The other day I blogged about 3 Intranet Truths.

Looking at my first Intranet Truth ("No two intranets are the same. If they are, you are doing something wrong - stop benchmarking and start leading") its worth reflecting on the first two themes from Step Two Design's Intranet Innovations 2011 awards:

• A culture of continuous improvement; and
• Innovations that are based on very simple ideas

One of the examples they share that embodies these themes is computer animation house, Framestore:

The intranet team created a tool to project manage the visual effects they produce for movies such as the Harry Potter series. Built in-house and displaying data from a third party system, the company’s artists can access tabbed views of complex data about every scene and shot.

Framestore's success isn't based on nice to have features or "best practices" blindly copied from others, but by designing an intranet solution specifically for their users. If you want to replicate their success, show leadership by focusing on learning from their method not their design.

You will also see this same mindset in the way Headshift | Dachis Group approaches our projects, including examples such as Reynolds Porter Chamberlain.

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.

Coming off the back of their annual social intranet conference, the ThoughtFarmer guys have announced the release of ThoughtFarmer 5. This release includes a new mobile-optimised version and an improved API.

I haven't played with the mobile version yet, but it looks well executed. I'm also really interested in the Integration Kit (TIK). No social intranet exists in a vacuum, so the ability to extend and customise ThoughtFarmer means you can use it as a true social workplace platform.

The much anticipated Socialtext 5 has been released - see this announcement post from Sarah:

This release sees a complete overhaul of the user interface, introduces a world-class rich text editor and a barrel-load of other features that make Socialtext more accessible, social and successful than ever before.

I have to say, the refreshed out of the box UI looks great!

This infoposter highlights well why traditional intranets fail, but I'm just not so sure those top five ideas for enhancing them will actually fix the problem. Actually, Socialcast might have missed the chance to explain why we need to humanise intranets and make them an integral part of how people organise and get work done.

Just thinking of my last post...

BTW For a more considered response to Saleforce's vision, see Dion's post and also JP Rangaswami.

Hat tip to Susan.

It seemed that my keynote talk at KM Singapore helped to change some people’s thinking about intranets. Challenging the notion that they are old, dull sites containing policies, I generated new enthusiasm for what intranets can (and should) do. But the most controversy came during the question-and-answer session, where I found myself saying:

“Blogs and wikis are dead.”

I certainly understand James' sentiment here. I'm also sure some intranet managers will draw a sigh of relief when they read this, thinking they don't need to worry about this social stuff anymore. Unfortunately, nothing could be further from the truth.

In fact, if we look at James' presentation it is full of refined examples of the software patterns that we call wikis and blogs... including REA Group (Jive), IDEO (ThoughtFarmer) and also Reynolds Porter Chamberlain (which integrates Atlassian Confluence along with a number of other platforms). I'm reminded that wiki is both a verb and a noun.

BTW I'm not aware of any leading enterprise 'wiki' that doesn't provide a rich text editor - even Atlassian are ditching wiki markup entirely in their upcoming version of Confluence.

For a successful SharePoint implementation, you can’t forget the most important ingredient — getting the platform used.

If you are reading this article, it is likely because you’ve heard whining in your office or you’re tired of repeating the same message over and over to improve user adoption of your SharePoint implementation.

You may be a frustrated project manager or business champion who spent countless hours on budgeting, planning, governance, information architecture, training and timelines, only to find that the last task in your SharePoint project plan that has no due date is USER ADOPTION. And to your horror, no one is taking your words seriously and people don’t care. The bottom line is this: for you to get people to take advantage of your hard work, you have to add one more task assigned to yourself — don’t give up.

Unfortunately if thinking about "user adoption" is the last step, then you've already failed. Written by a software vendor, this article - underpinned by an assumption that the software is perfect - advises people to Break Down the Resistance, Stop the Whining and then Babysit, aka Enforce change. This approach is more than overtly paternalistic and I'm surprised they don't just recommend getting rid of the users who are blemishing the hard work of the technocrats. Part of me wonders if this attitude is just symptomatic of the Microsoft SharePoint ecosystem being geared towards software development and implementation, rather than a well rounded mix of people, process, technology and content (like we do at Headshift | Dachis Group). What do you think?

It’s clear that the once clear distinctions between intranets, internet sites and extranets are blurring somewhat as the technology evolves and business needs develop. Traditional distinctions between internal and external communication teams (and outputs) will also likely diminish, mirroring this application of technology. This merger though will bring some clear advantages.

• A single design with a single user experience for all places, giving a clarity of corporate identity with smaller overall design bills
• Publicly listed companies are obliged to publicly reveal some materials to the markets before telling employees (see our intranetizen post on laws and intranets). A single merged space could limits the chances of a mis-timed publishing.
• Employees read the corporate site too! Merging ensures that there is no chance of mixed messaging especially if the former intranet and internet materials were managed by different teams. Consistency of content is critical when information consumers can compare and contrast.
• Reduced licensing and support costs as to you move to using a single technology foundation.

We are definitely heading down this path - I'm seeing this issue come all the time during the planning stages for social intranets.

However, in practice right now it doesn't necessarily deliver all these benefits - e.g. licensing models for external and inward facing versions of the same platform can throw a spanner in the works. In some companies, the public internet site is also a more reliable source of information than the intranet - so some users might not see this as an improvement.

But there is not doubt that in the medium term, the intranet is definitely going to be a victim of extranet-isation; meanwhile organisations are also building external facing spaces where staff and customers will mingle. Just a question of if and when these will merge.

A study has found that the hustle and bustle of modern offices can lead to a 32% drop in workers well being and reduce their productivity by 15%.

They have found that open plan offices create unwanted activity in the brains of workers that can get in the way of them doing the task at hand.

Open plan offices were first introduced in the 1950s and quickly became a popular as a way of laying out offices.

Having a clean and sterile desk can also leave employees with smaller brains, scientists claim.

The findings are revealed in a programme made for Channel 4, The Secret Life of Buildings, to be broadcast on Monday.

This type of research, IMHO, has implications for both our online and physical workplaces. Implementing a sterile, impersonal intranet is probably as bad as a clean desk policy.

But for physical workspaces at least, why does it always have to be one or other - open plan OR individual offices, work from the office OR work from home?