thinkIntranet Strategic Intranet Management

I’ve been feeling increasingly positive about the use of microsharing or microblogging as a means to bridge the chasm between us (at J&J) and enterprise 2.0. Microsharing is the term for the type of activity that these days is most popularly known through Twitter.

At least part of the e20 vision presupposes a consistent amount of “working out loud,” and microsharing is simply the easiest way to go about that. Social networking and collaboration tools are most powerful when they are able aggregate activity – including the artifacts of working out loud. Say what’re doing now, what you’re reading and what you think – and in the e20 world your activity will be exposed to whoever wants to hear it.

As someone who is rather bullish on microsharing - I was both bemused and annoyed at Senator Chuck Grassley’s recent Tweets about President Obama. NPR had a recent piece on Grassley’s use of Twitter, extrolling his “authentic” voice and how Twitter allows the common person to listen in on the daily work of a politician. So here’s one example of a Grassley Tweet: “Pres Obama you got nerve while u sightseeing in Paris to tell us”time to deliver” on health care. We still on skedul/even workinWKEND.”

Come on. Surely Senator Grassley does not really speak like that?

I’ve been busy this week at J&J preparing some online communications, managing the transition of our two graduating coops, and preparing for my own eventual transition out of the Global Procurement organization. As a bit of background, when i took this position the hiring manager and I agreed that this was probably a “set it up and move on” sort of opportunity - which matched with my concerns about the New Jersey commute. So, while the work has been great, I’ve decided to excercise this exit clause and end my work with Global Procurement sometime around the end of July.

Melcrum’s latest version of their “Transforming Your Intranet” report includes a contribution from me on recession-proofing your Intranet. So far I’ve just glanced through the free extract, but it looks like a valuable report for any organization considering a more strategic and successful Intranet Management program. The report came out last November (hmm.. I guess I should Google myself more often).

Just read James Robertson’s Post “Web Workplace: A new word for Intranet”.

I agree that Workplace describes a more holistic view of for what typically fulls under the “Intranet” umbrella. A few years ago now, IBM adopted the term to describe a new organization formed when the Corporate Intranet team moved out of Communications and under the CIO. The mission of the “Total Workplace Experience” group extended to everything “on the glass” - which I think was (and still is) the right way to think about things.