Humanize through Social by Tony Byrne @tonybyrne #intra11

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 also addressed the trend that more and more companies are allowing employees to bring their own devices to work. BYOB, ‘bring your own beer’. He warned this could lead to a lot of complexity for companies in the IT services area. How do you manage the combination of all the devices and the different corporate applications. This is even more the case if companies are trying to develop their own mobile applications, are rolling them out and would like to maintain them. If you want to develop for mobile devices go for the web (use HTML5). The web will win, says Byrne.