Yes, I know I’m an intranet antagonist - but honestly its for you own good. So here are 3 intranet truths - I'll have more to say on this later, but in the meantime print it out and stick it on your wall.

Some great follow up reading to my Intranet2011 presentation. Intranet managers appear to think in very black and white terms - its either a social intranet or its not, and they may or may not 'control' it. But as Dion highlights here, we have broad options. In fact, we've always had options but we now have even more choice for dealing with brownfield environments and organisational complexity, as the platforms and architectures have matured over time.

This Webinar on the 10th May will provide a introduction to prospective Asia Pacific members of The 2.0 Adoption Council and will feature two existing council members: Cory Banks (Parsons Brinckerhoff) and Claire Flanagan (CSC). For more information and to register for the Webinar, visit the event page.

Last weekend, I had the opportunity to participate in BarCampCanberra 2011. Off the back of many varied discussions from our Social Business Summit series, I thought this would be a good chance to engage with a diverse audience about workforce collaboration. In particular, I wanted to create a link between organisations and how we organise information. The following are some notes about my thoughts behind this presentation.

Cross posted from the Headshift Australia blog, I've written up some notes about my BarCampCanberra 2011 presentation on enterprise social software. Would love to hear your comments here or over on the Headshift blog.

And don't forget, if you are interested in this kind of thing and work for a large organisation based in the Asia Pacific you should also register your interest in the regional 2.0 Adoption Council.

Things To Do

• Narrate your work. Talk both about work in progress (the projects you're in the middle of, how they're coming, what you're learning, and so on), and finished goods (the projects, reports, presentations, etc. you've executed). This lets others discover what you know and what you're good at. It also makes you easier to find, and so increases the chances you can be a helpful colleague to someone. Finally, it builds your personal reputation and 'brand.'
• Point to others' work, and provide commentary on it. When you come across something noteworthy, point to it and discuss why you think it's important. Chances are others would like to know about it. And include a link to the original source; people love links.
• Comment and discuss. Post comments to others' blogs, join the conversations taking place on forums, and keep the social media discussions lively. Doing so will let others hear your voice, and also make them more likely to participate themselves.
• Ask and answer questions. Don't just broadcast what you know; also broadcast your ignorance from time to time. Let the crowd help you if you're stuck. Most people and organizations are very pleasantly surprised by the amount of altruism unlocked by Enterprise 2.0.
• Vote, like, give kudos, etc. Lots of social software platforms these days have tools for voting or signaling that you like something. Use them; they help provide structure to the community as a whole and let people know where the good stuff and real experts are. They also make you more popular.
• Talk about social stuff going on at the company. Give a recap of the softball game, talk about plans for the holiday party, show how close the group is to its fundraising goal, and so on. Organizations are social places, and I think it's a shortsighted shame when E2.0 platforms are all business, all the time. However, it's often a good idea to give non-work stuff its own dedicated place on the platform so that people can avoid it if they want to.

I often equate introducing enterprise social software as like moving from individual offices to open plan. Its not just about changes to the physical space, but also the changes to workplace social norms that go with it.

As part of that process some people are going to say, I like the idea of a more social computing workspace...

...but what should I actually do in it?

Andrew McAfee does a nice of job of covering some do's, don'ts and also the grey areas. Focusing on the do's (see above) I think its all about positive, useful communication. But this doesn't mean it has to be all work work work.

As for the don't, here is another physical workspace habit we don't want to bring into the online social workspace.

I usually dodge questions about specific vendors and their offerings, and instead answer how I'd look at any particular deployment of collaboration software to see if it met my definition of Enterprise 2.0.

I find this pretty easy to do. I check to see if the environment meets three criteria: Is it freeform? How frictionless is contribution? And is it emergent?

It worth considering Andew McAfee's criteria for Enterprise 2.0 software - particularly as we get excited about the potential for Sharepoint 2010 for example. However, we actually need to apply this criteria twice. Once to determine if the software's architecture is able to support an Enterprise 2.0 use case, the second to determine if the organisation will actually deploy it in a way that allows those capabilities to be utilised.

Hat tip to Martin Koser.

Dates – January 28th, February 4th, February 11th, February 18th at 12:00 p.m. ET

January 28th: Webinar #1: Social Computing Adoption in the Enterprise “the Before” – learn how to best develop the business case, gain buy-in, select technology and establish the team

February 4th: Webinar #2: Social Computing Adoption in the Enterprise “the After” –gather best practices on implementation, policy formation, training, and community management

February 11th: Webinar #3: EMC Enterprise 2.0 Case Study

February 18th: Webinar #4: Raytheon Enterprise 2.0 Case Study

Unfortunately 12pm E(S)T is something like 4am in the morning here on Australia's east coast, however they will be posting the deck from each Webinar on slideshare.