What every SharePoint intranet should do? by @s2d_jamesr #congressp

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 much of this. There are intranets with 3,5 million pages.

Examples: a facilities page of the Department for Culture, Media & Sport intranet (DCMS), a page about My Employment from British American Tobacco (BAT). The BAT example also shows that good navigation is important for usable content.

Communication

The intranet is used a lot as the communication channel for global and local news. The SharePoint news features have always been horrible and are still quite horrible. James shows News Limited as an example. They use the news page to manage change. He also shows an example with targeted news, based on locations mentioned in ADS.

Collaboration

What collaboration is, is pretty clear? Document collaboration, discussion forums, etc. Shows several examples like Stockland has a SharePoint 2010 intranet with Newsgator. James mentions there are still many companies not open to putting collaboration on the homepage.

Culture

Create a beautiful intranet that engages staff. The intranet should also reflect the culture of the organization. Focus on how the intranet can communicate and cultivate the core values and business. Don’t use SharePoint out-of-the-box and pay attention to design, even if you do just a little bit of design. But useful first, beautiful second. Most people want both.

Activity

This is about integrating key tasks into the core of the intranet. E.g. SharePoint is great for building and sharing forms. And moving excel files online for sharing and collaboration.

My notes from the Internet Trends 2012 Update

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, phone, knowledge, navigation, news, note taking, content organization, magazines, cash registers, lending money, idea building/funding, recruiting, product design, etc. market (and we are still in "spring training", Meeker says [sheet 58])
sheet 24: very interesting overview of the market share of Microsoft compared to others. Used to be 96% and is now just 35%.
sheet 61: I like how Meeker digs deeper into the consequences of the internet by addressing what it means for our space, time and money and how we balance these
sheet 77: Meeker mentions markets that still can be opened, such as the time spent in cars and watching TV, education and healthcare.

And here's her complete slidedeck:

2012 KPCB Internet Trends Year-End Update from Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers

A Google Glas intranet?

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 forget the old intranet and sell the intranet as an essential tool to support work. It stresses that fact that the intranet can be relevant to help knowledge workers get things done. Looking at the definitions of the digital workplace, it is intended to be a bit more than the ‘social intranet’. The digital workplace wants to be the place where a knowledge worker can do his/her work. Therefore it must also connect to and support the business processes (and related tools). (Of course this can also be done when it’s called a ‘social intranet’...)

From intranet to mobile intranet 

If the new intranet should truly support workers, it should also support him/her everywhere work is done. Therefore the logical step for the new intranet is to also become mobile. The knowledge worker needs access to the intranet everywhere he/she is getting things done. Slowly organizations are thinking about how to do this. 

But what comes after this? I want to share two of the steps I see. 

Location-based intranet 

When the intranet gets mobile access there will be a new demand for push-information. We have come to find push-informatie without context irritating. But when information is filtered based on your location, it could be useful. Services like Foursquare, Google Fieldtrip and Google Now give us glimpses into this future. In the same way this could be useful within organizations by providing information about nearby experts when you’re looking for help or which protocols apply to the part of the organization you’re walking around in. Furthermore location information added to messages employees are publishing also provided meaning and context. Posting a message in a factory can give it a totally different meaning, than posting it from a car on your way to work. 

Google Glass intranet 

One step further can relate to projects like Google Glass. Google Glass is trying to make finding and consuming relevant information and publishing it easier. You don’t have to carry your smart phone in your hand; information is projected right into your eyes so you can consume that information and publish and save content with easy gestures. Imagine the access to your intranet being like Google Glass. Everywhere you are you’ll have direct access to (the right internal) information. During meetings, on your way to meeting, when you bump into someone you planned to ask something, working on a document or product/service. The intranet is less and less something you go to, but something you wear. You don’t have to look for information, it will search for you depending on what you’re looking at and wear you are. 

What do you see as next-steps for the intranet? Do the above mentioned steps make sense? I’d love to hear your thoughts.

By the way, inspired by Dave Gray's work, I made the little drawings for this post by myself!

[This post was also published in Dutch on the Frankwatching blog.]

A week in the digital workplace by @s2d_jamesr

What’s it like in the digital workplace? James Robertson recently published a report to answer this question. He took a storytelling approach and gave us insight in what working in a digital workplace looks like.

In this way he hopes to make the digital workplace more concrete. This is necessary because James there's lots theoretical and abstract talk about it. James’ report wants to bring the digital workplace closer to us.

I enjoyed reading the report. In several steps James takes us through the digital workplace. He shows how a new employee would use the workplace during the week using all kinds of concrete examples. Like a personal welcome message, a pre-populated tasklist, information about working methods, mobile intranet, accessing operational information about e.g. hotel bookings, an overview of company numbers and real-time performance data.

James rounds up his report by listing 6 keys to the digital workplace (Identity, Awareness, Trust, etc) and also points to organizations that show the digital workplace is happening now.

I do think one important key is missing though. Clearly the digital workplace can only come to be if there is an integrated backend. Shouldn’t 'integration' be a 7th key? Or is integration tackled in the keys 'Access' and 'Design'?

The sub-title of this nice report points to the future. For many this is the future. And still, the examples of the week in the digital workplace aren’t futuristic. Maybe a next report should address the futuristic digital workplace. For instance, extend the mobile intranet with a location-sensitive expertise locator. Or automatic, real-time updates on any devices based on where you are?

Finally, what is the digital workplace? Shouldn’t the report contain a short definition? Or don’t we know what it is yet? James seems to have a broad view of the digital workplace. It’s not only digital but also hardware, like laptops and other devices. To me the digital workplace is the sum of all the digital, web-based tools a knowledge workers need to get his/her work done. And if this implies some information should be accessible via mobile devices (hardware), we’ll have to get that done as well.

If the definition is broader than my definition I agree with Efraim Freed on the ThoughtFarmer blog, we should then also extend to other hardware, like sensors, GPS etc.

I hope you read the report! Let’s continue the discussion here or on James’ blog. What’s your definition of the digital workplace? What are the challenges and where do you see it happening?

My Highlights from The Digital Workplace Trends Report 2012 by @netjmc - part 2

In my last post  I shared some of my highlights from Jane McConnell's Global Digital Workplace Trends 2012 report. We left off describing how some organizations used their intranet to support employees in the field. This brings us to the mobile intranet.

Mobiel intranet

Delivering the intranet and digital workplace to mobile was seen as important by 7% of the respondents in 2011. In 2012 30% thinks mobile is important and is investing. I'm disappointed to see that IT is defining the strategy in this area, according to the report. The goal of mobile is to improve communication and productivity. Corporate news and the people finder are the most important mobile intranet features. I would hope mobile is a business initiative with business in the lead and that the mobile features would be more closely related to the core business processes. I'm curious what we'll see in next year's report with respect to mobile.
A special finding from the report was that organizations with many employees without direct access to the intranet, are able to define clear goals for mobile intranet. And most mobile intranets are based on the existing platform of the intranet.
Location-based services are still in an early phase (45% has plans in this direction). In most organizations mobile services via intranet don't have a high priority. On the other hand 35% already have mobile services for their external customers (internet). Security and costs are the biggest barriers to work on mobiel intranet.

Intranet leadership
When can you say your organization is in the leading league of intranets? The report shows one of the following categories have to apply:

1. The digital workplace is the primary workspace
2. Internal social tools are well-integrated in the organization
3. A fully-functioning digital steering committee makes strategic decisions over the internal and external development of digital channels.

Only six of the respondents have reached this level!

Intranet governance

The ownership and management of the intranet is mostly the responsibility of Communications and IT. Sometimes HR also joins the group. Business functions hardly ever have a role in governance and management. An interest fact is that organizations reported when they moved ownership of the intranet to Knowledge Management and HR this was very beneficial to them.
Only 17% of the organizations have a digital steering committee, strategically directing the internal and external digital information and communication streams. The primary business functions are part of this committee.
Ownership and governance still don't receive the attention they need in most organizations. The leading intranet organizations do spend a lot of time and money in this area. Most other respondents say they are working on improving the intranet organization.
I like the way the report distinguishes between companies with lots of operational employees without a computer and companies in which almost all have a computer. The report mentioned an intriguing fact in this context: Companies that have a deep integration of their intranet with the primary processes, are mostly companies with many operational employees. The report shows that many companies are working on this deeper integration.
Related to governance is also measurement. 75% of the respondents don't measure at all. The most mentioned metrics on the collaborative side of the intranet are 'satisfaction' and 'activity' of users. In other parts of the intranet 'activity' is swapped by 'reach within the company’. 

That's my summary of this year's report! I want to congratulate Jane with her newest report. Lots of work has been put into it. And now we get to reap from the results! Thanks, Jane.

Of course the 160 page report contains more than I can describe here. You can order the full Digital Workplace report here. By the way, if you fill out the survey, you get the report for free!

And again, I'm wondering: Do you recognize the above-mentioned trends? What do you think are the most important Digital Workplace trends? And, what are the biggest challenges for organizations with respect to their (future) intranet?

My Highlights from the Digital Workplace Trends Report 2012 by @netjmc - part 1

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 survey and report also brings along some difficulties (for Jane...). The digital workplace is a much bigger topic than intranet.

Fragmented digital workplace

The intranet was mostly about the traditional internal digital publishing platform with static content. The digital workplace collects all the online, internal content and applications a knowledge worker needs to get things done. The report shows only a small number of organizations has a central, uniform digital workplace. Most have a fragmented landscape, consisting of separate tools.

Still can't find anything

Search is still horrible. Hardly any organizations are happy with their intranet search. Leading organizations pay much more attention to improving search. Users are frequently polled to test search results, search patterns and data are analyzed, and functionality, like tagging, is added to improve search.

Concerns

Information security is a concern for many companies with respect to the digital workplace. As is the quality of information. Other concerns are the influence of the social platforms on the company's structure and culture, and multi-linguality.

Enterprise 2.0

More and more companies are rolling out internal social media. Usually this is set up next to the existing intranet and is integrated into it over time. On the other hand only 8 % is working on organization-wide deployment of internal social media. The data seems to show that bottom-up roll outs are stagnating. But still 50% of the respondents is investing in this area. As you would expect podcasting and social bookmarking are used the least internally. And ‘prediction markets’ (although they were popular some time ago) and ‘gamification’ (now very trending, for sure on the Web) are not mentioned at all.

Internal social media ROI

What most organizations get from internal social media is well known. Improved knowledge sharing, recognition and location of experts, etc. Cost reduction and faster market penetration is not mentioned a lot. As is improvement of and integration with business processes. The report does show that successful internal and external adoption of social media are related.

Intranet in the field

I really enjoyed the section in the report about 'intranet in the field'. Some organizations shared how they use their intranet to support employees in the field, working directly with customers. Those employees could connect to the internal company and ask questions, consult the internal procedures, etc. This topic relates to mobile intranet. I'll share the mobile trends in the next post.

So, do you recognize the above-mentioned trends? What do you think are the most important Digital Workplace trends? And, what are the biggest challenges for organizations with respect to their (future) intranet?

I'll post part 2 of my highlights in a couple of days.

Have a nice weekend! :-)

Expectations for the Enterprise 2.0 Summit #e20s

I'm really looking forward to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit! Are you coming? If so, I hope to meet you there!

Recently the organizers shared a pie chart of the participants per country. To my surprise hardly any people from The Netherlands are coming! I was wondering why hardly any Dutch people attend this conference. Last year I was there with one other Dutch guy. I know of many people in Holland who are interested in Enterprise 2.0 and social business. So that can't be a reason. Is the conference not well-known? I don't think that's the reason either. The location can't be a problem either. So, what is? Let me if you have any thoughts on this. My goal is to get more people in Holland interested in the summit and hopefully many more fellow Dutchies will be at next year's Summit. And for this reason I won't just be blogging in English but also in Dutch about my conference learnings.

What are my expectations for this year's Summit?

1. Last year we had a great breakout session about the integration business processes and (internal) social networks. At that time using external and internal social tools was mostly something extra, next to the formal tools in the organization (email, ERP & PLM tools). In our group we debated how important it is to relate and integrate the social tools with the formal business processes (and accompanying tools). I'm curious if we will see examples of companies actively doing this. Or is social still isolated in most organizations?
2. In the previous year there was lots of discussion about the 'return on investment' of internal social tools and social business in general. The business cases have popped up. One of the great things about (internal) social media is that it is also challenging us to not only talk about results in terms of money and analytics, but also in the form of stories. I wonder which types of value the speakers will show and in which way they will validate the effort they put into enterprise 2.0 initiatives.
3. Lots of data has been created on internal and external social media. Last year's final presentation was about the promise of Big Data. Are companies using the data to improve they way they run it? How are they capitalizing on internal and external big data?
4. Mobile has been a huge topic in the previous year. Are organizations combining enterprise 2.0 and mobile and capitalizing on this trend?
5. And, related to mobile, I'm curious if companies are also working on location-based social networks (inside and outside the organization). What are the implications of local in the new enterprise?

Keep in touch to see if these expectations will be met! I'll be live blogging the Summit just like last year. Tweets can be followed at #e20s. And you can find this year's program here.

Are you coming to the Enterprise 2.0 Summit? What are your expectations for the conference?

PS. Contact me for a discount for the Summit!

State of the Blogosphere 2011

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 professionals (18%), corporate (8%) and entrepreneurs (13%).

Blogging patterns

The majority of the bloggers has been blogging for at least 2 years. It is remarkable that all bloggers maintain more than one blog. 60% of the respondents blogs up to three hours per week, the rest (40%) blogs more. 13% say they spend more than ten hours per week.

The majority of the participants blogs 2-3 times a week. Professional full-time bloggers blog more often. 26% says they post at least three times per day.

The general trend among bloggers is to spend more time on blogging than in 2011 and to post more often. When bloggers decide to blog less this is due to, just as last year, spending more time on other social platform and especially microblogging.

Blogging and business

What is the influence of blogging on brands? This year blogs are listed as having the most influence on brands. Compared to 2010 this is a huge leap forward. As a second and third brand influencer friends and other social media are mentioned. All types of bloggers are asked regularly by brands to blog about their product or service. Even though most bloggers think that companies find them less professional, compared to traditional media.

A remarkable finding from the survey is that blogs are still considered to be most influential under consumers when they look for recommedations about products and services. Facebook is also influential, but less than blogs. Twitter’s influence has also decreased in this respect.

Blog inspiration and success

To find input for blogposts, most bloggers tap into social media sites (21 uur/week). Bloggers don’t watch a lot of TV.

Professionele bloggers measure the success of their blog by the number of unique visitors and financial gain. Hobbyist measure success by personal satisfaction. 70% of the bloggers blog to share experience and expertise with others. Another way to measure the success of a blog is if it has been quoted in traditional media. 36% of the bloggers say their blog has been quoted.

An interesting fact is most bloggers don’t want advertisement on their blog, although most bloggers admit they do not have enough readers for advertisers to be interested in advertising on their blog.

Blogging and other social media

82% of all bloggers uses Twitter. Under professional bloggers almost all use it. Hobbyists have about halve as many followers on Twitter as professionals. Professional bloggers have around 1000 followers. In most cases blogposts are automatically published to Twitter.

89% of the bloggers has a Facebook account. Setting up separate Facebook pages for your blog has increased by 15% in the previous year. In most cases the blogpost is not automatically posted to Facebook.

More than 6 out of 10 respondents uses Google+. The reasons to use Google+ are comparable to Twitter and Facebook: promoting your blog and finding interesting links. As with Facebook, automatic publishing of blogposts to Google+ is not done often. 

The participants find Facebook and Twitter as most-effective to publicize a blog. LinkedIn comes in 3rd place.

Wordpress is the most popular blog hosting service. 51% of the participants uses it. Blogger en Blogspot are popular as well (21% en 14%).

Blogging and mobile

A nice question was about the impact of tablets and smartphones on blogging. 45% said they use more pictures and images and 43% said they write shorter posts because of mobile.

Questions

You can read the whole report online. Have you read it? If so, what were the most remarkable findings according to you? And what’s your vision on the future of blogging? Is it doomed, as some say? Or does it have a (certain) future? 

Note: This post was also published in Dutch on FrankWatching and Teed.

Internet Trends 2011 and on

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.

iPad experiences

I love my iPad! What a wonderful gadget it is! When we got it (with a newspaper subscription) I was wondering: Is it really worth it? I have an iPhone and a laptop, what do I need an iPad for then?

But, again I experienced that using is believing.The iPad (- I have the iPad1) fits perfectly between the iPhone and laptop. In lots of cases it takes over usage time from the iPhone and laptop.

For instance, reading email is great on the iPhone and the iPad. Instant-on is a killer. Even my wife hardly fires up the (Windows) laptop to process email. Although typing longer emails is still done on the iPad, most emails can be processed by a quick and short reply using the iPad.

Reading news and feeds is wonderful on the iPad as well. Apps like Flipboard are mindblowing. I'm amazed by how quickly I can go through feeds, tweets, etc. using Flipboard, compared to Google Reader or Twitter itself. And I love the way news is presented. It feels and looks right. And I'm sure we haven't seen the end of iPad app development yet. That's one of the things that really strikes me. The real app development for the iPad has only just started. There are some cool and innovative apps, but we're still figuring out what its real potential is.

I mentioned my wife. I must also mention my kids (2 and 4 years old). They love the iPad! They watch videos, play games and read interactive books on it. The user-interaction seems to be made for them. Flipping through pictures is completely obvious to them, for instance.

The size and weight are ideal. We took the iPad along on our trip to the US. Using a laptop in the car or on a plane is OK, not great. The iPad fits there perfectly. And it kept the kids satisfied the whole way... 

Reading on the iPad is great as well. For example, I've been reading Wired on the iPad for some time. Every Wired issue shows what the iPad means for publishing. I really like the way they are playing with the magazine navigation, interactive articles and infographics, etc.

My newspaper (NRC) is a strange one. They have a website optimized for mobile devices, especially the iPad. But the newspaper itself is currently not much more than an interactive pdf.

In short, the iPad is great for browsing, reading, processing and typing short notes/emails.

We haven't even seen 1% of the potential of the iPad, I think. (Just compare the number of iPhone apps that don't have an iPad counterpart yet...) Some things I'd like to see:

• It would be great if you could search through your iPad content. Most apps are closed and walled. Even within apps search is often poor. For instance, why can't I search through all my Wired magazines, as I can on the web?
• Adding notes, highlighting and underlining content, etc. could be easier. Sometimes you can type comments, but that's not as easy as scribbling some notes with a pen. I think we need something like a pen. This is definitely the case when using the iPad in business environments, I think. Or will voice control do the trick here?
• Sharing content from many apps is horrible. Again, I hope the walled feeling to the iPad and the apps will go away. Why can't I share a Wired article right from the app, like I can do on the web? Just to give one example. 

Does this relate to your iPad experiences? I'd love to hear them. Please, leave a comment or share a link to your post(s) about your experiences.

Mobile Intranet

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. Enterprise mobility now presents itself as "a pervasive and ubiquitous mesh of software, middleware and hardware requiring seamless integration, state-of-the-art user interface and pristine security." Security is "the elephant in the room".
• "A mobile strategy is not the equivalent of making your web applications accessible via a mobile device."
• Surveys show that more than 50% of the companies are working on or planning mobile deployments. Many based on the iPhone or iPad. The biggest reason not to deploy just yet is security. Business Intelligence is a big driver for enterprise mobility. Other reasons are: productivity/speed, and the real-time enterprise.
• White shows that most are not strategic about mobility. The intiatives are hardly tied to business goals and processes. This is surprising, I find.
• Employees give their employers very low marks for their mobile strategy. Most don't have a strategy and/or guidelines.
• Intranet information architectures will change drastically. There is little point "in providing access to all sections of the intranet." Also the mobile intranet challenges us to think about our user. White gives an overview of the user segmentation VDC provides: road warriors and executives, mobile office professionl, etc. Don't give them all the information, but the information they need to get their job done.

This is a first release by White about making the internal company information mobile. I'm looking forward to White's future publications about this topic!

But for now I'm wondering: is your intranet ready for mobile? If not, are you getting ready for mobile? Please share your thoughts!

The 2015 intranet - Anywhen, Anywhere by Martin White @intranetfocus #intra11

I still have one more post from the Intranet Conference (Congres Intranet) for you! Martin White closed the conference with a talk about The 2015 Intranet - Anywhen, Anywhere.

White's talk can be easily summarized: Mobile First.
The internet is moving to mobile, the intranet is as well.

White has been researching this topic and has interesting (upcoming) reports about this topic. The number of users with mobile web access is astounding (refer to picture).

White also doesn't not believe in a future for mobile apps. He says develop for the mobile web, not apps. It's way too expensive to develop apps for all the different platforms.

The real value of mobile intranet will be in the area of business intelligence, says White. Mobile intranet supports the real-time enterprise.

IT needs to address this trend. Also with respect to security (lots of devices are left behind/lost).

Usability and mobile: speech, typing. Don't push you're whole intranet through the mobile. Your intranet may even turn out to be much smaller if you think mobile first.

Final thought: When reviewing the intranet, think information not content, think apps not pages.

That wraps up my posts/notes about the Intranet Conference. I hope they were useful. Comments and corrections are more than welcome.

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.

Moved by the Mobile Web

For some time now I've been following the mobile web with fascination. How quickly this market has grown and is still growing! I can remember getting my first (Prepaid!) mobile phone about 9 years ago. Even then a mobile phone was something not everyone had. Some people were even very irritated by "all the people calling in public (on the street) and sitting in the train". I don't hear that complaint very often anymore...

Then slowly but steadily the mobile web popped up. Actually it was already there but just way too expensive for mainstream use.

I don't think the mobile web is mainstream now, but it definitely is getting there. Recently I bought an iPhone 3GS (I know I'm slow...) and now have my own real experiences with it. And I must say I was impressed without having a smartphone. But I'm even more surprised and fascinated by it now.

Like with many technologies, after you start using it, you really feel it. You suddenly actually experience the power it has and what it's pushing. My experience in short is: the Web is clearly moving to Mobile, or maybe I should say it is Mobile. This may seem to be common-sense to you. Good for you! To me it wasn't. And after showing lots of friends and colleagues how the iPhone works, which Internet apps you get and can use, they are continuously fascinated by its possibilities.

What I find is that the Mobile web is great for lots of things. It pulls to the Internet to your fingertips. I find myself using my laptop less, for instance. My smartphone is great for keeping up with email. Reading email, deleting emails right away if your not going to read them, writing back short emails, archiving and forwarding them. Writing back long emails is not very easy though. I usually save that for when I'm working at my pc. This is something I'm struggling with. As you know I apply GTD to my life. This also implies touching an email once. When I decide not to answer an email using my iPhone, I'll have to keep that email in my inbox and come back to it again. I don't like this. What I am doing know is typing in some snibbits of the email I want to send back and saving that in draft mode. (If you also apply GTD, how do you handle this issue or isn't it an issue for you?)

It's also great for browsing through my feeds and reading the shorter ones. The longer posts will be saved to be printed or read at my computer.

I've been tweeting for some time. One thing I didn't like about my tweet reading behavior is that I would have to be at my computer to read them. This is OK, but I now find that reading tweets is done much better and easier from the iPhone. I look at them between meetings, at times and places I find handy. It's much easier to keep up with them in this way and also to engage in conversations.

The neat thing about the mobile web is it's developing quickly. The number of useful new apps is astounding. I just feel it grow every time I pick up my phone and go to the App store. A direction I think will be big is the potential for product innovation and development. Just think of the direct feedback you can get from users in the field (we're seeing this already via Twitter), using the camera to project all kinds of information on products with augmented reality for customer of service reasons, etc.

For this to happen I do think the mobile web needs to speed up. Internet access is OK via wifi and it's reasonable if there's a 3G network. But the 3G network is not fast enough (- although sometimes this also has to do with the apps themselves...).

What are your experiences with the mobile web? Do you have a smartphone? Are your experiences comparable to mine? I'd love to hear from you.