ThoughtFarmer Blog - Official Knowledge sharing blog for the new enterprise.

Hosted software, cloud computing, SaaS. They get so much press you’d think that no one installs software on their private network anymore.

The reality, of course, is that behind-the-firewall software is a much, much larger portion of the market than SaaS — maybe 1000 times larger. It’s just not growing as fast.

ThoughtFarmer, as a web 2.0 wiki social software solution, is contrarian. Unlike most solutions in this space, we install behind the firewall. Why? Four reasons:

Speed. Applications on your network travel at full throttle. They’re not affected by internet congestion. And because they’re dedicated to you, they’re not affected by what the vendor’s other customers are doing.

Stability. When the software is on your servers, you don’t have to upgrade if you don’t want to. And there are never any surprise changes.

Security. Do you trust some 23-year-old in Palo Alto with your data? Me neither. I mean, he can have my email address and Flickr photos, but not my trade secrets. Behind the firewall is the safest place for your intellectual capital to live.

Single Sign-On. Software on your private network can integrate with your Windows log on. You get a secure, personalized view without ever entering a password.

(Hmm… they all start with an S.)

The main disadvantage? Software behind the firewall is usually more expensive. It takes more manpower to maintain the servers and to install and upgrade the application. But for most companies with more than a few dozen employees, the peace of mind is worth it.

As online collaboration tools continue to permeate the enterprise, intranet managers need to make their intranet the hub of internal collaboration or risk irrelevancy.

Collaboration means working together to get something done. At a minimum, I think your intranet should facilitate the following three types of collaboration:

Instant Collaboration

Goal: Share ideas and get immediate feedback
Offline equivalent: Face-to-face meetings & phone calls
Online solutions: MSN Messenger, Google Talk, WebEx, etc.

Instant collaboration tools include instant messaging and desktop screen-sharing. Your intranet should provide links or downloads for these tools and instructions on how to use them. Advanced integration could include an indicator beside names in the employee directory to show who’s online.

Project Collaboration

Goal: Plan and execute a project
Offline equivalent: Status meetings & war boards
Online solutions: BaseCamp, Central Desktop, eProject, etc.

Project collaboration tools usually include a shared calendar, to-do lists, message boards and a file repository. Your intranet should link to your project collaboration tool and include suggestions on how to use it effectively. Advanced integration could include a personalized to-do list on the intranet home page.

Mass Collaboration

Goal: Ongoing sharing, learning and connecting with teammates
Offline equivalent: Team off-sites, workshops, conferences
Online solutions: Confluence, SocialText, ThoughtFarmer, etc.

Mass collaboration solutions make it easy to create, share, and find content. They include wikis, blogs, and social bookmarking. The best ones leverage the network effect to aggregate individual contributions in ways that create value for the entire organization. Your intranet shouldn’t be integrated with a mass collaboration solution. It should be a mass collaboration solution.

The intranet team should pursue ownership of all types of online collaboration and integrate them into a single portal. The future for intranets is mass collaboration.

Further reading:

• Collaboration Types: Part One, Two and Three

• List of mass collaboration applications

In a recent post, Lars Plougmann describes the opportunity for firms without an intranet to move directly to an open intranet using social software tools. A brief summary:

• What’s wrong with traditional intranets? They’re always out-of-date.
• What’s an “open” intranet? One where every page has a nice friendly Edit button on it.
• Won’t that lead to chaos? Yes, and that’s not such a bad thing.
• Can we trust our people to edit the intranet? You already trust them to write emails and to handle your clients.

Read the entire post for more.

In Wikinomics, Don Tapscott describes the “perfect storm” that is ushering in a new era of mass collaboration: the Web as a computing platform; a global economy; and a demographic tidal wave he refers to as the Net Generation.

Born between 1977 and 1996, the Net Generation grew up immersed in a digital world. The internet dominates their personal and social lives, from instant messaging to peer-to-peer filesharing to virtual communities. They publish and participate in online social networks and swap ideas as easily as they swap songs and videos.

So what happens when one of these fresh college graduates joins a firm and finds a staid, traditional intranet with a tightly controlled publishing model?

They hate it.

This is a very real problem for companies trying to attract and retain new talent. These twentysomethings operate on principles of openness, participation and interactivity. If a company’s technology infrastructure, including the intranet, does not encourage free communication and collaboration, it misses a big opportunity. Worse, it alienates these younger, internet-savvy employees.

This issue is obviously bigger than just the IT department. It involves the culture of the entire organization. That notwithstanding, what can we as intranet managers do to attract and harness the talents of the Net Generation?

Turn users into authors. Help your employees edit, create, annotate, rate and comment on the intranet. By trusting them in this way, they’ll trust you back. You’ll create honest, satisfied, engaged employees. You’ll also create an environment where knowledge flows freely and breakthrough ideas can emerge.

Turn authors into friends. Expose your company’s social network online. Allow employees to associate, connect and form relationships with one another through the intranet. This isn’t touchy-feely hogwash. One of Gallup’s 12 questions to gauge employee engagement is “Do I have a best friend at work?” Intranets that turn authors into friends improve employee engagement and strengthen workplace community, especially with Net-Geners.

Skeptical? Then consider some of the world’s most heavily-trafficked web sites: MySpace (#3), YouTube (#6), Facebook (#10), Blogger (#12), Flickr (#20). They are dominated by the Net Generation, and they operate on the two principles listed above: they turn users into authors, and authors into friends. To create an intranet that “clicks” with N-Geners, we would all do well to imitate these sites.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Wikinomics: “Companies able to adapt to the new demands of N-Gen now will gain a tremendous source of competitive advantage and innovation. Those that don’t will be left on the sidelines, unable to refresh their workforces as the N-Geners flow to other opportunities.”

Sounds ominous. But I think he’s right.

Well-known usability guru Jakob Nielsen has just published his Intranet Design Annual for 2007. In the report Nielsen picks his top 10 intranets of the year and surveys a wide range of intranet trends from submissions around the world. Nielsen’s summary:

This year’s winners emphasized an editorial approach to news on the homepage. They also took a pragmatic approach to many hyped “Web 2.0″ techniques. While page design is getting more standardized, there’s no agreement on CMS or technology platforms for good intranet design.

For followers of Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 techniques and methods, it is interesting to see Nielsen talk about the adoption of tools like internal weblogs, use of AJAX in the user interface, and wikis. He also mentions the use of star ratings and user comments, both features we’ve implemented and had positive feedback on from users of ThoughtFarmer.

Finally, it was interesting to see the breakdown of corporate ownership for the intranet (35% communications, 27% IT, and 19% HR) and the inability of many organizations to get a grasp on their intranet’s ROI. Nielsen writes, “The ultimate imperative for usability is to ’show me the money.’ What’s the benefit to the business of improving the user experience? Sadly, most intranet teams continue to have weak data on their work’s monetary value.”

Rod Boothby runs an interesting blog about innovation, knowledge workers, and enterprise blogging over at Innovation Creators. His most recent post includes a poll of “break out read/write intranet systems for 2007″ — of which, ThoughtFarmer made the list.

These software companies all make tools that could be used by a large company to create a readable and writeable Intranet. Please indicate how likely you think it is that each of these companies will hit a home run in 2007. 1 is not likely. 5 is guaranteed success.

We’re in some good company there. It’s a pretty diverse list of major platforms, some of which are new to me. In general, I think everyone on the list shares the desire to redefine how intranets work and create value for organizations. I’m not sure how entirely scientific the poll is, but Rod’s done a good job in capturing many of the Enterprise 2.0 type platforms out there today.

So go check it out and be sure to give us a few stars…

At the close of 2006, we’re seeing some strong trends with web applications in general and intranets in particular. With the help of AJAX, browser-based interfaces are becoming more powerful and complex; yet paradoxically, there is a renewed awareness of the importance of simplicity. And as sites like MySpace, Wikipedia and YouTube become more popular, the concept of social, collaborative intranets is starting to gain traction.

With these trends in mind, here are the 5 articles that most influenced my work as an intranet consultant in 2006.

1. Enterprise 2.0: Dawn of Emergent Collaboration
The seminal article on how Web 2.0 will radically alter knowledge collaboration in the enterprise. Absolutely worth the $6.50 cost to download.

2. Greater than the sum of its parts
A great PowerPoint by Yahoo’s Tom Coates explaining how and why social software works. This slideshow gave me great ideas on how to add social value to an intranet.

3. Participation Inequality
In a multi-user community, like a wiki or a discussion forum, a small percentage of users are responsible for the bulk of activity, while others just watch. Jakob Nielsen discusses the phenomenon and ways to overcome it.

4. Ambient Signifiers
Adding subtle visual cues to your interface can improve usability for advanced users without overcomplicating it for novices.

5. Defeating Feature Fatigue
An abundance of features might excite people, but it decreases long-term satisfaction. This Harvard Business Review article about product design applies equally well to intranet design.

And let me throw one more in here. Thinking of quitting your day job in 2007 and becoming an entrepreneur? Guy Kawasaki makes suggestions on how not to go bankrupt in your first year in his article, “The Art of Bootstrapping.”

You have my wishes for a great 2007!

The Vancouver Sun featured an article today on Intrawest Placemaking’s success with their ThoughtFarmer-powered wiki intranet. Here’s a quote:

Using tiles on the entrance to a new resort would have cost $2 million. But a Vancouver-based construction manager for Intrawest Placemaking — which builds resorts worldwide — had a better idea. He used shaped concrete, polished and finished for a better-than-tile appearance. That saved Placemaking more than $500,000.

Then the construction manager got the word out to the rest of the company by posting his experience to Placemaking’s new everybody-is-an-editor intranet.

Read the full article here (PDF, 650K)

The Vancouver Board of Trade featured an article on ThoughtFarmer and Intrawest in the September issue of Sounding Board. Here’s a quote:

How do you maintain a fresh, relevant, accurate intranet for 350 employees without a full-time editor?

That was the challenge facing Tracy Hutton, the director of learning at Intrawest Placemaking, the real estate division of Intrawest Corporation. Hutton wanted to leverage the existing intranet to create community at the recently re-organized company. And she wanted a better way to capture Placemaking’s intellectual capital online. But she had to accomplish this without a single full-time resource.

Her solution? Make every employee an editor, a concept inspired by the success of the online encyclopedia Wikipedia.

Read the full article on the VBOT web site.