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90-second video on inserting, positioning and resizing multiple images in ThoughtFarmer 3.0.

Thousands of corporate intranets are seldom-used, impossibly complex beasts. In contrast, next-generation intranets are simple, social platforms that can change the way people work (for the better!). But getting to Intranet 2.0 isn’t so easy. Here are my 10 steps.

Step 1: Blow up the old intranet.

Why? It’s irrelevant to employees’ day-to-day job. The cumbersome updating process alienates people. It’s out of date, and usage is dismal.

How? Find the intranet server, get to a command prompt, and type >rm –rf *. (That’s a server admin joke.) Alternatively, unplug it. Seriously, it’s not worth trying to fix; you’ve got to start over.

Step 2: Turn users into authors.

Why? When readers can also write, the intranet becomes self-healing. There’s no longer any distortion in knowledge transfer. Users feel trusted and empowered. And there’s no excessive burden on a few people.

How? Every page should have a big fat edit button.

A great example is limestone mining company Graymont. They’re in a staid, traditional industry that hasn’t changed much in a hundred years, but their IT environment is cutting edge. They’ve given everyone the power to edit in their collaborative intranet 2.0 environment, even those who come to work in steel-toed boots and only occasionally sit at a computer. “We believe that sharing information everywhere possible will help us do a better job and be a lower-cost producer,” explains director of IT Ron Ogilvy.

Everyone has the power to edit in Graymont’s intranet 2.0 environment — even those who come to work in steel-toed boots.

Step 3: Expose the social context of all content.

Why? If you know who added a piece of content, where they work, who they work with, and what other content they’ve created, the content is wrapped in a social context. That context makes the information much more interesting and meaningful.

How? Expose every bit of social data you can. Rich, self-maintained employee profiles are a great way to do this, linked clearly from each piece of content a person contributes.

Intrawest Placemaking, a resort development company, uses “Place” pages: a personal area where each employee can add a profile, upload photos and documents, create pages, and share favourite links. Every change an employee makes to the intranet—every comment posted, every file uploaded, every page added—has the employee’s name by it, linked back to his or her “Place.” Other employees can follow the links, learn about each other, explore each other’s content, and develop relationships.

According to Placemaking’s president, Drew Stotesbury, there “has been a dramatic increase in the frequency and quality of collaboration across our organization.” (Read the case study on Intrawest Placemaking’s intranet.)


Employee profiles are a vital link in exposing the social context of intranet content

Step 4: Make things findable.

Why? If people can’t find stuff on your intranet quickly, they’ll stop using it.

How? Support multiple methods to find content. Implement an excellent search, an intuitive navigation structure, and tagging (keywording’s cool younger brother).

An effective combination of intuitive navigation and thorough tagging was employed on an extranet for primary care physicians in Vancouver, Canada. For example, to find a lab requisition, a physician can navigate by lab location, condition type, or requisition type. The tags help surface the same lab form in multiple, logical locations. Or they can search. “[Our extranet] is like a medically oriented, locally resourced, primary-care Google,” said one physician.

The physician extranet “PC Central” combines search, hierarchy and tagging to provide multiple navigation paths to content

Step 5: Send signals when content changes.

Why? When you send signals, it brings people back to the intranet. It keeps conversations flowing; it keeps content fresh.

How? When a page is added, edited, or commented on, send a signal to interested parties via email or via RSS feeds.

Screenshot of a signal sent via email

Step 6: Provide scaffolding: a framework to support new content.

Why? Some organizations deploy a blank wiki as their Intranet 2.0, but it’s really tough to start with a blank slate. Users need some sort of framework in place to guide content creation. The more scaffolding you provide, the better: it’s easier for users to edit something that’s there than to create from scratch.

How? Get an information architect to help define the initial structure of your new intranet.
For smaller companies, it could be as easy as defining the top level or two of your navigation. Maybe something like this:

• Home
• People
• How-To
• News
• Projects
• Tools & Links

Step 7: Hold a barnraising to populate initial content.

Why? Again, it’s really tough to start with a blank slate. Populating content before launch creates initial value, providing a reason for users to visit. That content will also serve as a design pattern, causing other users to imitate what they see.

How? Get 5 or 10 people with their computers together in a boardroom. Lock the door, order pizza, and create or migrate content for a day or two.

Step 8: Make them use it. Once.

Why? Most people don’t want to learn a new application no matter how easy it’s supposed to be. Users have to be forced, just once, to try Intranet 2.0. Once they see how easy-shmeezy it is, they’ll be off to the races.

How? In brief group training sessions, get every employee in your organization to click the Edit button. Get them to edit their profile, add a page, add a comment.

I was recently on-site at a 230-person web start-up to help them implement our ThoughtFarmer Intranet 2.0 platform. We installed it on Monday. We built scaffolding on Tuesday. We barnraised on Wednesday. On Thursday and Friday, we did a series of 12 training sessions that got almost half the company to click the Edit button. Their intranet 2.0 was an immediate success, with high levels of participation across the organization.

Step 9: Lead by example.

Why? If you can get the senior team to participate in your collaborative intranet, people will pay attention… and imitate them.

How? Get one of your senior executives excited about the prospects of a collaborative intranet environment.

Get them adding and editing early and often. The more senior the exec, the better – the CEO would be great.

Intrawest Placemaking, mentioned earlier, enjoyed the full support of their president, Drew Stotesbury. He took the lead in openly sharing information on their collaborative intranet. Discussions he initiated were often the most popular pages.

A discussion initiated by Intrawest Placemaking’s president, Drew Stotesbury

Step 10: Get the intranet “in-the-flow”.

Why? Most intranets are “above the flow”. They store the artifacts of production. But they’re not used for production themselves. When you can use your intranet as a production tool, to get things done, you’ve reached Intranet Nirvana.

How? Use your Intranet 2.0 in the flow. Write documents in your wiki – not in Word. When you’re taking meeting notes, do it live, on your intranet. And if you can’t use your intranet in the flow, change it till you can.

At ThoughtFarmer, we use our ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet “in-the-flow” — we use it to design ThoughtFarmer itself. Sometimes we find ourselves floating back to old ways of doing things, like starting a document in Word. When that happens, we try to discern what it was that caused us to fall back “above the flow”.

At ThoughtFarmer, we use our ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet “in-the-flow” to design ThoughtFarmer itself

Intranet 2.0 isn’t easy to achieve. But once you’re there, you’ll never want to go back.

ThoughtFarmer has been named one of Canada’s Top 20 Web 2.0 Companies.

The PICK20 Web 2.0 Awards, sponsored by KPMG and Backbone magazine, recognizes Canada’s best minds and sharpest practicioners leading the 2.0 evolution of the Web. From the article:

With this issue, Backbone and KPMG unveil the PICK 20, the first and only national roundup of Canada’s Web 2.0 pioneers and practitioners. In the pages that follow you will discover 20 companies that are leading the way into the second iteration of the Web.

The PICK20 Web 2.0 Awards was the cover story for the July issue of Backbone Magazine, found in the Tuesday edition of Canada’s national newspaper, The Globe & Mail.

The 20 winners are:

1. Club Penguin - http://www.clubpenguin.com/
2. FreshBooks - http://www.freshbooks.com/
3. ConceptShare - http://www.conceptshare.com/
4. Cambrian House - http://www.cambrianhouse.com/
5. Dabble DB - http://www.dabbledb.com/
6. Octopz - http://www.octopz.com/
7. Open Text - http://www.opentext.com/
8. Kaboose - http://www.kaboose.com/
9. Standout Jobs - http://www.standoutjobs.com/
10. NowPublic - http://www.nowpublic.com/
11. blogTO - http://www.blogto.com/
12. Jiibe - http://www.jiibe.com/
13. Something Simpler - http://www.somethingsimpler.com/
14. Mob4Hire - http://www.mob4hire.com/
15. MovieSet - http://www.movieset.com/
16. b5media - http://www.b5media.com/
17. SmartHippo - http://www.smarthippo.com/
18. ThoughtFarmer - http://www.thoughtfarmer.com/
19. Protagonize - http://www.protagonize.com/
20. Store Ops-Center - http://www.opterus.com/

If eHarmony.com doesn’t appear on the top ten list of best places to work in a America, it surely should. The 230 employees at the online matchmaker bask in the glow not just of the company’s stunning business success but also the knowledge that it brings real happiness to its customers.

eHarmony was founded by psychologist Dr. Neil Clark Warren, who observed after 35 years of marriage counseling that happy unions were composed of compatible people. His vision for eHarmony was to match couples on key dimensions of personality that could predict compatibility and lead to more satisfying relationships.

eHarmony launched in 2000 after three years of research to determine these key dimensions. Today, it is a solidly profitable enterprise growing at about 30% a year with over 20 million registered users in all 50 states and 191 countries. A mind-boggling 236 on average say ‘I do’ to their eHarmony matches every day.

Now ThoughtFarmer is helping make eHarmony an even better place to work, says vice president of human resources Jim Lambert. “Of all the things we do for employees – and it’s pretty wide and varied – I think ThoughtFarmer has been one of the biggest hits,” Lambert says.

eHarmony’s intranet home page, powered by ThoughtFarmer

His HR group knew from surveys that employees wanted to be kept in the loop and up to speed on what the company was doing. eHarmony did have an intranet, but it required knowledge of HTML coding to make changes. Result: not enough employees participated in making changes to the site.

“What ThoughtFarmer did was provide a vehicle we could use to communicate with employees on the fly,” Lambert says. “And it allowed HR to manage the flow of information, while at the same time letting employees customize their own intranet pages and share information with others in their department.”

The HR group regularly posts current and upcoming events, monthly updates on company performance, messages from the CEO and COO, pictures from the latest company event, and changes to the employee manual.

Employee Resources page on eHarmony’s ThoughtFarmer intranet

“We’re trying to avoid clogging everybody’s e-mail box by making ThoughtFarmer the central repository for everything,” Lambert explains. Broadcast e-mails only include links to ThoughtFarmer now.

ThoughtFarmer ensures the security of the intranet so only employees can access the information, something that is important to eHarmony. “We have been pleased wth the level of security and flexibility to create various levels of access to the system,” Lambert said.

Departments can create their own private intranets – but also post information for everyone. Employees are encouraged to include personal information about themselves on their pages and keep them up to date.

Typical content page on eHarmony intranet

“We also like to use ThoughtFarmer for recognition when an employee or a department has done a fantastic job,” Lambert says.

He believes future employee surveys will show ThoughtFarmer is contributing to improved employee satisfaction. He already has anecdotal proof.

“One of the things employees almost always express to me [during weekly round-table sessions] is their appreciation for ThoughtFarmer and the intranet – the fact that they’re getting quality, timely information.”

As more and more departments put their information on the intranet and canvas employees at large to contribute ideas and thoughts, it will also result in product improvements and cost savings, Lambert believes.

The product and its maker have done everything he expected and more, he says. He was particularly impressed that his input resulted in changes to the ThoughtFarmer product. Questions and issues, he adds, are always responded to immediately.

“I honestly don’t think I’ve ever dealt with a vendor that has been more responsive. The support is fantastic.”

When Graymont Limited went looking for a tool to help it “transcend the continent” and get far-flung employees working together as if they were just around the corner from each other, they turned to the enterprise 2.0 technology in ThoughtFarmer. 

As one of North America’s largest producers of lime, the essentials of Graymont’s business haven’t changed in 100 years. They operate facilities on sites that have been in operation for 200 years. But the company’s philosophy around information and technology is absolutely 21st century.

“We believe that sharing information everywhere possible will help us do a better job and be a lower-cost producer,” says director of IT Ron Ogilvy. And part of that philosophy is that every employee be included in the collaborative environment, especially those who come to work in steel-toed boots and only occasionally sit at a computer.

Graymont planned to implement a company intranet as a binding element in its seven-year strategy to build a common set of information tools for over 1000 employees in several dozen locations across the continent. Ogilvy briefly considered Microsoft SharePoint for this crucial role. “But we came quickly to the conclusion that to do what we wanted in SharePoint, it would be a very large, expensive and long project.”

Last year, he trialed several “intranet in a box” products – plus ThoughtFarmer. ThoughtFarmer won hands down. “Its ease of use and the look and feel were huge attractions. We were amazed how quickly we could set up a complete and very effective tool,” Ogilvy says.

 
Screenshot of Graymont’s ThoughtFarmer-powered intranet home page

Today, three months after launch, myGraymont, the company’s ThoughtFarmer-based intranet, is the portal to most of the applications, tools and information resources employees use, including the Web-based JD Edwards EnterpriseOne ERP system. It’s also the primary interface to the company directory. Employees are responsible for keeping their own listings up to date on their personal myGraymont pages, which they’re encouraged to personalize with pictures and information about themselves.

And ThoughtFarmer is the company’s document management system too, its database already populated with thousands of items – policies, instructions, how-tos. Employees can edit and correct most and post their own. “So you have a continuously evolving, self-healing base of information,” Ogilvy says.

 
Screenshot of ThoughtFarmer page for the Pilot Peak quarry

The payback? Easier access to information and tools will make employees more productive – and less frustrated – and also reduce the management burden for IT. “But the big values,” Ogilvy says, “will come in areas outside IT – when a person in Pennsylvania, say, connects with someone in Alberta and shows him something he’s done that saves the company $10,000 or $20,000; or when an informal discussion group is established amongst maintenance workers or kiln operators across borders and geography. We expect those things will happen regularly.” 

Just using myGraymont to interact more personally with distant colleagues can be an end in itself, he adds. “If it helps create a new relationship, the value of that relationship will be the payback.”

A photo gallery of a lime plant from Graymont’s ThoughtFarmer installation.

Today, at the Enterprise 2.0 Conference in Boston, we’re announcing the third generation of our wiki-inspired intranet platform: ThoughtFarmer 3.0 Multilingual. Read the official press release.

Localized interface and multilingual content management

ThoughtFarmer now supports a localizable interface, easy language switching, and multilingual search. Pages automatically display in your home language, if available, or intelligently fall back on your secondary language preference. Watch a 90-second video overview.

Create blogs

Create department blogs or employee blogs. Use them for project reports, status meetings, and for sharing your latest insights and ideas.

Create and share calendars

Create multiple event calendars. Share launch dates, project schedules or important deadlines. Control who views and edits each calendar.

Create forums

Now, in addition to inline comments on any ThoughtFarmer page, you can create dedicated discussion forums.

Support for high-capacity, load-balanced deployments

ThoughtFarmer 3.0 contains numerous performance enhancements that results in drastic speed improvements in all environments. Data replication across distrubuted data centres is now supported.

ThoughtFarmer 3.0 contains over 100 enhancements and improvements, as well as minor bug fixes. A full list of changes will be available in the release notes.

From June 9th to 12th, Darren and I will be descending on Boston for the Enterprise 2.0 conference.

At 12:15pm on Tuesday, I’ll be presenting on the following topic:

Intranet 2.0 in 10 Not-So-Easy Steps

In this fast-paced, entertaining presentation, intranet consultant and ThoughtFarmer co-creator Chris McGrath will share the 10 not-so-easy steps to convert an impossibly complex, seldom used corporate intranet into Intranet 2.0: a simple, social intranet that helps employees collaborate, share ideas and find information.

Come by the demo pavilion to catch the presentation, or stop by our booth. Send us a message on Twitter if you’d like to schedule a meeting with either of us — we have some available time when the expo hall is closed.

It’s shaping up to be a great conference for anyone interested in next-generation collaboration tools for the enterprise. Hope to see you there!

I used to work for a company that took pride in encouraging open dialogue. They had an excellent intranet, and a few years ago they wanted to implement forums to promote productive conversation.

After 3 major revisions to the forums over a 4 year period, usage was still sporadic at best. The technology worked, the culture was right, and the company was big enough (over 500 employees). What was wrong?

When you have a small base of users (say, under 10,000), everything has to be perfect to create effective discussion forums. Here are 6 guidelines:

1. ATTACH A FORUM TO EVERY PAGE.

Instead of just providing a centralized location for forums, allow discussions to emerge on any and every intranet page. It’s impossible to know what will spark a conversation.

2. PROVIDE AN AGGREGATED, PRIORITIZED VIEW OF DISCUSSIONS.

This page should list every active discussion on the intranet, showing:

• Title of page where discussion is happening
• Owner of page
• Number of posts to the discussion
• Date & time of most recent comment (best expressed in relative terms, i.e. 2 hours ago)

Sort by date, placing at the top the discussion with the most recent post.

3. INTEGRATE FORUMS WITH THE COMPANY DIRECTORY.

Forums shouldn’t require registration. The intranet should be able to personally identify each user (usually via Windows integrated authentication).

Link the name of each commenter to his or her employee profile in the intranet directory.

4. STRIP THE INTERFACE TO THE BASICS.

On the actual page containing the discussion, all you need for each comment is:

• name of commenter (linked to his/her intranet profile)
• date & time comment was made (best expressed in relative terms, i.e. 2 hours ago)
• the comment itself

Not needed:

• No multi-level threads
• No comment-level subject (a single subject at the top of the page is sufficient)

Sort comments with the oldest at the top, so the discussion is easily read.

5. SIGNAL PARTICIPANTS WHEN A POST IS MADE.

This is perhaps the most important step to effective discussion forums.

As soon as a post is made, send an email to the page owner and to everyone who has participated in the discussion so far. (If your user base is technically savvy, you can provide an RSS feed instead.) This keeps the discussion moving and keeps all participants involved. Otherwise, days can elapse between comments, and the conversation dies out.

6. ENGAGE YOUR ORGANIZATION’S THOUGHT LEADERS.

If you can get the leaders at your company to use the forums to share opinions or ask thought-provoking questions, others will follow.

It takes all 6 steps to create effective discussions on your company’s intranet. Has your company made a success of forums? Do you have any other ideas on how to make them work? If so, I’d like to hear about it. Post a comment below.

Shel Holtz, a well-known communications consultant, posted an in-depth look at our Tubetastic marketing campaign, calling it “a lesson in excellent blogger outreach.”

Shel also took a close look at ThoughtFarmer itself, and had this to say:

I must confess, I was pretty impressed with ThoughtFarmer, which includes a slew of features ranging from single-signon and polls to inline tagging and image galleries.

Read his entire write-up.

The world’s #2 blog, TechCrunch, featured us this week:

ThoughtFarmer embraces the Wiki model, offering an open and democratic authoring environment with no barriers to content creation. The service then adds structure and social networking to the wiki core.

Read the entire article here.