convergence and will certainly be in the future.
I think the intranet in 5 years time will work in the same broad headlines (Communication, Collaboration and transactions) but boundaries between these, and the depth to which they go, will change. Convergence will bring office stalwarts like shared meetings and telephony to the intranet, data will be in the cloud accessible from whereever your office is. Work is not a place, it’s a verb and the intranet, accessible from anywhere, will be your gateway. Such convergence brings convenience (with possibly some compromise) and that will be all important in the future workplace.
The intranet is dead; long live the intranet.
June 7, 2010 at 4:01 pm · Filed under digital life, news
Just over a week ago, on UK launch day, I popped out to the shops on the pretence of looking at the iPad in the flesh, but truth told, unless it was really awful to use, I was going to buy no matter what. I’d done my research, felt I knew all there was to know. The only question a forum really couldn’t answer was “What’s it really like to use?”. 20 minutes in store later and I had an early answer – one week on, I can give a more qualified response.
First, be clear of the iPad’s limitations. These are outlined very well on countless websites but here are my …
5 reasons not to buy an iPad
- You like flash. If playing Facebook games is your thing, or you use interactive websites, the iPad is not for you.
- Peripherals. If you need to print, or just have to connect a keyboard, ignore the iPad. Whilst there are rumours of both these features coming soon, there are no timelines and no guarantees.
- You need Google docs. Just now, you can read but you can’t edit.
- You need specific software that’s not covered by the 200,000 strong app store. There’s plenty of stuff there but it might be that your “must-have” is not. If so, avoid.
- The iPad is a great addition to your house, but unless you’ve got iTunes loaded somewhere, or can hitchhike on someone elses, you won’t be able to update, activate or push new content. I don’t think it should be anyone’s primary device.
My 5 reasons to buy:
- The best surfing experience there is. It’s just so easy to use and the screen is fantastic; websites really do come to life. I’ve found that I consume sites, especially news, when I have previously browsed. Really, it’s fantastic
- Simple, powerful email client. Ok, Outlook it ain’t but what it does, it does really really well. Throw it horizontal and the neat part-screen scroll comes into it’s own to browse email and read in the instant preview side. Crystal clear, easy to use.
- Photos look great! The new photo stack feature is also very smart. I remember when we bought the Apple TV and suddenly we took time to look at our photos again. And now, with iPad, we’re doing it again. The photo frame feature is also excellent.
- Oh, the apps! They were great on the iPhone and they’re brilliant on the iPad, assuming the company have made the appropriate coding efforts. Tweetdeck is superb, we love Epicurious (iPad comes in the kitchen for that) and tvcatchup for iPad is everything the BBC iPlayer should be and isn’t.
- Videos and music. Apple have completely reworked itunes for iPad and it really shows. As with photos, it enhances serendipity; you’ll discover old favourites you’d forgotten. Video is outstanding.
What is our Apple iPad (notice I’ve said ‘our’? It’s now a firm family favourite shared by everyone). iPad is…
- An in-car entertainment system for my daughter. Hook it to the headrest and she can watch Nemo for hours.
- Sofa surfing. Perfect for it with the flash caveats noted above
- A digital photo frame. Ok, I’d've never bought one but now I’ve got one, I use it!
- On the go Internet and email. Better than iPhone, more portable and discreet than a laptop. We’re travelling to France on holiday next month and I can see iPad being indispensable.
- Children’s entertainment and education. My daughter is just over 2 and loves the iPad. If i’m honest, it might be just too easy for her to use – need to find a way to lock the settings app though!
I confess that I love Apple’s gear and we have a houseful of it, but the iPad is a very welcome addition. It has it’s own place, fits the gap neatly between phone and laptop. It has limitations but for my purposes, that’s not an issue.
My one gripe. I need a case (I have the Apple one) to make sure the iPad doesn’t get too beaten up, but it so destroys the aesthetic of this device. Its just so good looking without it!
June 4, 2010 at 9:13 am · Filed under digital life, Intranet, news
Intranets are strange beasts. Hidden behind the corporate firewall, they’re very often the practical hub of an organisation serving employee needs. Equally, as we learnt during @thoughtfarmer ‘s presentation, an intranet can be an ignored sink hole of woe. Optimised for Netscape 4.0 indeed …!
I enjoy events such as IBF24 as much for the official comment as the peripheral insight afforded through Twitter. Viewing other company intranets is an opportunity that many corporate intranet folks do not often receive and, frankly, they should grab it with both hands. Grab too some excellent ideas: Who could fail to be impressed with the Ernst and Young people networking graphical tool, or the slightly more achievable British Airways Outlook email signature creator? I’ll be including both in future developments.
A healthy debate was had on the subject of ‘beautiful intranets’, with many intranet examples presented to fuel the conversation. Beauty is a somewhat subjective quality, but with intranets, there must be a practical aspect to the description. An intranet is a place of work; it’s a place of transaction, communication, collaboration and engagement in varying degrees – I think ‘beauty’ is excellence in execution and efficiency in these four platforms. Naturally, there is an aesthetic element to the question, but aesthetic beauty over practical execution does not make for a good intranet.
To paraphrase William Morris, the 19th century British designer and writer “Have nothing in your intranet that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be useful and beautiful”. (As if Morris knew what an intranet was – original quote from The Beauty of Life)
(The award for the most beautiful intranet went to Intermón Oxfam, managed by Julia Serramitjana. In announcing the award, note was made of the clarity of function of the site as well as the use of pastel shades. A little flippantly, I did ask how a company might apply that pastel thinking when their brand is so clearly bright red as mine is. Consensus has it that bright is fine when applied as an accent rather than across a page. We might apply that thinking on the next design change)
I think the joy of events like #ibf24 is that it gets intranet managers out from behind the firewall. It was great virtually meeting so many of you — stay in touch.
October 28, 2009 at 3:42 pm · Filed under digital life, Intranet, news
I was lucky enough to attend the SharePoint 2009 conference in Las Vegas last week. I met some great people and was thoroughly impressed with the innovation from Microsoft and from their clients alike.
On the plus side
- Great new functionality in SharePoint 2010 which I’m going to enjoy bringing to the company. Especially the social computing aspects
- Top innovation from companies, particular Electronic Arts (EA) and Accenture.
- Great people
- Organisation at the Mandalay. I think that team had it really organised. Whilst some would have seen the mealtimes as chaotic (and on day 1 it certainly was), I think they did a sterling job
- Kirk Patrick, Mandalay Bay staff. Despite Pepsi being everywhere, he was unphased by my request for a range of Coke products to be delivered within the hour to our conference room. There in 10. Brilliant.
Downsides
- Las Vegas. If you’re not a gambling person like me, it’s a thoroughly depressing town and if you are a gambler, there’s a chance you were more depressed about it than me. One colleague lost over $1000 – it’s hard to be happy for him
- Coffee. Some are addicted to caffeine. Some, like me, were 8 hours out of their timezone and needed the fix to get ‘em through. There were water stations galore, more food than needed so the lack of coffee stations seemed an oversight. (Edit – I think they noticed by Thursday judging by the coffee points near registration)
- SharePoint accessibility coding. I recognise the advances they’ve made but this is a very complex area. The recognition of standards is a genuinely positive step, but when each country appears to have their own, it seems unlikely that a single MS standard will work for all geographies. You know, great for the US, but probably not so good for the rest of the world.
I really hope that anyone who came to see me speak last Wednesday enjoyed the session and has been generous in their feedback. I’d be more than happy to answer any questions about our deployment if you have them.
I also hope that next year, SPC10 is not in Las Vegas. Seattle maybe, New York even. Either way, look forward to it.
April 28, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under digital life, Intranet, news
Yesterday was another auspicious day for our work intranet as at 06:00 EDT, we launched the new HR portal section bringing self-service tools to our employees.
Culturally, it’s a major change. We’ve shifted from a traditional HR model (providing local HR experts aligned to functional teams) to a centralised support model with aligned self-service intranet facilities.
The intranet aspect of this launch has been an major undertaking. It has seen us switch from a simple simple SharePoint iteration to a multi-variation model to manage the various language options across our geographies (US English, US Spanish, Canadian French, Canadian English, UK English, French, Belgian French, Belgian Dutch and Dutch).
A few facts to share:
- Switch from 1 to 9 SharePoint variations
- New menus to accommodate HR content
- 2000+ pages of multi-lingual content
- 12 Integrated SAP HR transactions
- New “MyLinks” section to enable web bookmarking
- Integrated employee benefits functions
- Integrated job search functions
- New “workbench” page
- Enhanced employee profile page
This new launch is a major piece of work and a huge step change for our intranet which, up until now, has largely been a communication and collaboration vehicle. As good as that content was, our employees had no “compulsion to visit”, meaning the site was mostly for browsing rather than for action.
Bringing transactions to the portal adds that employee “compulsion to visit” which will have knock on value for the news articles and executive communications. In the long run, I hope that our employees will that the ease of information access and flexibility of use will outweigh the negatives of not having an HR expert immediately to hand — but only time will tell.
Tomorrow I’ll share some of the initial feedback 
April 15, 2009 at 10:09 am · Filed under digital life
In the early 1980s, a Russian governmental delegation came to London to talk to their counterparts and understand more about the capitalist system. One asked “Which minister is in charge of making sure there’s enough bread for the people?” and was dumbfounded with the response that no-one was. The opportunity to make a little dough (pun intended) was the mechanism for ensuring there was sufficient bread with 1000s of unrelated but interconnected parts bringing fertiliser to field, wheat to mill, flour to baker, bread to shop. It’s remarkable that it all works really, given the lack of orchestration.
Step forward 30 years. Who is it that ensures that the right wiki pages exist, or that they are accurate? Who regulates the blogs to ensure fairness in all aspects or that each youTube video has a reply? I sincerely hope the answer is no one individual — the answer is the collective community of users.
The free market world of social computing has already created marvellous resources such as wikipedia, youTube, millions of blogs and billions of tweets – countless petabytes of information of various levels of worthiness. All this we can pass on to others. All this knowledge nucleating from the provision of social computing tools. Like the scientists at the coffee break, all that was needed was the forums and then the creativity flowed.
But what I’m really excited about is the power of social computing behind the firewall on the corporate intranet. Here, we have the same community already used to interacting digitally (after all, employees are real people too!) But added to the collaborative confusion on the internet, is a genuine common purpose and a little orchestration from management. This could give the fledging knowledge sources some direction and speed up creation and usage.
Does a little orchestration of social computing outputs kill or strengthen it’s power? Is the free and open approach to knowledge creation the best way or does it need some rules.
April 14, 2009 at 10:50 am · Filed under digital life
I’ve really got into Twitter of late and am gathering a select group of followers. I find it useful place to vent, a useful place to network, to laugh and to learn. As an aside, much of the research into a forthcoming keynote speech I’m giving was found on the internet via Twitter.
For all that eulogising, I think it’s the functionality of twitter that I like as the interface on their own website is far from fully formed. To that end, I’ve been using a bunch of applications which interface back, including Tweetdeck, Lounge, Twitterfon and others. Tweetdeck, especially with their latest 0.25 update, is the pick by some way.
But dear reader, all is not well. My Macbook is well armed with 2GB of RAM and has a spritely processor, but Tweetdeck hogs capacity. It mostly hovers around 8-10% of my CPU (still way over the odds if you ask me) but will often spike into the 90s and higher bringing everything else to its knees. Close it down, reload and all is well for a while again.
Anyone else having the same issues?
September 27, 2008 at 8:31 am · Filed under digital life, news
In hindsight, all the clues were there but I wonder how many of us would have seen the investment opportunity suggested in this early review of the Google search engine. All said, it’s hard to imagine that even Google’s founders, Larry Page and Sergey Brin could imagine how their project might develop.
The article makes note of the fact that even then, Google had ambition. In 1998, they already had indexed 25million pages and were soon to up that to a massive 100million — compared to today’s 8-10 billion.
The interface came in for some criticism noting that it was in need of a facelift. Again, hindsight tells us that the simple, clean, white-focused homepage set the benchmark in usability. It’s said that the interface was so simple because Page and Brin never got round to working on it and the beta design just stuck. Tempting to believe that.
“Will Google go commercial” the founders were asked, “we’ve no objections” the future multi-billionaires responded. $1000 invested in the fledgling company back in 1998 would now be worth $250million.
Missed opportunity.
July 22, 2008 at 1:02 pm · Filed under digital life
Earlier this week, macrumors.com announced that wordpress was coming to the iPhone and ipod touch. It’s here and it’s impressive.
Quick to setup, simple to use, the app allows you to edit and write any wordpress blog including self hosted ones like this.
The facebook app has made it easy to update my status and as a result, I’m editing regularly so, look out as I suspect this app will mean I’ll be blogging a great deal more
May 20, 2008 at 6:55 pm · Filed under digital life
I remember when I started at University way back in 1991, the campus had hundreds of dumb terminals so that students could access their email and other services. They were truely dumb: no hard drive to speak of and little software loaded — all of that was elsewhere on the network.
Sounds familiar?
Yes, I think so. Recent announcements, such as those by Microsoft, demonstrate the latest direction that corporations are taking to service their IT needs. Instead of taking software and hosting it on their own networks, many companies are embracing SAAS : Software as a Service. Host it on their networks, access it via browsers much like you would a website, or like those early dumb terminals.
We don’t often see IT coming full circle!
We also take it for granted that software produced by a single company, such as Microsoft, will interact seamlessly. By and large, they do. But what I’m becoming increasingly aware of is that handshaking, that commonality being extended to websites that are not owned by single entities.
For example, you might be reading this posting in Facebook. You might be reading it on imjon.com, my wordpress blog. However, I actually wrote this post in Flickr! and simply exploit the connectivity to write once and post in many locations.
Clever, simple, connected. Not something you might imagine from three independent companies.
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