Articles by Month: May 2008

Photo: At the back of the shed

At the back of the shed

This was the second of the photos that I took in the deep in the night, in a deserted Hunter Valley field. Also a 10 minute exposure, with a red-filtered torch used to illuminate the back of the shed.

Posted by jamesr at 11:36 AM
Categories: Photos

Express your interest in submitting for the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards

Having received a good crop of submissions for this year's Intranet Innovation Awards, we're now starting into the first round of evaluation and scoring.

Since the closing date, however, we've had a few people get in touch to ask whether it's too late to get an entry in. This is not surprising, as life is busy, and it's easy to lose track of the closing date.

We'd like to help avoid this situation for next year, and to make it as easy as possible for everyone to get their entries in (and therefore win an award!).

So we've set up a simple form for expressing interest, which asks only five questions:

• your name
• your organisation
• email address
• categories you may be submitting for (optional)
• brief description of your innovation(s) (optional)

We will then:

• Notify you when the 2009 Intranet Innovation Awards open for entries (March/April 2009).
• Remind you two weeks before entries close.

Filling in the form is entirely optional, and the sole purpose is to help you keep track of the awards process. (We won't use your details for any other purpose.) The form will remain open through the rest of this year, right up to when entries open in 2009.

Posted by jamesr at 11:12 AM | Permalink
Categories:

Shifting from content management to content delivery

The CMS Myth has written about moving from content management to content delivery. To quote:

As vendors look to differentiate and provide more value, they are scurrying to deliver more ‘out of the box’ tools to deliver content and better overall user experiences. It’s important for the savvy web professional implementing content management to separate the features of content management from content delivery when approaching a vendor selection and implementation. Let’s clearly distinguish the two camps.

Posted by jamesr at 09:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Photo: Glowing shell

Glowing shell

Spent the weekend up in the Hunter Valley, and set aside a night to stand in the darkness in an deserted field (as one does!). I "painted" this abandoned shed with a million candle power light (with a red filter) to create this otherworldly look. (This is a ten minute exposure, no digital editing.)

Posted by jamesr at 09:27 PM
Categories: Photos

The Australian CMS marketplace [+ audio]

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We do a lot of work helping organisations select a suitable content management system (CMS), and this requires us to keep track of the Australian marketplace. It's complex and evolving, but there are almost certainly products that fit your specific requirements.

This slidecast gives an overview of the marketplace, including average prices and future directions. (Being strictly vendor-neutral, no individual products are discussed.)

Posted by jamesr at 11:46 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Content management

Content is not data

Seth Gottlieb argues that content is not data, and that "unstructured data" is not a very helpful term. To quote:

Content has context. In addition to who wrote the content, where it appears also matters. We care greatly how content is classified and organized because we want to make it easier to find. A database table doesn't care about the order of its rows (it is up to the application to determine how they should be sorted). Content contributors really care about where their assets fall in lists (everything from index pages to search results).

Posted by jamesr at 09:15 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management

Growing the team at Step Two

Step Two has been growing strongly over the last few years, and we've built ourselves a global reputation in the intranet space (and beyond). We have staff in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane, but the work is still pouring in. We're therefore growing our team, to further support our consulting, mentoring, training and publishing.

We're looking for great people to join the consulting team, working in the fields of intranets, information management, collaboration, content management and knowledge management.

This includes conducting field research, developing intranet and information management strategies,mentoring teams, developing best-practice resources, running workshops, and more.

Experienced web, intranet and information managers are ideally placed for this work, as are consultants looking to progress their professional careers. (We provide plenty of mentoring support to help build the skills and experience of our new starters, that's half the fun!)

If you've read our work or seen us present, you know where we're coming from. Take this opportunity to join our team, and to play your part in helping organisations to be more successful in their information activities.

What we can offer

We can provide unique opportunities:

• Working with the Step Two team, globally recognised as experts in our fields.
• Interesting mix of work across a wide range of clients and industries.
• Clear two-year roadmap for the business, outlining the opportunities for staff.
• Defined "pathway" for new starters, from initial mentoring to choosing an area of expertise.
• Opportunity to run workshops and other training.
• Writing articles and contributing to (or writing) reports.
• Presenting at international conferences (we've all travelled this year).
• Selected international projects (such as our current work for WWF).
• Friendly and flexible working environment.
• Sensible working hours and a serious focus on work-life balance.
• Playing a leadership role in the community and industry, with world-wide visibility.

The right person for the job

You will be:

• Already based in Australia (we can't accept overseas applicants at this point).
• Located in Sydney or Canberra (although we'd consider other cities).
• Friendly with a strong interest in the "people side of the problem".
• Strong at communicating and writing.
• Keen to build your professional knowledge and learn new skills.
• Ready to play a visible role in the community and industry.
• Experienced, with a minimum of five years in business roles and/or as a consultant.

If we've got your attention, send your CV to jobs@steptwo.com.au. We'd be happy to also talk through the role if you'd like further information, just email us to arrange a chat.

Posted by jamesr at 06:39 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Bite-sized UX research

Steve Baty has written an article on bite-sized UX research. To quote:

Regardless of the cause for your company’s resource crunch, focus on getting small wins as often as possible throughout your involvement in a project. This is a fairly common piece of advice that crops up time and time again, but it’s very much worth repeating. And it applies just as readily to both situations where time is short and those when there’s just not enough of you to go around.

Posted by jamesr at 10:17 AM | Permalink
Categories: Usability & user-centered design

21 days of wiki adoption

Stewart Mader has published a series of videos covering 21 days of wiki adoption. To quote:

Your competitors are using wikis. Your customers are using wikis. So are other employees in your organization. You need to use wikis too. It’s where your future is. And I’ll show you how.

Posted by jamesr at 01:01 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Intranets, Knowledge management

Running a brainstorm session in virtual space

Michael Sampson has written an article on virtual brainstorming sessions. To quote:

Be very clear that brainstorming rules apply. If the brainstorming work is being run through a wiki page, write clearly at the top of the page, "Brainstorming Rules Apply", and create a link to the page in the wiki that lists the rules of brainstorming. Doing so serves as a written reminder to everyone visiting the page how they are supposed to act at this point in time.

Posted by jamesr at 10:38 AM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Knowledge management

Intranet Innovation Awards: thanks for the great entries

Thanks to all those who entered this year's Intranet Innovation Awards. Just a quick note to say that if you had technical problems with submitting (such as overloading email servers), or haven't had confirmation of receipt, please do get in touch as we'd hate for you to miss out...

Posted by jamesr at 10:34 AM | Permalink
Categories:

Fixing appalling intranet search

Gerry McGovern talks about fixing intranet search problems. To quote:

Intranet search is appalling because people don't want their content to get found, and the organization does not value the importance of finding.

Posted by jamesr at 09:28 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Search tools

Photo: Panorama - Gold ship

Panorama: Gold ship

I'm pretty happy with how this turned out. The fading light added definition to the clouds, and the street lamp behind conveniently illuminated the ship. If only the skyline was completely clean, but still...

Posted by jamesr at 08:07 PM
Categories: Photos

How to improve intranet content? (a mindmap)

There are many ways of improving the quality and value of intranet content. To progress discussions on this topic, we've produced a mindmap that brings together almost a hundred ideas. Download the PDF (72kb), and print it on a big piece of paper.

This can be used in a number of ways:

• Highlight on the mindmap all the activities and ideas you are already doing, and identify where the gaps lie.
• Conduct further research into potential ideas and approaches, using the mindmap as a starting point.
• Clarify team and individual responsibilities relating to intranet content.
• Help the team to break out of old habits, giving an opportunity to consider new ideas.
• Gather together the intranet team and decentralised authors, and use the mindmap to discuss the current situation, and possible improvements.
• Demonstrate to management the work that the intranet team does to help deliver good intranet content.
• Compare notes between intranet teams, using the mindmap to identify differences and similarities.
• Use as a framework to structure discussions and activities at intranet conferences and other gatherings.

This is version 1.0, released in the spirit of helping all intranet teams. It's also helped us to get all our ideas on a single piece of paper. Please do send us a message if you have any comments, suggestions or ideas. We'll then incorporate these, and released updated versions when appropriate.

Posted by jamesr at 01:24 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets

Open for entries: 2008 Global Intranet Survey

Jane McConnell has just opened up the 2008 Global Intranet Survey for submissions from organisations. This is the single most important survey conducted on intranet management and aspirations, and the results produced are of great value for all intranet teams.

It will only take 45-60 minutes to complete the survey, and I'd strongly encourage every intranet team to enter this year. Most importantly, teams who submit get a free copy of the final Global Intranet Trends report (see a sample).

(I'm a huge fan of Jane's work on intranets, particularly of her unique models on global intranets.)

Posted by jamesr at 01:02 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Enhancing dashboard value and user experience

Joe Lamantia has published the fifth article in his series on dashboards and portals. To quote:

Portals gather and present content from a wide variety of sources, making the assembled items and streams more valuable for users by reducing the costs of content discovery and acquisition. By placing diverse content into close proximity, specialized forms of portals, such as the dashboard, support knowledge workers in creative and interpretive activities including synthesis, strategy formulation, decision making, collaboration, knowledge production, and multi-dimensional analysis.

Posted by jamesr at 10:40 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Information architecture, Information management

WIPA Usability and Eyetracking Seminars (Canberra, Sydney, Brisbane)

Spreading the word on behalf of the WIPA committee:

WIPA is presenting an afternoon seminar on the use of the latest eyetracking technologies and the challenges of ensuring usability when an Agile Development process is used for developing websites. The two speakers are Dr Peter Brawn and Dr John Eklund, who are both experienced and respected experts in their field. More information available on the WIPA site:

wipa.org.au/events/display.cfm?event_id=13

Afternoon tea will be provided.

Cost

$50 for WIPA Members
$90 for non members

Dates

Canberra: Friday 23 May, 2008, 2.00 pm - 4.50 pm.
Where: NLA Theatre, lower ground floor, National Library of Australia

Sydney: Wednesday 4 June, 2008. 2.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Where: Y Hotel Hyde Park, Whitlam Square where Wentworth Ave meets Liverpool St.

Brisbane: Thursday June 12, 2008. 2.00 pm - 5.00 pm
Where: Riverside Hotel South Bank (To be confirmed)

Registration
wipa.org.au/registration/

Posted by jamesr at 10:07 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

Intranets are not information dumps

Gerry McGovern has highlighted that intranets should not be information dumps. To quote:

Maybe we distribute information so that people can become better informed. But what are these things we want people to become better informed about? And why aren't these things we want people to become better informed about connected with productivity or collaboration?

Posted by jamesr at 09:11 AM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets

Only a few days to win an Intranet Innovation Award

It's now only a few days until entries close this year for the Intranet Innovation Awards. It should only take about an afternoon to put together an entry, and we had some strong winners last year. Looking forward to seeing what this year brings!

Posted by jamesr at 08:32 AM | Permalink
Categories:

Sage advice on wiki adoption: keys to success

Stewart Mader has written about keys to wiki adoption. To quote:

Meetings are an especially good place to start. Plan agendas using a wiki, then record minutes & notes, and action items. Between meetings, you can update the status of items, and this sets the stage for deeper wiki uses, like project management.

[Thanks to Michael Angeles]

Posted by jamesr at 02:29 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0

A first taxonomy for "search log junk"

Avi Rappoport has written about "search tools junk". To quote:

Search logs contain a lot of weird things, and some of them can have a significant effect on search log analysis. Having looked at tens of thousand lines of search log entries, I offer this first attempt at defining some of the weirdest and least useful kinds of log entry, which I call "Search Log Junk". Here are the types of junk that I've seen most frequently.

Posted by jamesr at 06:33 AM | Permalink
Categories: Search tools

Don't try to boil the content ocean

The phrase 'trying to boil the ocean' refers to tasks that are clearly and heroically impossible. This is exactly what most teams take on when they try to get every intranet page up to the same high standard.

In the earlier article titled Intranet authoring: a hobby?, the role of intranet authors was explored, highlighting that many are required to maintain their content 'on the side', with little training or support.

Most intranets struggle to deliver consistent, accurate, readable and valuable content. Despite this, the goal of many intranet teams remains to deliver universally 'good' content.

This briefing will discuss common approaches to improving content, focusing on those that have failed. Suggestions will then be made on ways to target efforts for best effect.

Failed: content cleanups

Many teams attempt a content cleanup on a regular basis, perhaps every year or two. These involve reviewing most sections of the site, and the content contained within.

These reviews are looking for ROT (redundant, outdated or trivial), generating 'hit lists' of content that can be removed.

While these very easily remove hundreds or thousands of pages, the long term impact is negligible. As fast as content is reviewed by the central team, more is published by decentralised authors.

The process drains the energy of the intranet team, and often frustrates content owners. Even after a major cleanup, the intranet rapidly accumulates more content problems, and reverts to its previous state.

[CM Briefing 2008-06, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 08:45 AM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets, James' articles

Searching more is not always better

The rise of enterprise search has put an increasing focus on searching ever broader collections of content and documents within organisations.

While enterprise search projects generally start with simple intranet search, attention quickly moves to searching document management systems, collaboration tools, business systems and fileshares.

Underpinning this work is the belief (or hope) that business value will be delivered to users by deploying a more extensive search tool.

Unfortunately it is often the case that searching more is not better than searching less.

This briefing will look at some of the challenges involved in implementing enterprise search, and provide practical tips on how to proceed.

Relevance and value

The fundamental goal of any search tool is to provide users with useful and relevant search results.

Within the enterprise, this means finding valuable information across the many different repositories, sources and systems.

The difficulty is that increasing the amount of information being searched almost always reduces the relevance of search results. Once called the 'Altavista effect', this was seen in the millions of hits generated for any set of terms entered into that search engine.

This is equally significant within an enterprise, and the challenge is to maintain (or improve) relevance as the volume of information grows.

Consideration also needs to be given to user needs and expectations. What types of queries are being entered into the enterprise search, and what sorts of results are expected? Gaining a deeper understanding of these questions helps to shed light on what to search, and how.

[CM Briefing 2008-05, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 08:34 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information management, Intranets, James' articles, Search tools

Intranet (re)design wrap-up

So you're sitting at your desk and you have to redesign your intranet (or design one from scratch). Where on earth do you start?

By any measure, this is no easy task. The multitude of factors that need to be taken into account can be overwhelming.

Over the years, we have published a vast amount of information on intranets, offering the benefits of our experience and giving practical advice on intranet management, information architecture and content management.

In this article, we attempt to wrap up all the activities that form part of an intranet (re)design into one concise checklist.

Along the way, references will be given to our most popular articles, giving you more detail on particular topics. The goal is to give you an excellent starting point for undertaking an intranet (re)design and also to provide support throughout the process.

User-centred design methodology

As a basic framework for this article, a simplified intranet (re)design process has been devised, illustrated in Figure 1.

Before going through each of the steps in order, it's important to point out that best practice for designing interactive information systems -- such as intranets and websites -- involves using a user-centred design (UCD) methodology.

This simply means that input from the people who will actually use the intranet is given equal weighting with the business objectives and the information (aka content).

[May KM Column written by Patrick Kennedy, read the full article]

Posted by jamesr at 08:00 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets, Usability & user-centered design

Photo: Pale cross (I)

Pale cross (I)

This is a photo I took late at night in the cemetary at the top of Wellington city centre. A beautiful and haunting place, even after they put the road through the middle of it. The highlight was created by a small LED torch I happened to be carrying.

By the way, I'm posting this photo from my new Flickr account, which I'll be using to share just my best work. My old account will still be in place, and you can follow this for my work-in-progress shots.

(I don't know whether having two Flickr accounts is sensible or practical, but I guess I'll find out over the next couple of months.)

Posted by jamesr at 10:53 AM
Categories: Photos

Enterprise social tools: components for success

Thomas Vander Wal has written about achieving success with enterprise social tools. To quote:

Social tools require much more than just the tools for their implementation to be successful. Tool selection is tough as no tool is doing everything well and they all are focussing on niche areas. But, as difficult as the tool selection can be, there are three more elements that make up what the a successful deployment of the tools and can be considered part of the tools.

Posted by jamesr at 05:22 PM | Permalink
Categories: Collaboration, Enterprise 2.0, Knowledge management

Intranet questions (Wellington, NZ)

The last two days I've been running a workshop in Wellington, New Zealand. A great group, and very vigorous discussions and debates.

As ever, for the record, these were the "big questions" raised by participants at the beginning of the workshop:

• Homepage policy?
• Intranet vs document management?
• Process for delivering a business-effective intranet?
• Intranet redevelopment process?
• Conducting needs analysis?
• Collaboration tools?
• Web 2.0?
• Getting the launch right?
• Project management methodologies vs intranet team?
• Keeping momentum going?
• Governance?
• Managing scope?
• Working more effectively with business units re content?
• How to find the right "activities" to add to the intranet?
• Different needs for each area?
• Analysing research results? And choosing the right activities?
• Obtaining business buy-in?
• Usability testing and information architecture?
• Trimming fat?

Posted by jamesr at 01:06 PM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets

Wikis in the Enterprise

Wikis are spreading like wildfire within organisations, driven by their quick setup and comparatively easy use. As yet, however, little has been written on how to make wikis work well.

That is why the new report from J. Boye, titled Wiki in the Enterprise is so valuable. Many have written about the potential value of wikis, but this work talks about what has worked in real-life (and what hasn't).

Drawing upon research done in a number of organisations, this report discusses the reasons for deploying wikis, the cavets, and how wikis meet reality.

Most importantly, this reports a range of practical and pragmatic recommendations on how to setup and use wikis. These will give teams a valuable leg-up when approaching this new publishing technology.

A recommended addition to the dialogue on wikis, and I'm looking forward to future reports from J. Boye.

Posted by jamesr at 02:40 PM | Permalink
Categories: Content management, Intranets, Knowledge management

Comment on pilots and avoiding training

Graham Oakes (based in the UK) emailed me a great perspective on my story about pilots and avoiding training. Here's his thoughts in full:

One thing to consider behind this is what is the real corporate objective? A lot of this sort of training is done for compliance -- if the corporation can demonstrate that their staff have done the course, then they avoid liability if anything goes wrong. Having the pilots pass the test at the end is simply their way of proving that the pilots have done the training.

From this, it flows that all the corporation want is a record that the pilot has passed the test. They may not care one iota what the pilot actually ends up knowing: they just want the box ticked so their liability is protected.

In this scenario, the corporation may be really happy that their pilots have found a way to tick the box without wasting time on the training. (But they don't want to know about it, because then the liability comes back.) And it's a very common scenario...

Cheers
Graham

(Graham is a down-to-earth expert on governance, so he's worth listening to on this topic.)

Posted by jamesr at 02:38 PM | Permalink
Categories: Intranets, Knowledge management

Farewell and thanks to Patrick Kennedy

We were saddened to say farewell to Patrick Kennedy last Friday, as he is heading onto new opportunities. Patrick has been a truly valuable member of our team, and a real pleasure to have in the office. He's also worked tirelessly for the benefit of our clients, and for the industry as a whole.

Still, Patrick is destined to do more great work, just in an in-house role rather than as a consultant. So we wish him the best of luck, and give him our warmest thanks. (You can continue to follow Patrick's activities and insights on his personal blog.)

Posted by jamesr at 02:21 PM | Permalink
Categories:

Highlighting two workshops (Melbourne, Brisbane)

Just a quick note to highlight two of our upcoming workshops:

• Complete Intranet Management
  Melbourne, 9 May 2008

  Running in a few days, this is a unique opportunity to get "under the hood" of the Intranet Hive, our new methodology for managing intranets. This provides a view of all the ongoing activities needed to sustain and grow an intranet, something that intranet teams have never run before. (The workshop will also now be run by Catherine Grenfell, a former intranet manager herself, and now the manager of the Intranet Leadership Forum.)

• Information Architecture Essentials
  Brisbane, 18 June 2008

  Information architecture techniques provide a solid foundation for developing (or redeveloping) websites and intranets, and these should be core skills for all project teams. This workshop provides essential knowledge and techniques that can be put into practice. (This workshop will now be run by Rebecca Rodgers, who is based in our Brisbane office, and has many good experiences to share.)

It's not too late to sign up for either of these...

Posted by jamesr at 11:50 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations

User-centric UA and entry page strategies for better findability

Jane McConnell has written about the importance of intranet IA. To quote:

1. Define top level categories ( level 1 navigation) in user terms, not in terms of the source of the content. This results in categories defined according to subject or purpose (user populations who have similar needs).

2. Ensure that clear mission statements exist for each : for example, this space provides these things for these people. Or even better, this space lets these people do A, B or C by providing them with X, Y Z.

3. Implement a double-ownership approach, with roles in charge of the spaces and thereby representing user needs, and other roles in charge of content, thereby ensure information and services of high quality and relevance.

4. Distinguish between content created "for us by us" and "for others by us". Departments and functions tend to want to put both in the same space on the intranet, and this is not logical for users.

Posted by jamesr at 11:39 AM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Intranets

The four purposes of an intranet [+ audio]

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As you may have noticed, I've been working steadily to capture some of the key concepts that underpin our intranet work. Some of these have already been shared as articles, and most in workshops, but this is a good way of getting these useful concepts out to a wider intranet audience.

This slidecast explores the four fundamental purposes of an intranet, looks at where intranets have traditionally focused, and where they should be going next if they want to demonstrate ROI.

(The audio was recorded at the recent IA Summit in Miami, Florida.)

Posted by jamesr at 09:39 AM | Permalink
Categories: Conferences & presentations, Intranets, James' articles

Photo: Desert fingers (II)

Desert fingers (II)

Flying out to Europe took me over central Australia in the middle of a sunny day. Whlie taking photos through the window of a plane is always fraught, the ever-changing landscape proved irresitable...

Posted by jamesr at 03:25 PM
Categories: Photos

User interface implementations of faceted browsing

Mike Padilla has written an article on the design of faceted browsing. To quote:

Just as it is important to choose the proper knife when slicing-n-dicing vegetables, it is critical to prescribe a suitable user interface to support faceted filtering. Faceted filtering allows you to narrow down a large list of objects to a manageable size by applying flexible combinations of attribute filters in any order. Rather than forcing you down fixed paths within a website’s information architecture, faceted filtering allows you to multi-dimensionally slice-n-dice the information in a manner that best accommodates your specific needs. A user interface that optimally supports faceted filtering must expose its robust functionality in a way that expresses affordances, controls complexity, and follows existing standards that have been pre-established across the web.

Posted by jamesr at 12:13 PM | Permalink
Categories: Information architecture, Search tools, Usability & user-centered design