In the penultimate presentation of the conference, save Dave Snowden on the closing keynote, Darren Gibbons is speaking on Intranet 2.0 in 10 Not-So-Easy Steps. See thoughtfarmer.com. (Stacy, a member of the ActKM List is in the room.)

How did we get here?
– 1994, a Web-based intranet for Sun Microsystems.
– 1996, a publishing mechanism for Mercantile Intranet.
– today, eHarmony, an Intranet “2.0”

What is Intranet 2.0?
– various features … blogs, wikis, email, search, RSS … lots and lots of buzzword
– it’s easy to get caught up in the features and functionality … but we start to get away from the promise and miss the benefits if we do this.
– rather than getting into detailed description, let’s look at the key concepts
– … top-down vs bottom-up
– … silos vs transparency
– … broadcast vs conversation (getting in contact with the people who have the information they need)
– … friction (barriers to publishing — special tools, permissions, special syntax; cognitive friction — having to work with a complex system that challenges the user’s mental model) vs flow (fully immersed in what you are doing)

10 Not-So-Easy-Steps
The 10 steps:
– (1) blow up the old intranet … stop the old ways of doing things.
– (2) turn users into authors … “Edit this Page” is critical, security is as open as possible, and versioning and soft-security (the system knows who I am; traceability back to the individual). No workflow (maybe, “workflow is workslow”)
– (3) email-free Wednesdays … “email is where information goes to die” (says Eric, “only if you don’t know how to use it”)
– (4) add signals … alerts and notifications of new content … RSS would be an alternative.
– (5) provide scaffolding … sample structures for people to use.
– (6) hold a barnraising … get a group of people together for a few days and get them to do content migration from the old to the new. Having a fully populated employee directory is really important.
– (7) “Make them use it. Once.” … hold a training session and get people to step through a worksheet (in 30-45 minutes, cover the main highlights and parts of functionality)
– (8) lead by example …
– (9) expose the social context … self-maintained employee profiles, allowing a bit of fun
– (10) get the intranet “in the flow” … wikis as “in the flow” and wikis as “above the flow”. See Socialtext re these ideas. “In the flow” as the place to work and collaborate.

Michael’s Thoughts
There was an implicit point here, which Darren didn’t say: “the use of these tools is predicated on a change from local productivity tools to ones on the Intranet”. That is, work and processes that are currently done using email and documents are shifted to applications on the Intranet.