The winners were unveiled at the 2011 Social Intranet Summit. Today, we’re pleased to announce the winners to the world.

Best-looking intranet

Winner: WATG, Newport Beach, California

Who they are: Renowned destination design firm WATG has designed some of the world’s most famous hotels and resorts, from The Atlantis in the Bahamas to the Emirates Palace in Abu Dhabi.

Why they won: Just like their projects, WATG’s ThoughtFarmer installation is well-designed. It employs a neat, minimalist aesthetic that complements the stunning photography.

Honorable Mention: Fortis Business Media, Nashville, Tennessee

Who they are: Fortis produces newsletters, videos, software, books, and directories to attorneys, human resources professionals, and other business executives.

Why they won: The name of Fortis’s intranet, “The Pub”, rolls right off the tongue so that users have incorporated its usage into the office vernacular — and it’s also a play on their core business of publishing. The look and feel is comfortable and inviting, taking design cues from an old English pub.

Most Innovative intranet

Winner: KWL Consulting Engineers, Vancouver, Canada

Who they are: Kerr Wood Leidal specializes in water engineering for municipal infrastructure and resource development. They are employee-owned and strive to maintain an open, collaborative environment.

Why they won: Like many firms, KWL periodically refreshes the mobile phones of employees. Using ThoughtFarmer, they held an open auction for dozens of smart phones and raised money for charity. They created a page for each phone, then let employees submit their bids by using ThoughtFarmer’s commenting features. The highest bid submitted before the deadline was the winner. In the words of Jonathan Funk, the intranet project manager, “In the end, we found a great new way to use our ThoughtFarmer intranet and raised $4230 for the Ronald McDonald House charity.”

Honorable Mention: Farm Bureau Bank, San Antonio, TX

Who they are: Farm Bureau Bank offers its banking services to members of the Farm Bureau, a U.S.-wide organization that strives to build strong, prosperous agricultural communities.

Why they won: Farm Bureau Bank created a “Shout-Outs” section on their ThoughtFarmer intranet. It’s a place where employees can publicly thank (or “shout-out”) a fellow employee or even a department for assisting with work-related issues. This kind of public recognition enhances employee engagement, which is a critical function of FBB’s ThoughtFarmer intranet.

Best Collaboration on an intranet

Winner: ACRONYM Games, Burnaby, BC, Canada

Who they are: ACRONYM Games in Vancouver designs popular video game titles like Family Guy Online, Wipeout The Game, and Monkey Island.

Why they won: Prior to publishing a game, ACRONYM does “smut and copyright reviews” to make sure the game’s assets comply with the appropriate standards. Prior to ThoughtFarmer, they were forced to do this via lengthy and confusing email chains. Now it’s done entirely in ThoughtFarmer using image galleries, commenting and version control.

Honorable Mention: Design Continuum, Boston, MA

Who they are: Continuum is a global design innovation firm. They design services, brand experiences and products. Some of their best-known innovations include the Reebok Pump, the Swiffer Sweeper and Pampers Pull-ups.

Why they won: Continuum has made extensive use of ThoughtFarmer’s custom profile fields to help them locate experts. Their employee profiles capture employees’ skills and attributes, from visas held to languages spoken to social style. According to Brendan Mullen, Continuum’s IT Director, “If I’m looking for a French-speaking PHP expert with a current visa for China, I can do that with a few clicks. In an organization with offices on 3 continents, that’s huge.”

Winner of the iPad Draw

All entrants were automatically entered in a draw for a new iPad 2. We were amused that the name we drew meant that our shipping charge would be almost as much as the iPad itself! Congratulations to our client DFDL Mekong in Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

Look for the next ThoughtFarmer Best Intranet Competition in late 2012!

On Wednesday, February 1st at 8:30 AM Pacific / 11:30 AM Eastern join ThoughtFarmer Analytics Lead Bryan Robertson for the webinar.

Gathering good web analytics can be tough, especially  for social intranets. Intranet Statistics, an intranet-specific web analytics package developed by the team in Vancouver, comes with every installation of ThoughtFarmer and provides highly detailed data about intranet usage.

In this webinar learn how to select the right data, assess it in the right way, and go from being a “reporting squirrel” to an “analysis ninja.”

• Topic: Using Intranet Statistics to Improve Your ThoughtFarmer Intranet
• Time: Wed, Feb 1st, 8:30am Pacific / 11:30am Eastern / 4:30pm UK
• Length: 45 minutes
• Host: Chris McGrath, ThoughtFarmer Co-Founder
  
• Presenter: Bryan Robertson, Analytics Lead
• Registration link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/951185760

Register now (free)

You can view a video of last month’s Client Webinar, “Using the ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK)”, on the ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk website. The ThoughtFarmer Client Webinar series is the first Wednesday of each month.

Jeff Pennal, ThoughtFarmer Software Developer

ThoughtFarmer clients are getting excited about the new possibilities offered by the ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK), our new advanced suite of customization tools that allows even more ways to extend your intranet’s functionality. This month’s Client Webinar will provide a detailed look at how the TIK is set up and how to use it: Using the ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK).

On Wednesday, December 7th at 10:00 AM Pacific / 1:00 PM Eastern join ThoughtFarmer Software Developer Jeff Pennal for the webinar.

The TIK allows intranet managers to move information into and out of ThoughtFarmer, enhance ThoughtFarmer with new functionality by embedding your code into page templates, create dashboards showing content from external systems, provide single-sign on to services that provide a remote authentication API, and more.

• Topic: Using the ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK)
• Time: Wed Dec 7th, 10:00am Pacific / 1:00pm Eastern / 6:00pm UK
• Length: 45 minutes
• Host: Chris McGrath, ThoughtFarmer Co-Founder
  
• Presenter: Jeff Pennal, Software Developer
• Registration link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/638109041

Register now (free)

See this short video demo to get a sense of the opportunities for integration that the TIK offers:

Last month’s Client Webinar, “Getting the Most Out of ThoughtFarmer 5.0”, is now available online. The ThoughtFarmer Client Webinar series is the first Wednesday of each month.

Missed the webinar where ThoughtFarmer Co-Creator Chris McGrath introduced the world to ThoughtFarmer 5.0?

No worries – our fancy web conferencing software recorded the whole thing.

Watch this video to see an in-depth tour of the ThoughtFarmer mobile web app (an intranet in your pants) as well as examples of how to use the new ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK) to create custom portlets that integrate with other systems and data sources.

This webinar also includes brief demos of other enhancements found in ThoughtFarmer 5.0.

You can read more about ThoughtFarmer 5.0 on the official launch page.

Tim Schiller, Support Engineer

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
• Registration link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/650399792

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.

Register now (free)

The Financial Post

A social intranet is just the ticket for a knowledge-based company that needs to pull together diverse employees for individual projects, says Alex Berenyi, director of systems and technology for Karo Group, a Calgary-based creative agency.

Karo, which has 62 employees in Calgary and Vancouver, built its own intranet several years ago, but never had time to add functionality to it, and so it languished, he said. “It just wasn’t compelling enough for people to use it the way it should be used,” he says.

“But for a project-based company like ours, we needed the ability to put a group together quickly. The intranet also needed to be able to find specific expertise among our staff, and to allow others to throw in their ideas, if they saw that they could be of help to the project, without going through an intermediary. When we decided to upgrade, we found it was easier to lease a social intranet system like ThoughtFarmer than to try to do it ourselves.”

Berenyi said a social intranet also can act as an accessible central repository of company information that is more effective and easier to use than traditional systems in which relevant company information is stored in a series of emails, or in a central folder.

“It’s searchable, so people don’t have to plow through dozens of folders trying to find the right information,” he says. “It improves communication and information flow, which is essential in a business like ours. There is a clear benefit in an intranet for knowledge businesses, because it facilitates better project management, improves productivity and reduces cost.”

Read the complete article.

ThoughtFarmer 5.0 is here! With a host of functional improvements plus the launch of the ThoughtFarmer mobile web app, ThoughtFarmer 5.0 continues to set the bar for social intranets — and now, it fits in your pocket.

ThoughtFarmer Mobile: An intranet in your pants

The biggest change in ThoughtFarmer 5.0 is the addition of a mobile-optimized version of ThoughtFarmer. Access your intranet content from modern Android, iOS or Blackberry devices: navigate or search pages, browse the people directory, update your status, comment on pages, view attachments.

Rather than a simple port of the browser version, ThoughtFarmer Mobile was designed from scratch to support the mobile context: hurried usage, screen glare from the sun, one-handed operation and touch screens. Unique mobile-specific features include:

1. Plain-text comment entry at the bottom of every page
2. Photo albums that support touch gestures
3. Search-as-you-type employee directory
4. User profiles integrated with device’s phone and maps
5. Home screen that focuses on key tasks
6. Full support for the iPad

We also snuck in a beta feature: full content creation and editing support for iOS 5 when you use the full version (not the mobile version). For most uses, you’ll want to stay in the mobile version, but if you want to create or edit full pages, click “Full version” in the footer and edit away.

ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK)

In ThoughtFarmer 5.0, we’ve improved our API and built even more ways you can extend the functionality of ThoughtFarmer.  We’ve packaged it up into a new system called the ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK). With the TIK, you can:

• Move information into and out of ThoughtFarmer, using our simple REST API. Create pages, export content, sync customer profile information with external HR systems.
• Enhance ThoughtFarmer with new functionality by embedding your code into page templates. Create dashboards showing content from external systems, like Zendesk or JIRA
• Provide single-sign on to services that provide a remote authentication API. For example, integrate ThoughtFarmer with Zendesk to allow your users one-click single sign on to your help desk.

The REST API is accessible by any language that supports HTTP and XML or JSON content. Embedding code in ThoughtFarmer is done with C#. We recommend Platinum support for customers building solutions using the TIK. Our Professional Services team is also available for consulting on your ideas.

Intranet in the Cloud or Self-Hosted

ThoughtFarmer Mobile works in both the Self-Hosted and Cloud editions of ThoughtFarmer 5.0. The Cloud Edition, a fully hosted version of our social intranet software, is single-tenanted and Guaranteed to Be There (see ThoughtFarmer Releases Cloud Edition).

The monthly cost for ThoughtFarmer Cloud Edition is $10 per user, dropping gradually to $4 per user for 1000+. See complete pricing. This includes everything you’d expect, like support, upgrades, and backups; and a few things you wouldn’t, like free administrator training and free intranet skinning to reflect your organization’s brand.

More Enhancements in ThoughtFarmer 5.0

• Don’t Rate It, Like It. Star ratings are gone in ThoughtFarmer 5.0, replaced by the more intuitive “Like”.
• Sharing Bar. A new “sharing bar” appears underneath the page title on every page. It includes all the features you might use to share or indicate your interest in a page: Like, Favorite, Export to Word, Export to PDF, and Email.
• Page Info box. Metadata about a page — owner, created date, updated date, version history, and tags — is now consolidated in a single “page info” box in the right hand margin.
• Feeds improvement. External RSS feeds can now be added to the home page and to group pages and will appear just like news items and other internal feeds.
• New machine translation. The Google Translate API is being discontinued by Google at the end of 2011, so we’ve replaced our machine translation with the Microsoft Translator API.
• Multilingual labels for custom profile fields. The labels for custom profile fields, used to add extra information to employee profiles, are now multilingual.
• Change comment sort order. Opt to sort all comments in reverse chronological order (newest first) instead of chronological (oldest first).
• New attachment and image uploader. No Flash required; supports drag and drop.
• Bulk export users, bulk import users. Bulk export users and bulk update users are both now supported.

Join me for a live tour of ThoughtFarmer 5.0 on Thursday, October 20th

Webinar with ThoughtFarmer Co-founder, Chris McGrath

Join me for a live tour of ThoughtFarmer 5.0 this Thursday. In addition to a walk-through of ThoughtFarmer Mobile and our new ThoughtFarmer Integration Kit (TIK), I’ll also show you the award-winning intranets from the Best ThoughtFarmer Intranets competition. You’ll be able to see what people are really doing with ThoughtFarmer.

• Thursday, October 20th, 8:30am Pacific / 11:30am Eastern / 4:30pm UK
  
• Register now

Are you already a ThoughtFarmer client? Visit the ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk to schedule an upgrade.

Carolien Dekeersmaeker, Client Services Manager

Most of our clients want two things from ThoughtFarmer: great intranet software, and great support. This month’s Client Webinar is about getting great support from us: Making ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk Do Backflips.

This Wednesday, October 5th at 8:30am Pacific / 11:30am Eastern join ThoughtFarmer Client Services Manager Carolien Dekeersmaeker and Support Engineer Tim Schiller for a webinar on this topic. I listened to this presentation last week at the Social Intranet Summit and was amazed at the number of things I didn’t know about using our Helpdesk and getting the most out of our support team. This session will make your life easier and make your ThoughtFarmer installation more effective.

• Topic: Making ThoughtFarmer Helpdesk Do Backflips
• Time: Wed Oct 5, 8:30am Pacific / 11:30pm Eastern / 4:30pm UK
• Length: 45 minutes
• Presenter 1: Carolien Dekeersmaeker, Client Services Manager
• Presenter 2: Tim Schiller, Software Developer & Support Engineer
• Registration link: https://www1.gotomeeting.com/register/432197801

Last month’s Client Webinar, “Using ThoughtFarmer to Find Experts”, is now available online. The ThoughtFarmer Client Webinar series is the first Wednesday of each month.

• Bragging rights
• Glory and accolades from your peers
• A line item for your CV
• An “attaboy!” or “attagirl!” from your manager
• an iPad 2

There are three categories:

• Best looking
• Most innovative
• Best collaboration

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.

Contest closes Friday, September 23rd, 2011.

Learn more about the competition

The webinar will include how-tos on using custom profile fields, tagging, Active Directory syncing, and employee directory templates. You’ll have the opportunity to interact and ask detailed questions so you learn exactly what you need to know.

This free webinar is open to non-clients as well, for whom it will offer a sneak peak at ThoughtFarmer’s inner workings.

Register now (free)

New webinar series for ThoughtFarmer clients

ThoughtFarmer contains powerful features that are sometimes overlooked. This webinar is the first in our new monthly webinar series designed to help clients take full advantage of the investments they’ve made in ThoughtFarmer.

The ThoughtFarmer Client Webinar series is every first Wednesday of each month at 10:00 AM Pacific.