contextia

Wiki mark-up

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Wed, 20 Feb 2008 23:26:00 +0000

James Robertson has written a post stating that wiki mark-up has no future and that the future lies in WYSIWYG style editing.

James mentions that wiki fanatics are likely to take exception to the post but I can't see any reason why a true wiki fan would.

Surely the whole Idea of wikis are to open content creation up to the masses and wiki mark-up has to-date kept wiki editing limited to those that know it. It is plainly annoying. I liken it to a nineteenth century version of HTML but with all the variations making the old Microsoft vs Netscape vs W3C battles look like teddy bear picnics.

So James you're absolutlely right and with some of the newer tools I've seen the market agrees with you (no matter what those unwashed, friendless wiki hooligans may say).

Malaysian intranet and portal conference

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 15 Jan 2008 23:51:00 +0000

I am pleased to have been invited to speak at the
"2nd Annual Portals, Content Management ande Collaboration Conference".
being run by DZ Hampton and being held in Kula Lumpur, Malaysia 21-24 April 2008.

My slot will be on the 23rd and is titled "Discovering effective content management strategies".

I will also be running a post-conference IA workshop:

Post-Conference Workshop 3
24 April 2008 (09:00 – 12:00)
"Creating user-focused information
architecture for intranets and portals".

The conference has a great SE-Asian and international speaker line-up and I'm really looking forward to meeting delegates from across the region.

Users have common goals, fears and hates

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Mon, 03 Dec 2007 21:15:00 +0000

A great recent post from Gerry McGovern in which he highlights that every website is NOT different and that he is tired of the associated babble (my word) that goes with defining sites e.g. "emotional branding".

Right there with you Gerry.

Obviously everything has an emotional attachment to some degree but most websites are about task completion, as plain and boring as that sounds. Over the 11 years I worked on websites and intranets without any exception any site that doesn't deliver on basic task focus and completion fails.

This applies across all sorts of sites to any site, intranet, e-commerce, government, video sharing, forum, search, Users want to do something quickly, easily and get a quick result (and as Gerry amusingly points out for free...).

It's unfortunate that web professionals are still having to fight the fight against excessive marketing vernacular. I have recently (unsuccessfully) tried to argue against the automatic playing of unrelated audio for site visitors to a non entertainment site.

Same battles I was fighting back in the 90's and unfortunately still losing the occasional one.

So despite all the growing awareness of usability, user focused design, IA, accessibility etc etc there's still exisits fundamnetal ignorance about websites even with those that actuallly manage them.

Cool is not always good. Wow factor is as fleeting and fickle as your users are.

End result is frustrated users, bad business opuibicity and eventual effect on a company or organisation's bottom line.

The way forward is to continue to educate clients, users and manages. Stop trying to convince them with best practice and gurus and focus on reports, stats, clickthroughs, research, MONEY. Hard data.

Convince them with business logic not website logic eventhough they generally lead to the same place.

Intranet Innovation Award winners

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Mon, 22 Oct 2007 23:25:00 +0000

James Robertson has published an article announcing the winners of the inaugural Intranet Innovation Awards.

Congrats to all the winners. Special mention to NZ winners Dorje McKinnon at Sungard (gold) and to the folks up at Northland Region for getting a special mention.

Intranet management evolution - independence for intranet teams

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 00:34:00 +0000

In most organisations where intranets and portals have been following an ongoing iterative evolution model (not out of any good modelling practice but more on budget imperatives) they have generally started off in IT or IS departments.

As intranet strategy and maturity has grown many have had the day to day management and strategy moved out of the technology arena moving into a less techy focused areas (communications, knowledge management, marketing, HR etc) while IT keep looking after the infrastructure.

I have (until recently) always thought this was a good thing.

Everybody is the problem

I have found numerous issues with the above approach across some of the intranets I myself have managed or been involved in.

(Quotes displayed are paraphrasing of actual statements heard over the last few years. Some creative licence used in places for greater effect).

Communications and marketing are poor usability people (don't get me started with IT)
Having seen a search box moved from a logical top right location because the communications/marketing managers wanted "more images in that location instead to make the site look better " (despite the fact that 50% of site traffic went to the two searches located there...), I simply do not think most communications and marketing managers do not yet have the capability to truly understand the online user paradigm. They see it as a campaign or 'communications tool' which it is but it is so much more.

Or in an intranet where the news had had 20,000 views in one year ( less 5 news views over one year per user - with a user base of 4,000 and probably about 150 stories, Biggest story got about a 500 views) "What? open up the 2nd level navigation on the homepage so users can access work related information better... no I want more news and images to build the news area instead."

IT sometimes çonfuse online terminology (still)
Information architecture? ''Yes we have a Microsoft IIS server box cabled to a Oracle backend db linked through to Peoplesoft 9 all behind a supa douper triple authenticated Firewall etc etc.

Usability testing - "Yeah that manager said it seemed to work fine during our UAT. He signed the release."

Silo-ed business groups do not care about other units
The training people want all courses linked on the homepage, procurement want little visited links on the homepage, as does every other team.

"Share a content area with another business unit. No we want our own with all our pictures".

"Put those pages under Finance and purchasing? But we are called the 'Corporate business asset accounting procurement systems and management sub-division'...."

IT think everyone else are Luddites
IT think communications and marketing people focus mostly on words, pictures and perceptions (and yes they do:) ). But this view can neglect the value of utilising the user and business engagement skills that many communications and marketing people may have. A lot of the web 2.0 for business features that I am seeing put to good use are being pushed by the non-IT areas (eventhough it tends to be IT staff being early adopters of these areas).

Communications and other units think IT are business unfriendly
IT push technology directions - "Sharepoint will solve all our problems" or "Open-source! open-source! open-source!" without considering business or more often USER needs.

Without true governance pet schemes can go ridiculous
"Second life is the new thing. Lets invest half our budget to work out how we can leverage Second life as our new intranet."

Essentially these types of internal politics have meant that many intranets are static and caught in between responsibilities and expertise and without the proper resolution of these issues they are basically just sitting there rotting with a few dedicated professionals looking around for ways to extract themselves from the mire.

Standalone operational teams with consultative governance structures are optimal

The optimal solution is an intranet team that is independent of the direct line management of either of the two. I see no issues with it being part of a wider online team (I think the whole web/ intranet models are starting to converge more and more and the sharing of resources can only mean a good thing for the normally 'ugly sister' of the intranet).

If a standalone team is not organisationally possible than a strong governance and operational structure (with input from all key stakeholder groups) should be in place (should be in place regardless) to ensure:

True organisational ownership of the intranet
Shared insight to business issues and objectives
Brand/technology/pet project and ideology influence is kept to a minimum and diluted when progressed
A true reporting and accountability direction for the intranet manager and team
Allow for cross organisational budget financing and direction

Evolution of management models

As intranets evolve, so do governance models, and I think its time to start considering the independence of online and intranet teams from all the traditional areas to ensure true business accountability, transparency and business and user responsibility is taken. The other groups have provided their expertise at the right time to help the development of the intranet and obviously ongoing expertise and involvement is still required in respective areas of expertise.

Even if it is just a single person (putting aside line management) the intranet should still be managed'' outside these areas and reporting to a governance, and if need be, an operational group as well.

In organisations that have already done this I have seen a much more robust , professional and user focused approach to the intranet which for end users means a true organisational intranet not an organisational one with a specific business unit bias.

Virtual user research in Second Life

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Thu, 27 Sep 2007 21:10:00 +0000

Just reading a write-up User testing in Second Life by Lisa Herrod at Sitepoint, of a presenattion at the recent OZ-IA confernece in Sydney, User Research in Virtual Worlds from Gary Bunker and Gabriele Hermansson, both from Hyro.

Interesting indeed.

I am a slight cynic of the whole Second Life virtual world model especially when users are flocking to webpage models of social interaction like facebook, mySpace and leaving second life to a slightly faddish geek set at the moment.

I am currently playing around with a few online card sorting tools and think they are great tools for IA validation and wide spread quantative research but not replacements for good live person exercises.

I do not believe good focus groups can be run in a virtual environment as one can not view the side looks, or comments, the physical reponse to a comment from other participants where real value can be produced. It's not what they say but what they do. Valid for actually user testing but equally valid for focus groups and interviews.

The whole point of focus groups is person to person interaction and discussion. The presentation of avatars and digital represenation of discussion items does not truly do this justice.

Also its ridiculous to think that second life represents a wide enough user base for most websites. Second life is well overrepresented by narrow audiences and age groups. We don't even know that an avatar is actually a 45 year old white female, or a 15 year old etc etc.

Real people skills are the key the success in user research. The need to talk and engage with actual users represented as they truly are. We need to move away from technology itself to make technolofgy more friendly and intuitive for users not the other way round.

Wiki in the enterprise

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 18 Sep 2007 01:31:00 +0000

Shiv Singh has written a post on the evolution and issues for the wiki at his well known online agency Avenue A/Razorfish.

He shares an informative and useful presentation with screenshots and usage figures.
Very worthwhile if you're currnetly managing or looking at wikis internally.

Web analytic standards

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 11 Sep 2007 21:00:00 +0000

The Web Analytics Association (yes there is one) have released a groups of 26 standard definitions for web analytic measurements.

By recommending standards, definitions and terminology, we can collectively enable common ways of looking at data measurement and methodologies—resulting in:
More meaningful industry benchmarking
Comparability of results among different tools
Better understanding of the metrics terms we all use

I think that while any move to standardise the language and definitions of web statistics will be a difficult one, the idea is sound. The Association is looking for feedback on their initial recommendations.

Intranets ''07

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:53:00 +0000

Due to a recent change of employer I will no longer be able to chair or present at the upcoming Sydney Intranets '07 event.

It is always a great event with some excellent speakers and organisations involved.
I hope to be attending next year.

Users 'see' simple things

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 04 Sep 2007 21:40:00 +0000

Jakob Nielsen is at his best when he produces clear and simple results of his research.

His latest alertbox, 'Fancy Formatting, Fancy Words = Looks Like a Promotion = Ignored' is a good example. Despite the number being clearly 'visible' (in bold red large font) on the homepage many users couldn't find the US population on the US Census site.

The reasons? The popluation stat was called a 'population clock' rather than just 'The US population is ....' and that the location and style of the population made users think it could be and ad 'banner blindness'.

Great article for content people, IAs and designers.

Full code press

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:44:00 +0000

One of the coolest events I've heard about in a while is Full code press.

The concept is simple. Web teams take each other on, at the same location, to build a complete website in 24 hours. No excuse, no extensions, no budget overruns.

It was first held a few weeks ago in Sydney and involves a team from Australia and New Zealand. The teams build sites for two different charities and involve an IA/usability person, coders, designers and a project manager.

This year NZ (the 'codeblacks') won. Congrats to everyone involved.

Next year it's in Wellington.

Auckland intranet and portal conference

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:36:00 +0000

The 2007 Brightstar intranet and portal conference went really well last week. Or so I heard/read, unfortunately at the last minute I couldn't make it. My presenattion slides will still be made available to those people that attended through their conference login.

Michael Sampson has written up detailed coverage (as he did last year).

Hope for intranet managers?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Fri, 31 Aug 2007 21:31:00 +0000

Gerry McGovern has written a post 'Hope for intranet Managers' and includes a link to his recent intranet survey.

I meet a lot of intranet managers who are frustrated with their jobs. It's easy to understand why. But we need to be clever here. We need to get things in perspective. We need to think long-term.

NZ intranet forum information sessions

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 04:15:00 +0000

A great free networking event for Intranet folk in Auckland and Wellington NZ.

Sure Step Two will be selling their leadership forum but they'll also be providing some great expert information on the day including examples from the recent intranet innovation awards.

From Catherine at Step Two:

The Intranet Leadership Forum is about to launch two new chapters in Auckland and Wellington.

We are an active community of intranet professionals who share and learn from each other at regular workshops and informal meetings.

This is a facilitated forum that is all about improving the effectiveness of intranets, by providing knowledge and resources to build on site strengths and to address current weaknesses.

We will be holding free information sessions in Auckland and Wellington,

-Wellington:
Friday, 24th August, 1-3pm, followed by afternoon tea

Location: Reserve Bank of New Zealand, 2 The Terrace, Wellington

- Auckland:
Monday, 27th August, 1-3pm, followed by afternoon tea

Location: University of Auckland, Alfred Street City Campus, Auckland

Each session will cover:
How the Intranet Leadership Forum works
Special presentation on how to build innovative intranets, with
screenshots and out takes from the 2007 Intranet Innovation Awards
see the intranets of companies from around the world
learn howintranets are the center of organisational change initiatives
see the best of the best staff directories, calendars and on-line
sharing

Come along, meet up with other intranet mangers in your area and see
examples of what is happening around the world with intranets.

To register for a session send an email to
catherine@steptwo.com.au
stating which city you are in.

http://www.intranetleadership.com.au/
http://www.steptwo.com.au/

Are portals like death and taxes...inevitable?

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Wed, 08 Aug 2007 04:20:00 +0000

In-house development vs out of the box

Ever since I learnt HTML in 1997 from a couple of printed out sheets of A$ I have supported more of a DIY approach to things and at the same time been a keen advocate for good best practice. around development standards, and accessibility/usability etc.

My feeling was always around why spend millions on something you can build yourself?

As I have worked with and for increasingly larger organistations this approach has started to seem unmanagable and increasingly invalid.

The key issues:

Inhouse development seems to take just as long and cost just as much as 'out of the box' (or out of the b=box with a bit of customisation.
Just because you have standards doesn't always mean inhouse development meets them
Inhouse development involves a degree of wheel reinvention if the proper structures and development practices are not in place or followed. (even in very large software houses this is not always the case).
'Portal like' software is getting increasingly flexible and functional (and IT people really love them).

It's the last point I'd like to expand further.

Enterpise protals vs portal development platforms

Now putting aside the contentious use of the word portal (an any actual meaning), in my experience there are two types of portal software.

Proprietary enterprise
The big enterprise type of systems (Peoplesoft portal, Sharepopoint being two of these). They are characterised by being integrated or developed around previous proeducts in a vendors catalogue and tend to do a lot out of the box (not all of it well) and also tend to be less flexible around the presentation layer (look and feel, site structure, accessibility standards etc). It does generally mean there is less need to employ developers as most functionality is already built. They are starting to offer SOA type of approaches but they are still more restricted than other approaches.
Flexible development platforms
The other type is the more development platform (BEA weblogic). These tend to require developers to develop base artifacts to be reused. The systems come with already inbuilt functionality but it is relatively easy to build new functionality as they tend to be built around an open web services approach.

My organisation is currently exploring several different platforms (as well as using several... which of course poses many difficult scenarios) but for the 'intranet' I really see approach 2 being far more effective (given my general stance as mentioned at the start of owning and controlling development).

It gives organisations more flexiblity in displaying and managing content and functionality and also the ability to control the base code of development (thus accessibility) more than the proprietary systems.

User demands not being met

User demands are increasing (mostly around workflow, intregration with existing data systems, personalisation of content) more rapidly than most organisations have the ability to meet those demansd and thus in terms of good buisness it seems logical to take on board at least good solid SOA portal development approaches to be able to better meet these demands.

So while I still hate the misuse of the word 'portal', and dislike that the multinationals have hijacked the word, and hate that vendors oversell their products, the 'portal solution' of any colour/format/platform is likely to be part of the enterprise of the future if not fully realised as of yet.

I also see open SOA standards being a key player in this development.

I also realise that 'portal' hype has decreased over the past couple of years (generally it has been migrated into the wider enterprise 2.0 hype) I think this is because many organisations have simply changed their web development practices to be 'portal'/SOA like, rather than from scratch as had to be done in the past.

I think the postives of moving in this direction have started to outweigh the negatives.

News feeds for intranet teams

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Thu, 02 Aug 2007 04:07:00 +0000

James from Step Two has published a comprehensive list of must read feeds for intranet teams.

Just a reminder if you'd like to add contextia to your news feed visit Feedburner or use the feed links on the right.

Intranets '07, Sydney

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Wed, 18 Jul 2007 22:11:00 +0000

The Intranets '07 event has been finalised for Sydney for Wednesday, 19 September.

It is a focused one day conference with two workshops on the following day.

The previous couple of years have been great. Lots of great views from intranet managers and this year presentations include Telstra, National Australia Bank and Heinz.

To its credit it has little vendor involvement.

I will be chairperson of the event as well as presenting on content strategy and management.

Strategic Intranet and Portal Management conference - Auckland

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Wed, 11 Jul 2007 23:05:00 +0000

The Auckland Strategic Intranet and Portal management conference has been finalised for th 28 and 29 of August at The Rydges in the city.

As always it features lots of great speakers and case studies, some usual faces and some new ones.

Cairo Walker from Step Two will be running a separate workshop on the 30th on a new model of theirs 'Intranet Honeycomb'.

I'll be doing a presentation on content management strategy focusing on users and governance and will also participate as a panelist in the open panel discussions at the end of day two.

Hope to see you there.

Blogs ARE the new information medium

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 22:55:00 +0000

Jakob Nielsen is starting to show his age.

I've been a big fan of his since his 'Designing Web Usability' book and have on occasion defended the fellow from detractors.

But his latest article Write articles not blogs is one of the most boring reactionary things I've read around online communication for quite some time.

I'm sure all those big graphs in the article are all valid and the research behind it perfectly fine.

The problem is that it's boring, not engaging and I don't have time to read big long boring online article (no matter how valid) on a particular subject, especially when I'm at work and I tend to avoid getting online at home.

I like blogs as they provide 'snippets' of good information (if of course they are good blogs) or links to other information. It helps build a collective and wide personal knowledge of a subject over time without the need to do in-depth study.

The social and interaction aspects of blogs should not be overlooked for the valid value they provide which articles do not.

Articles certainly have their place and there are people that do both but blogs have opened up knowledge sharing beyond what traditional articles have and shouldn't be compared with something as structured as an article.

Donna Maurer IA workshops in Auckland

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Wed, 04 Jul 2007 22:02:00 +0000

Well known IA expert Donna Maurer will be in Auckland running two one-day session covering aspects of IA. She is being brought to Auckland by the good people at Optimal Usability.

This full day workshop will provide you with a thorough overview and
understanding of information architecture theory & practice.

It will cover a wide range of information architecture issues, including an
understanding of how it fits into a project, fundamental skills & knowledge required for information architecture work and current information architecture issues.

It will be theoretical and practical and allow you to immediately apply ideas to your projects.

Great opportunity to get expert advice and upgrade your skills.

Search engine optimisation and content searchability

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:48:00 +0000

Demise of the meta keyword

I am still working with a lot of content authors who think buy stuffing words into their meta keyword fields and writing massive page descriptions are somehow going to increase their site/page searchability and ranking within search engines. They don't.

As mentioned in a previous post even my CMS vendor believes (even in this day and age) that somehow managing meta keywords is the key to SEO.

When Search Engines first kicked off (dark ole' pre-Google days) meta tags were the key information used by search engines to identify page content. This lead to all sorts of e-marketing scammers making millions spamming keywords and page descriptions.

Obviously the sophistication of SEO has greatly improved with the advent of Google style Page ranking, link popularity and the actual searching of content and not just meat fields and titles.
This too has lead to all sorts of e-marketing scammers but Google really has done a great deal to protect the integrity of its ranking technology to avoid these types of things (i.e. the white text on white background, domain name squatters using link pages etc etc).

Perhaps the only good use of meta keywords these days is a general indicator for other content authors in your organisation as to what the target keywords are and thus that they should be used in your keyword maps.

Good content - good searchability

With more internal search engines following more of a Google model (indeed many are now adopting the Google app) this applies to web content and intranet content in equal measure.

I'll reinforce my position that good web content and intranet content is fundamentally structured the same way (leaving aside to a degree social/ web/enterprise 2.0 collaborative stuff).

Accessible sites are searchable sites
Well written web content is searchable content
User-focused content is searchable content

SEO marketing and natural searches

It's important to highlight the difference between search engine marketing (Google adwords etc) and natural search optimisation (free listings).

What I'm concerned about here is natural search engine optimisation for websites and intranets and I'll leave the e-marketing stuff to someone else.

Searchability and Findability

I'll highlight the separation between searchability and findability here also.

When I mean 'searchability' I'm talking specifically about a search engine (either internally or externally) indexing a site and producing relevant results for users of that search engine. 'Findability' is a larger concept.

Basics of good SEO

Use keyword maps - Page titles, headings and keywords in first paragraphs need a common thread. The link/navigation to the page has the keyword focus.
Links should not be images, not Flash, not Javascript. Simple accessible text links is the way to go.
key content is in text. Text! not flash, not image not fancy java apps. Good ole plain HTML/XHTML rendered text. Otherwise forget about indexing.
CSS can be utilised to great effect for good SEO. Use it to structure your site in divs. Don't use tables.
Pages are coded following W3C standards and guidelines. It is generally web developers themselves that keep pages from being indexed and ranked. Crappy code means unsearchable content.
Content is of a quality that makes other people want to link to it. Links are good.
Link to content don't duplicate it. Really important especially internally. Have a single source and provide links through. This also benefits users as they are presented with multiple locations of exactly the same content. See CMS container issues.
URLs are clear.Most search engines can index URLs with variables but they do tend to avoid them on occasion. Do URL rewrites to form nice readable URLs if you've got a dynamic content site. Again it's also good for your users.
Content is written for users and uses user-focused words and language (for intranets as well).
Forget short-cut scams. Follow good development and content basics. Focus on natural search optimisation not marketing optimisation. Get free listings!
Write lots of good content that people want to read. This is what gets indexed highly.

SEO links:

Intranet and portal personalisation

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 21:26:00 +0000

Step Two Designs, through their KM Column, have published two new articles around intranet and portal personalisation.

James Robertson - Personalisation vs Segementation and
Catherine Grenfell - Do staff make use of personalisation features?

Catherine's article reports on a survey Step Two did around personalisation features of intranets and portals.

The results illustrate that:
adoption of personalisation is far from guaranteed, the survey shows that no
significant spike of usage at the high end of acceptance
personalisation includes bookmarks, portlets/dashboard elements, news and
documents
management perception of personalisation benefits is a key factor
in getting a personalisation project off the ground
technology available within the organisation has a significant impact on an
organisation's ability to deliver personalisation
measurement of adoption and effectiveness of personalisation is undertaken
by fewer than 20% of respondents

Intranet branding

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:50:00 +0000

Garth Buchholz at Digital Web Magazine has written an article on 'Intranbranding: why your intranet needs its own personality'.

I'm generally a fan of branded intranets except I've found that there are lots of cheesy names out there. The ones I dislike the most tend to be names of people created from acronyms. Sure intranets need 'personalities' but they aren't people .

My organistion is currently looking at a similar process noty sure of what will come out of that.
Being at a University the scepticism and cynicism level is extreme.

I read a very intersting article/textbook on branding names sometime back and it oulined a history of brand name development. Early 20c it was family names i.e Ford, later abbreviations were popular IBM, then the 70's, 80's techy names i.e Microsoft then in the 90's and the 00's the web opened up names that meant nothing about the company or product... Yahoo!, Google, Bebo, De.li.cio.us etc etc .

Have the names and brands of intranets also evolved? Have we moved on from the ubiquitous something -'net' to the little direct association names? The company in-jokes?

Anyway a quote from Garth's article:

By creating an IntraBrand for the intranet you:
Give design elements a site-wide consistency, creating a
strongly unified look and feel—this develops a sense of teamwork and
equality among different departments.
Create a dynamic identity and community for the workforce.
Even if elements of the intranet include prominent corporate messaging, goals,
etc., this is the employees‘ environment, and if they don’t use the site, it
quickly diminishes in value.
Define the intranet’s main objectives and intended use.
Intranet branding can help communicate to employees how the organization expects them to use it, and what they can use it for.
Provide a benefit to current and prospective employees. An
intranet that has an integrated social networking value will appeal to new
generations of employees whose internet experiences have made them expect
higher standards from web communities.
Build a permanent foundation for employees. An intranet’s
lifespan can extend even further than the careers of many employees. While
the organization itself may be buffeted by external forces, be restructured,
or even be sold to another corporation, the intranet may provide a sense of
stability and community.

Global intranet survey

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Tue, 19 Jun 2007 21:04:00 +0000

Jane McConnell is now running the 2007 version of The Global Intranet Strategies Survey. The previous survey has been well received the world over.

The study is designed to understand how intranets are being used in
organisations that fulfill one of the following three characteristics:
large, global, complex.

The survey profiles the participating organisations and identifies issues, approaches and trends. All participants receive the standard which includes analysis by NetStrategy/JMC.

Participants are invited to contribute ideas and topics for the survey
of the following year.

The survey is open until the 15th of August.

Content management requirements and vendor sales jobs

noreply@blogger.com (Nick Besseling) — Mon, 18 Jun 2007 04:27:00 +0000

A lot has been written about Content management System (CMS) requirements and working out the best CMS for your organisation. I don't waat to rehash any of that stuff.

What I want to highlight and rant about right now are issues with vendors and the salesmanship of solutions.

My organisation is in a position to work with a local vendor for a CMS which provides the tool to a number of large organisations of similar type and is now supplying their CMS internationally.

In theory working closely with a CMS vendor means you can get functionality built into upgrades and hopefully get bugs and other issues resolved painlessly. In practice I'd take an out of box solution that has been fully tested, anytime. Or open source when at least you can understand when things don't work.

Things to consider when talking or working with vendors about CMS solutions (so you don't have to deal with it after the fact) :

Just because they say 'Yes it can do that' does not mean 'Yes it can do that' :)
Remember vendors are software salespeople and software developers. They are not web content people, or intranet mangers etc etc. A very important point to keep in mind.
Focus on key functionality and not get distracted by the whizz bang in their Marketing material.
Be concerned if your vendor thinks making big Flash applications increase'Accessibility'. They need to understand basic Accessibility issues and the increasing comliance issues arising in many countries.
Don't specify it can handle HTML in your requirements and/or RFP. All CMS's can handle 'some' HTML. Specify a standard of HTML or XHTML. i.e. must meet HTML 4.0 validated standard. This'll keep you away from dreaded proprietary tags and a situation where basic HTML tags do not work or are rendered incorrectly.
No matter what they say you are likely not to need 'a dynamic enterprise 2.0 collaborative Flash Application development environment' before getting an edit function that works.
Be concerned that they test/and or develop in Firefox but fundamental functionality doesn't work in Firefox...
Check Accessibility and Usability- not just of the output but of the tool itself. My vendor just tried to sneak a Flash based tool bar into the application. For no reason whatsover except they are on a Flash 'bender' at the moment.
10 steps to get to page editing is TOO much. Make it a single click from an actual page or a 3 step process max. anything else will suck time from your authors. if they can't do this find something taht does. There are many.
Beware of 'Search Engine Marketing' functionality. My vendor is selling an SEO tool (as part of an updrade) to manage meta keywords across a site. Problem is Google does not use meta keywrods for anything thus the tool is useless. Simply write good serach engine content (see forthcomiung post on good SEO.)
If you want your vendor to do real fixes you'll likely have them more money. Like builders pay them AFTER they've done it properly.
Don't let IT manage the process. It is a tool for Content authoring and content management.
Make sure end-users are the key focus of any developent or RFP.
You have lot's of choice. Don't get blinded by technology preferences or some sort of misguided jingoistic worldview.
Be concerned if the vendor keeps ignoring basic user requirements and help and keeps developing uneeded new functionality. Tell them to fix what they've already created first.