At any given time I have a dozen or more customers and prospects to manage deliverables for. Add to this that I have struggled for years to find a good way to keep things like this organized. About a month ago I installed MediaWiki on my site to help manage my workload. I have a Client Whiteboard, a Partner Whiteboard, a People to Ping page, a page for my own internal projects (business infrastructure), a listing of Articles to Read, and a simple page called This Week which simply lays out what I hope to accomplish in the week ahead. This has been huge for me. Each morning this is the first place I go to get a handle on the day’s and week’s work.

Throughout the week I find lots of articles I want to read, both industry news and development ideas. Or course, I manage these by tagging them in deli.cio.us. But it occurred to me this morning that it would be infinitely more manageable if I were able to pull the feeds from deli.cio.us into my Articles to Read wiki page. I did some Googling and found a plugin called SimplePie. And it could not be simpler to install and use. You just drop the plugin into your wiki’s extension folder, add an include line into your LocalSettings file, and then use the following syntax on your wiki page to display the feed (you also can pass parameters within that tag to control display options like number of articles and text styles):

<feed>http://del.icio.us/rss/webdevteam</feed>

Done. I have been advocating using social media tools to customers of Intranets. Using things like deli.cio.us, Flickr, FaceBook, and even blogging tools, users of an Intranet can collect and share all sorts of information without having to own and manage the systems that provide them. For one company, I set up a group deli.cio.us account and gave everyone access. We displayed the feed on their group homepage. Within a week, everyone had contributed articles relevant to their work and their home page became far more valuable.

written by Christopher Murray \\ tags: intranet, social media, web tools, wiki, workplace

I have a client who is upgrading their internal systems and processes. They have chosen to use both SharePoint 2007 (because they are inherently a Microsoft house) and Ektron CMS400.net. SharePoint will be used to migrate from QuickPlace; Ektron is being used as an engineering document repository. Neither has any connection to or knowledge of the other. They do have an existing Intranet (one that I built years ago when an employee there). It’s a mix of LAMP and ColdFusion and anything else people wanted to try over the years. And it is a mess. The same sentiments apply as in yesterday’s post: I can’t find anything ... Our Intranet sucks.

So now we’re off with these new systems, building new sites and tools as the different groups request them. (We’re learning how to use these tools as we go along.) But there exists no sense of portal or commonality, of connectedness. Everything we are building is stand-alone, unaware of any of the other sites. And while each of these tools has a value to someone, there is nothing tying them together. Now, rather than one Intranet, we have several, disjointed systems to manage.

How do you avoid this? Before touching the first line of code or dragging-and-dropping the first widget, you have to ask yourself a few questions:

• What is the goal of this new system? New functionality? Better integration with existing tools?
• Are we going to replace the old Intranet or are we simply going to add to our toolbox?
• If we’re adding, how does this system integrate with the others?
• Who owns this system? Is there an administrator to see that it does not turn into yet another file dumping ground?
• Is there likely to be redundant data with other systems? What will you do about that?
• Is there a corporate mandate on which systems to use and for what purpose?
• Is there a set of standards to follow for consistency, repeatability, data structures, metadata?
• What about Search? Will you create a unified search across all systems? What’s the cost of that? What’s the cost if you don’t?
• Have you looked at this and the other systems with an eye toward developing a portal? Is there a sense that these systems and tools belong together?

These are not difficult questions, but they will give you an idea of how to move forward. If you want to avoid the “our Intranet sucks” anthem, you should consider how your systems will play together before you bringing more on board. You want also to consider what those systems will be used for and how you are going to structure the data going into them.

This is my mission now: helping people answer these and other questions to build better systems to support their business. I’m working closely on this with Mark Cahill over at VarioCreative, a guy who gets this stuff and has been successful at it for years. Give us a call and tell us how we can help you.

written by Christopher Murray

One of the key areas I am focusing on in my new business is Intranets. I have long been a vocal advocate for the business value of the Intranet, for building the business and the culture alike. But a common theme in business seems to be “our Intranet sucks” or “I can’t find anything in our system” or ” that’s your stuff, I need to find my stuff.” Too many businesses see their information systems and processes as a cost center rather than leveraging them as competitive advantages and assets.

The area I live in is ripe with business; office parks line the highway corridors and spot the wooded areas as well. And everyone has infrastructure. So, my question to you is how do I find them, those folks who would be interested in what I offer? I know they are not going to come looking for me. I have joined a few local groups like the Chamber of Commerce and the BNI. I could go “old school” and start knocking on doors with some cards. I certainly am using my network to full advantage (at least I am trying to), but what happens after that?

I would love to hear your advice and thoughts.

written by Christopher Murray