Most of our clients are super jazzed about the new ThoughtFarmer 5.0 and want to start planning their upgrade. This month’s Client Webinar will explain how to get the maximum benefit from new features, including how to prepare your intranet for mobile access: Getting the Most Out of ThoughtFarmer 5.0.
On Wednesday, November 2nd at 8:30am Pacific / 11:30am Eastern join ThoughtFarmer President Darren Gibbons and Support Engineer Tim Schiller for the webinar.
ThoughtFamer 5.0 includes a mobile web app, the ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK) and a host of other updates (learn more about ThoughtFarmer 5.0). This session will prepare you for planning a smooth upgrade that delights your users and gets the most out of the new features.
Topic: Adapting to ThoughtFarmer 5.0
Time: Wed Nov 2nd, 8:30am Pacific / 11:30pm Eastern / 3:30pm UK
Length: 45 minutes
Host: Darren Gibbons, President & Co-Creator
Presenter: Tim Schiller, Software Developer & Support Engineer
Last month’s Client Webinar, “Making the ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk Do Backflips”, is now available online. The ThoughtFarmer Client Webinar series is the first Wednesday of each month.
The Social Intranet Summit in Vancouver (SISV) has quickly become a favorite time of year for the ThoughtFarmer team. We get to see our clients, some of our favorite colleagues in the industry (whom we happen to invite as speakers) and plenty of other great people interested in social intranets.
Andy Jankowski and members of the ThoughtFarmer team enjoying Manhattans in Vancouver (Carolien Dekeersmaeker, Selma Zafar, Bryan Robertson, Amanda Bremner)
Things get a little hectic in our office, with long hours and mythic levels of multitasking. Gord’s wife and baby even left town for a few days so he could freely work his crazy hours in the run-up to the summit.
ThoughtFarmer head honchos Chris McGrath, Gordon Ross and Darren Gibbons - handsome, friendly, social, just like ThoughtFarmer
We love the summit, but once it’s done we take a huge collective sigh of relief. The presentations were great, people enjoyed the food and the after-hours networking was a blast. We bask in the glory of so many great insights, conversations and connections for about a day, then jump back into the fray of normal work and try to catch up on sleep.
We prepped and prepped and prepped and then the summit came and went. We’re happy to have been pushed and challenged and are both relieved and sad now that it’s over. If you didn’t make it this year you missed a great event, but we’ll try to make as much of it available as possible. For starters, check out the highlights below and keep your eyes peeled for upcoming SISV speaker webinars. Don’t forget to set aside budget to attend next year!
Balancing practice and theory
One of the challenges we most enjoy about SISV is putting together a captivating agenda that appeals to our full potential audience. The trick is to balance helpful practical presentations with those that provide deeper insights into the science, psychology and management theory linked to social intranets.
These all came together in a presentation from Deane Barker, who turned out to be the sleeper hit of the conference. Deane isn’t as widely known as some of our other speakers, but his presentation struck the perfect balance and he left attendees with helpful, concrete tips.
A key theme from this year’s presentations was the growing body of evidence showing that building positive work environments and fostering employee engagement are good for business and good for employees. Two of our presenters, Andy Jankowski and CV Harquail, explained the links between social intranets and employee engagement and have posted their presentations online:
Our audience pounded away at their keyboards during the summit, capturing snippets of insight and wisdom from presentations. Here we’ve noted a few tweets that highlight key points and themes from SISV:
misterbeebs: Watch out #yeg C-level execs. I’m coming back from #sisv with some knowledge on why you’re afraid to get social thanks to Deane Barker 14 days ago
lauramdavies: engaged employees 20% more productive & take half as many sick days. Intranet managers have huge influence over employee engagement #sisv14 days ago
gordonr: The true social intranet killer app: cute baby pictures in Halloween costumes. #SISV13 days ago
rhappe: Panel is talking about welcoming/onboarding people to their Internet. Critical best practice in community management#SISV13 days ago
rhappe: ”It’s not about age, it’s about making it meaningful” re: social tool adoption inside the enterprise Carmen de Antoni, LifeMark#SISV#e2013 days ago
As if you were there: Music, videos and photos
During breaks the ThoughtFarmer team played a hand-selected mix of energizing music and at the end of each break we played a fun video to lure folks back to their seats. You can find a list of the funny and stunning videos from summit breaks on the ThoughtFarmer website and listen to the soundtrack to SISV 2011, courtesy of Grooveshark:
On Flickr you can see photos from the summit (if nothing shows, view it on Flickr):
Stay tuned to the ThoughtFarmer frequency to hear about upcoming webinars featuring speakers from the Social Intranet Summit.
A final word of thanks
On a personal note I’d like to thank all the speakers and attendees who joined us in beautiful Vancouver, and especially the wonderful ThoughtFarmer team. Without great speakers and engaged attendees there would be no summit and I’m lucky to work with the cool kids on the ThoughtFarmer team on a daily basis. Hope to see you next year!
Gentry Underwood and a conference attendee, probably wishing they had a boat
The founder and CEO of Prescient Digital Media, Toby is a senior Internet and intranet consultant with particular expertise in the area of Internet and intranet planning and communications. Toby has led his company to many awards in recent years including an illustrious Webby Award. His clients include: Harvard, HSBC, Sony, Pepsico, RBC, USAA and dozens of others.
Social Intranet Study 2011: Prescient/IABC Report from 1400 organizations
Wednesday, September 28th at 9:45 AM
Find out the state of the art for social intranets with Toby Ward as he presents the findings from the 2011 Social Intranet Study which surveyed over 1400 organizations from around the globe. Initial findings show that about 2/3 of organizations how have at least one social media tool on their intranet. Shockingly, there are some pundits that still think social media is a fad. Gain insight into how your company compares with its social intranet efforts.
Highlights from the 2011 Social Intranet Study
Social media tools such as blogs and wikis have become mainstream communications channels on the corporate intranet:
Nearly two-thirds (61%) of organization intranets have at least one social media tool on their intranet
Fewer than 10% of organizations have no interest and no plans for implementing social media
Blogs and discussion forums are almost common-place – of those organizations that use social media:
75% have intranet blogs; 65% have intranet discussion forums; 61% have intranet wikis
Of those that have social media on their intranet, 55% claim to have a social intranet (A social intranet is defined as: “An intranet that features multiple social media tools for most or all employees to use as collaboration vehicles for sharing knowledge with other employees. A social intranet may feature blogs, wikis, discussion forums, social networking, or a combination of these or any other social media tool with at least some or limited exposure on the main intranet or portal home page.”)
SharePoint is also a major contributing factor to the rise in intranet / enterprise 2.0: 55% that have social media use SP to power their intranet 2.0 tools.
A social intranet is not as expensive as believed. Of those that have implemented 2.0 tools, almost half (38%) have spent $10,000 or less (34% have spent between $10,000 and $100,000; 26% have spent $100,000 or more)
@tobyward: Too many suffer from Terrible Intranet Syndrome (T.I.S.); could the Intranet Global Forum be the cure? http://bit.ly/pyoJNJ@simplycomm19 Sep
Andy Jankowski, Director, Intranet Benchmarking Forum
Andy Jankowski is the Global Director of the Intranet Benchmarking Forum. During the last 16 years he has served as an advisor for Oracle, JPMorgan Chase, Ernst & Young and Andersen in the areas of enterprise communication and collaboration. He is a frequent conference speaker, a student of positive psychology, and an avid road cyclist. Andy enjoys connecting people and dots.
Inspired by Tony Hsieh’s best selling, Delivering Happiness Book and Jenn Lim’s groundbreaking Delivering Happiness Movement, Andy combines current Positive Psychology research with his many years of experience working with intranets to explore the link between intranets and employee happiness.
CV Harquail is an “entrepreneur of insight”, uniquely positioned at the intersection of organizational change, management practice, and communications media. She brings together academic research expertise, change agent experience, and new media fluency to help organization members and leaders think differently about the relationships between technology, organizations, individuals and systems.
CV has her PhD in Leadership & Organizational Behavior from the Ross School of Business at The University of Michigan. She was a professor of Leadership and Organizational Behavior at the Darden Graduate School of Business at the University of Virginia before moving to Montclair, NJ and starting her consulting practice. She continues to teach and speak to MBA & EMBA students, to corporate groups, and to professional & scholarly groups.
In this presentation, CV Harquail will focus on how social tools can help organizations flourish by engaging us individually and collectively in the pursuit of the organization’s purpose. She’ll explain how systems of organizational engagement – systems that that help us Enable Identity, Foster Voice, Activate Agency, Cohere Community and Catalyze Purpose — not only meet basic psychological and sociological needs, but also move us to invest our energies in our collective work.
CV will also link the lofty concept of collective purpose back to the organization’s day-to-day tasks, so that participants can articulate a ‘business case’ for comprehensive, purpose-supporting systems of engagement.
Entering only takes a few minutes — just submit a screenshot and a brief description. All submissions will be entered into a drawing for a brand new iPad 2. Winners will be announced at the Social Intranet Summit intranet administrator workshop on Thursday, September 29th.
Mark Fidelman’s experience includes more than two decades of technology sales and marketing with organizations including A.T. Kearney, EDS, CT Space and Autodesk, most recently serving as Executive Vice President of Sales and Customer Success with enterprise social knowledge base provider MindTouch, Inc. He is also a contributing writer to multiple publications and holds a patent on a system for tracking mobile electronic loyalty cards.
What if Richard Branson Led a Social Intranet Initiative at Virgin?
Wednesday, September 28th at 1:00 PM
Where do you begin to learn from one of the world’s most famous billionaire entrepreneurs? How do you follow your dreams and passions and create an empire around them? Famous for the mantra “Screw it, let’s do it”, Sir Richard Branson has pushed the boundaries of business, entrepreneurship and successful brand engagement. But he also taught us for decades that success starts from within; putting employees first (before customers and shareholders). With such great success and creativity, how would Richard Branson lead an E2.0 initiative?
This presentation will teach you how Richard Branson would lead an Enterprise 2.0/Social Business initiative. We’ll walk in Branson’s shoes while he builds the case, executes on the strategy and sees the results. What strategies would he use to overcome internal political challenges? Which Virgin companies would he use to kick off a Social Business pilot? Which technologies would he use? How would he integrate the strategy across Virgin Brands?
NOTE: A former employee of Virgin and advisor to Branson has worked with Mark to create this presentation.
Rachel Happe, Co-Founder & Principal at the Community Roundtable
Rachel Happe is a Co-Founder and Principal at The Community Roundtable, a peer network for social media, community, and social business leaders. She has over fifteen years of experience working with emerging technologies including enterprise social networking, ecommerce, and enterprise software applications. Rachel has served as a product executive at Mzinga, Bitpass, & IDe, and as IDC’s first analyst covering social technologies. Rachel started her business career as an analyst at PRTM. Rachel is a GigaOm Pro Analyst and serves on Social Media Today’s Blogger Board, the Enterprise 2.0 Conference Advisory Board, and as an Isis Parenting Fellow.
Community management is an essential part of optimizing a social approach to business and while it has existed for some time online, it is now becoming a mainstream discipline of general management as well as a specific role assigned to the person who does the front line engagement. As a result, the discipline is changing and maturing rapidly. Hear Rachel share the latest best practices and lessons learned, compiled from the leading practitioners in the space.
Community Management 101
Thursday, September 29th at 1:00 PM
The use of social technologies is fast approaching mainstream adoption but the process and management changes required to fully utilize the potential of these technologies has not caught up. Community management is an essential part of optimizing social approaches but as a discipline it is not universally well understood. Rachel will explore what community management is, the risks of not using it, and some best practices and examples.
Shel Holtz, Principal Holtz Communications + Technology
Shel Holtz is principal of Holtz Communication + Technology, which provides content and communication strategies for organizations’ online efforts. He has worked internationally with some of the largest organizations in the world. Shel has authored or co-authored six communication-focused books. He is the co-host of the first and longest-running PR podcast, “For Immediate Release.” He blogs at blog.holtz.com.
Surviving Your Intranet’s Content Crisis: Content Curation on the Social Intranet
Wednesday, September 28th at 9:05 AM
There’s no shortage of talk about content curation on the web, but it has a place on your intranet, as well. With search functions suffering on many intranets, well curated content can make a huge difference in the value of the intranet. Employees who take the time to curate both internal and external content based on topics they care about can make it easier for their colleagues to find great content, spark more collaboration, and drive use of other internal social tools. In this session, Shel Holtz will dig into the content curation trend and explore some ways it can be applied to internal communications and employees’ day-to-day online activities.
Stowe is an internationally recognized authority on social tools and their impact on media, business, and society. He is best known for his commentary on the social revolution at www.stoweboyd.com, and his public speaking on his research on work media, social business, the social web, publicy, social cognition, networked identity, and the future of work. Stowe is at work on a new book about the rise of a socially augmented world, called ‘A Liquid, Not A Solid; A City, Not A Machine’.
Trust, Tasks, And Twitter: What Social Cognition Research Tells Us About Working Together
Wednesday, September 28th at 3:00 PM
Research in recent years has shed new light on the biochemistry and cognitive psychology of human interaction, with some startling and often counter-intuitive findings. Why does adding smart people to small groups not improve performance? Why are short-term, ‘Hollywood’-style projects so effective? How does sharing task progress lead to happiness? What are the benefits of having friends at work? Does Twitter make people smarter? Stowe will walk through a broad collection of research on social cognition, and show how social tools seem natural because they line up with the structure of our minds and innate social connection.
@stoweboyd: Rise Of Rōnin and The Liquid Economy sto.ly/o8vJy4 We are headed for an economy dominated by short-term freelance work. 8 Sep
@stoweboyd: The half life of a bitly link is about 3 hours http://sto.ly/q0CiH8 although I bet it will be getting shorter as the web gets denser. 7 Sep
@stoweboyd: A New Etiquette For Modern Communication sto.ly/pXxJin Some will think I’m rude to say we have no obligation to respond. Get over it. 1 Sep
Toby Ward, CEO, Prescient Digital Media
Andy Jankowski, Director, Intranet Benchmarking Forum
CV Harquail, Consultant, Authentic Organizations
Have you considered entering the 
Mark Fidelman, General Manager at Harmon.ie
Rachel Happe, Co-Founder & Principal at the Community Roundtable
Shel Holtz, Principal Holtz Communications + Technology
Stowe Boyd, Web Anthropologist
