ThoughtFarmer | The Social Intranet Blog

By Chris McGrath , April 19, 2011

Three months ago, ThoughtFarmer Senior Analyst and Analytics Lead Bryan Robertson presented our most popular webinar ever on Intranet ROI.

This Wednesday at 10am Pacific, he’s back with more metrics and analytics in a captivating presentation entitled “Establishing KPIs and Baselining Your Intranet.”

His presentation is a live repeat of his session from the Social Intranet Summit. Here’s the extract of the presentation:

The old axiom applies to intranets too: what gets measured gets done. Learn from analytics expert Bryan Robertson how to establish metrics that can be used to measure success and establish a baseline to measure intranet performance ongoing.
30 min + 15 min Q&A

Register now (use discount code I-SAW-THE-BLOG).

The Social Intranet Summit Webinar series is every third Wednesday of each month at 10:00am Pacific. See the complete 2010-2011 agenda. Registration link: http://sisw.eventbrite.com.

In: Concept & theory

Mechanistic and Organic Organizations

By Gordon Ross , April 15, 2011

This article is the second (see Connected companies, complex systems and social intranets and What would Donald Schön think of your social intranet?) in what’s becoming a bit of a review of some of the theory shaping the ideas behind social intranets. Let’s continue the discussion in 10 days at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston.

In my last blog post on connected companies, complex systems, and social intranets, I wrote a little bit about the appropriateness of mechanical metaphors and models in complex times. While I never used the term explicitly the competing metaphor to the mechanical, which Ephraim picked up on in his comments, is the organic.

This dualism of the mechanical and the organic is not new in western philosophical thought. In fact, it’s about 500 years old, tracing its roots back to Francis Bacon in the 1600′s. And as recently as 120 years ago, Emile Durkheim helped establish modern sociology using these concepts as central parts of his ideas and theories on the ties that bind people together.

Continuing the tradition of the dualism set forth by Bacon, Durkheim, and others, we fast-forward to the 20th century and the 1960′s work of Tom Burns and George Stalker which had much impact in the field of organization theory, with their study of innovation, management, and structure of Scottish electronics firms. In their writing on mechanistic and organismic structures, they outlined the differences between the two types and solidified the concept in the minds of future generations of organizational theorists and business scholars.

In: Concept & theory

Connected companies, complex systems, and social intranets

By Gordon Ross , April 6, 2011

This article is the first (see Mechanistic and organic organizations and What would Donald Schön think of your social intranet?) in what’s becoming a bit of a review of some of the theory shaping the ideas behind social intranets. Let’s continue the discussion in 10 days at Enterprise 2.0 in Boston.

One of the best parts of my job is the privilege of having conversations about the emerging field of social software, Enterprise 2.0, Social Business, the latest generation of Knowledge Management (or whatever you prefer to label the collection of people busy innovating away at the moment in this area) with some truly brilliant minds and kindred spirits.

One such chat that I recall vividly happened with Thomas Vander Wal, the first time we met in person in Washington DC in December 2009. I was there for a proposal shortlist presentation and dropped him a note to ask if he’d be interested in having coffee. He obliged and what was scheduled for a 30 min chat wound up turning into a close to 4 hour conversation at a local coffee shop. We rambled far and wide on topics, shared our common interests and backgrounds, and I reluctantly left Thomas to the remainder of his afternoon, my head spinning with all sorts of great thoughts.

If you’ve had the pleasure of meeting Thomas in person or attending one of his presentations at a conference in the past few years, you may very well have had a similar experience.

In: Events

Video: Intranet Secrets & 5 Steps to a Social Intranet

By Chris McGrath , March 18, 2011

The recorded video of Wednesday’s webinar is here for your viewing pleasure:

Watch on Viddler

Don’t miss next month’s webinar on Wednesday, April 20th: Establishing KPIs and Baselining Your Intranet. Register now with discount code FREEPASS.

In: Events

Webinar: Intranet Secrets & 5 Steps to Make Your Intranet More Social

By Darren Gibbons , March 15, 2011

This Wednesday, March 16th, at 10am Pacific, ThoughtFarmer Co-Creator Chris McGrath will be presenting an entertaining yet informative webinar:

Intranet Secrets: Behind the Firewall, Some Things Are Better Left Unsaid plus 5 steps to make your intranet more social

Chris’s presentation draws practical lessons from the confessions of intranet users on our Intranet Secrets web site. It’s a live repeat of his session from the Social Intranet Summit.

[photo] I deleted 70,000 pages on our intranet. No one noticed.

Register now (use discount code I-SAW-THE-BLOG).

The Social Intranet Summit Webinar series is every third Wednesday of each month at 10:00am Pacific. See the complete 2010-2011 agenda. Registration link: http://sisw.eventbrite.com.

In: Featured

Darren Gibbons, ThoughtFarmer President, interviewed in Georgia Straight

By Chris McGrath , March 10, 2011

Vancouver’s news and entertainment weekly, The Georgia Straight, interviewed Darren Gibbons, ThoughtFarmer President, in this week’s issue in the article, “ThoughtFarmer, Google Docs make the workplace social.”

From the article:

“For us, when somebody new comes into the company, they can sit down, they can fire up the intranet, and they can get up to speed with different projects that are going on around the office, see some information about their coworkers—what their strengths are, that type of thing,” Gibbons said. “But they can also go through and look at photos from the Christmas party and that type of stuff too. They can get a feel for a little bit more about the company than they would from just having conversations with an individual.”

Read the full article.

In: Featured

Government & Social Intranet Software: USGS Case Study

By Chris McGrath , March 2, 2011

How is government using social intranet software?

Read how the USGS Nevada Water Science Center reduced intranet staffing from two half-time staff to almost nothing by introducing a collaboratively-maintained social intranet: “Water in the Desert: ThoughtFarmer & USGS“.

“ThoughtFarmer has become the go-to resource for everything from HR information, to signing out a digital camera or boat, to checking the budget on a project, to getting a virtual introduction to a colleague on the other side of the state. ‘It has really been even more successful than we thought it would be,’ says IT specialist Shannon Watermolen.”

This is the latest of our Intranet Case Studies.

As an agency of the United States Federal Government endorsements of specific commercial products are prohibited. The opinions of the US Geological Survey employees highlighted here reflect their personal opinions and do not constitute an endorsement of ThoughtFarmer or its developer by the USGS.

In: Events

Webinar: Creating Effective Requirements

By Chris McGrath , February 14, 2011

This Wednesday, February 16th, at 10am Pacific, OpenRoad Senior User Experience Designer and college instructor Selma Zafar will be presenting a practical webinar for anyone planning work on an intranet: Creating Effective Requirements.

Selma’s presentation is a live repeat of her session from the Social Intranet Summit. Here’s the extract of the presentation:

Creating Effective Requirements
Defining clear requirements at the start of any project helps not only the build go smoothly, but aligns the whole project team. Selma will introduce you to different methods for uncovering and documenting requirements that will set up your intranet project for success with a focus on the end-user. This talk will be practical, providing you with ideas that you can immediately execute.
30 min + 15 min Q&A

Register now (use discount code I-SAW-THE-BLOG).

The Social Intranet Summit Webinar series is every third Wednesday of each month at 10:00am Pacific. See the complete 2010-2011 agenda. Registration link: http://sisw.eventbrite.com.

In: Events

Tracy Hutton: Getting the C-Suite On Your Side

By Chris McGrath , February 1, 2011

[photo] Tracy Hutton at SISV In mid-2005, Wikipedia was largely unknown, Facebook required an Ivy League email address to join, and YouTube hadn’t even launched.

In this nascent environment, Tracy Hutton, then Vice President of Employee Experience at Intrawest‘s Placemaking division, convinced her executive team to embrace a radical concept for their intranet: everyone would be allowed to edit everything.

They launched ThoughtFarmer, and the resulting success led to an oft-cited Enterprise 2.0 Case Study and Tracy’s nomination as a “Rising Star” by British Columbia’s powerful Human Resources Management Association (BCHRMA).

Now a professional coach and a consultant at The Marcus Buckingham Company (and a brand new mom! congratulations!), Tracy presented “Getting the C-Suite On Your Side” at the Social Intranet Summit in October. In the video and slidedeck below, Tracy shares her strategies for securing executive buy-in through the story of launching her social intranet, “The Portal”, at Intrawest Placemaking.

For more from the Social Intranet Summit, sign up for the Social Intranet Summit Webinars. The next session is “Creating Effective Requirements”, and will be presented Wednesday, February 16th at 10:00am Pacific.

Getting The C-Suite On Your Side (Video on Viddler)

Getting The C-Suite On Your Side (Slidedeck on SlideShare)

In: Events

10 Web 2.0 Apps Your Intranet Will Love

By Chris McGrath , January 27, 2011

10 Web 2.0 Apps Your Intranet Will Love (This presentation was originally delivered live at the Social Intranet Summit Vancouver. Sign up for our monthly webinars based on the summit, free with the code I-SAW-THE-BLOG.)

I often talk to people who are looking at ThoughtFarmer and hoping for Application Nirvana. Application Nirvana is having ONE APPLICATION that lets you monitor critical systems, see your key performance metrics, enter your timesheets, check your to-do list, manage projects, publish documents, write emails, brew coffee, iron your shirt, etc etc.

Is ThoughtFarmer that application? No. Application Nirvana is an enterprise architect’s delusion. There will never be the One Single App that does everything.

Fortunately, with modern web applications like ThoughtFarmer, it is very easy to integrate best-of-breed applications. Here are 10 of my favourites.

1. FriendFeed

Description	Social microblogging aggregator
Use for intranets	Aggregate multiple blogs, news sites and other data feeds into a single RSS feed that can be displayed on your intranet, perhaps on the home page.
Integration method	RSS
Price	Free

FriendFeed for Intranets

Screenshot of two blog feeds aggregated on a single FriendFeed

2. Google News

Description	News aggregator
Use for intranets	See when your company is mentioned in the news; Follow trending news on topics important to your organization.
Integration method	RSS
Price	Free

Google News for Intranets

You can grab an RSS feed of any news search on Google News

3. Delicious

Description	Social bookmarking
Use for intranets	Share interesting links with others
Integration method	RSS
Price	Free

Delicious for intranets

Delicious’ pop-up window for saving a bookmark. The “For” field lets people save bookmarks to a single group, which can then be published to your intranet via RSS