Tomorrow's Intranet Is Already Here!

I was in a workshop the other day with my colleague Richard Dennison and we were thinking about the future of Intranet content. Richard summarises our findings nicely on his blog. The key consideration for me, was that we’ve now created a world inside the organisation where all content can now be classified as collaborative. Previously, we’d used words such as definitive, official and so on which implied it was owned and published by and individual, or very few. Official content is probably already a minority of the content we have available to us, and as a proportion of the total it will continue to shrink. What’s interesting about this new world is that this democratisation of publishing and crowd-sourcing of content is just the beginning of some fundamental changes we’ll see in the very fabric of organisations over the next decade. Businesses can no longer hold on to the top down structural models and processes constructed centuries ago during the age of empires. Big changes are foot!!

Augmented Reality

I was listening to a presentation the other day by a Futurologist. He talked about lots of things – the future of gadgets, smart badges, connecting artificial limbs to the nervous system and so on, but the thing that caught my imagination the most was the notion of ‘augmented reality’. We now have computer displays on spectacles, and displays on contact lenses are not that far away. And everything will have ‘presence’, so it seems it’s not going to be long before we are able to walk down the street and everything we see could be virtually tagged with information in our in vision display. The opening time of shops, special offers targeted especially at you – because the machine will know who you are, what’s playing in the theatre you’re passing and what seats are available, what number that bus in the distance is, where it’s going and if there is room. In fact, anything you could possibly want to know about anything you in your line of vision or around the corner could become available. But how will we manage it? We already suffer from information overload which has driven us to consume content in smaller bites, so do we really need this extra information? Of course, there are many specific applications for this technology – guided surgery, architecture, military and so on – and these will be very welcome, however, I think we’ll end up being very selective about how and when we switch these things on.

Sweeney Todd

An 18 certificate musical! Not unique, but pretty unusual. Clearly Tim Burton knows what people expect from him and delivered this one quite well. I liked the music, although sometimes the lyrics were a little hard to understand, but the counterpoint melodies were interesting and reminded me in some ways of the clever weaving of songs in Moulin Rouge. Johnny Depp plays to his strengths – perhaps now becoming typecast as number one weirdo actor – but it was Helena Bonham Carter who stole the show. As Mrs Lovett she was playing a part she was ideally suited to. On the whole the film moves along quite well, but there were a few minutes towards the middle where it slows down quite noticeably. The cinema audience seemed to get quite restless for a time. A quick mention for Sacha Baron Cohen. A good part for him, but he was too much like Borat and I found that a distraction.

Head tracking

I picked this great video up on the Confused of Calcutta blog.

I don't have a Wii yet, but will certainly be getting one. And I can't wait for games to be available that use this technique.

My son got the Xbox 360 he so desperately wanted for Christmas and he doesn't understand what all the fuss is about. He can't seem to see that, for most people, it's the game play that's important, not the ultra-realism of the graphics. Just another example of the old axiom 'Keep it Simple Stupid'.

Come on Virgin - you can do better than that!

Last year we had a lovely family holiday in Florida. We flew with Virgin Atlantic. We mixed time in the parks, with time relaxing by the pool. Took in a couple of baseball games and did a bit of shopping. Then we arrived at Orlando International airport for our flight home and came face to face with a 12 hour delay. Okay, these things happen and although it was uncomfortable and tempers started to fray we were reasonably well looked after both at the airport and on the flight home.

The time duly passed and as we boarded the flight, we were each handed a letter explaining the delay, apologising and offering us 10,000 Flying Club points as compensation. Great.

Shortly after arriving home, I duly sent off all four letters for the points to be credited to my account. I got a reply a week or so later telling me that my account would only be credited with the points in my name. My wife and two children would have to open their own accounts - even though I had been credited with the points for the original booking. Those of you with Virgin Flying Club accounts will know that 10,000 points are pretty worthless, so at a stroke the compensation for a very long and uncomfortable delay was taken away. The grand gesture was just that, an empty gesture.

I sent a letter to Virgin. No reply.

Another letter. No reply.

So today I emailed them. And got an email failure due to ‘insufficient disk space’ on their email servers. So much for customer service.

I shall certainly think twice before booking another flight with Virgin!!

Facebook - it's not real!

I came across this post from The Eychild today whilst I was thinking again about why I'm uncomfortable with Facebook. Facebook is superficial. And it serves only to re-kindle relationships with people I hadn't seen or heard from for years. Of course, there's likely a good reason why those relationships fizzled out in the first place. So, even though I've now re-newed contact with all these 'friends' it hasn't resulted in any real relationship with any of them, let alone facilitated a real friend interaction - like a drink down the pub!

Also, MySpace is not dead - it seems to still have traction with the kids.

This illustrates a real risk for those trying to get social networking going inside an organisation. How do we avoid it descending into superficiality and failing to deliver real value? Perhaps one thing we should do is stop talking about "Facebook Inside" but start talking about creating a place where people can share experiences, insight and information on their projects. If we create Facebook inside we'll have failed.

Feature on Simply Communicate

I mentioned in a post the other day that I'd been interviewed by Marc Wright at Simply-Communicate for a 'How Did I Get here Feature'. Well it's now on the website. Enjoy!

Facebook

My colleague Richard Dennison goes head to head with Tom Hodgkinson over his Guardian article on the politics of Facebook. Richard makes a very interesting observation about the fickle nature of the social networking world, particularly in the UK. I often wonder if - when the next new ‘big thing’ in the social networking world emerges - people will abandon Facebook and migrate – like Wildebeest – to something else.

Or will we just tire of it? I completely acknowledge the value of social networking inside an organisation, and I’ve found it a little useful in my private life just keeping track of friends, but it is increasingly reminding me of Friends Reunited. A great flurry of activity, which slowly but surely went stale. I know it’s not quite the same thing, but it is similar.

Caetano Veloso

The Caetano Veloso CD finally arrived from Play.com over the Christmas period. The first CD seems to have been lost in the post, but Play’s no quibble policy soon had another copy on its way to me.

My first reaction was of disappointment. Probably foolishly, I selected the ‘Definitive Collection’ album, which seems to be an odd mix of material, from his earliest to his latest. As an album it doesn’t really work, but then ‘best of’ albums seldom do.

Having listened to it a few times now though I’ve found it has grown on me. Veloso has an interesting voice, not quite perfect in the way we’re used to our manufactured and highly produced music being and some of his interpretations of the Bossa and Samba rhythms are truly original. My preference though is for the later, more mellow songs, such as Odara and Coisa Mais Linda which suit Veloso’s voice much better.

If only I could speak Portuguese! Here's the critically acclaimed version of Cucurucucu, Paloma which Veloso sang in 'Hable Con Ella', the Pedro Almodovar film which first brought him to my attention.

All in all though I’m glad I stumbled across this guy.

Blending

Yesterday I was interviewed by Marc Wright of Simply-Communicate.com for a ‘how did I get here’ feature on the site. It was most enjoyable, and quite rewarding to think back through the progress we’ve made on intranets in the UK.

Towards the end of the interview we started to discuss what the next ‘big thing’ might be. Of course, there are lots of things I could have talked about, but I have been thinking recently about blending.

Lots of boundaries seem to be breaking down and all our edges are blurring. What I mean (I think) is that things are increasingly being blended.

For example, people often go on about the need for a good home-life balance, but that implies having an amount of each at either end of scale or balance – in other words the two are kept separate. The reality of flexible working however is that home life and work life are increasingly blended. I access my email whenever I can, not just between 9am and 5.30pm. I don’t mind logging in and doing stuff at weekends or on a day off. Similarly, I have no qualms about popping out to attend to something in my home life on a work day. It’s totally flexible. And I’m measured by the contribution I make and whether or not I hit my targets, not by whether I’m at my desk or not. More about flexible working in a later post.

Also, with the definition of an organisation becoming more flexible – we have employees, contractors, partners, suppliers, even customers as part of our organisation – it’s difficult to know what constitutes inside and what outside. Employee or not. It’s become a blend of the two. This possibly means the end of intranets as we know them. Something I predicted a few years ago. It certainly means changes for the way we manage communications.

With the continued rise of user generated content, I think we’ll increasingly see this new kind of content become integrated with ‘traditional’ content - a blended solution. We’ll see much more commenting on news stories - like on the BBC site – directly within the story, rather than in a separate section. This could change the dynamic of who has the authoritative voice.

Similarly, as people get used to aggregating content for themselves, we’ll start to see content being blended with applications much more than now. I think this is particularly relevant inside an organisation. We used to talk about how we could put together web sites that were “sticky”. In the new world, people won’t come to the site, but will pull the content into their aggregator or portal. They’ll increasingly also be pulling applications into the same portal. Content is going to find it harder to get eye time.

Normal service has been resumed

Typical! Take time off from work be sick the whole time. I've been struggling with a heavy cold for a couple of weeks, then last week I went down with a severe throat infection. Nasty. Hence no posts recently. I'm back now. And I've some catching up to do.

Chapter Two - New Year's Eve

New Year’s Eve deserves a special occasion. One restaurant I’d never been to, but which my wife has visited and really enjoys is Chapter One. Unfortunately, we were unable to get a booking there for New Year’s Eve, so we decided to try their sister restaurant in Blackheath village, appropriately named Chapter Two.

The eight course culinary ‘extravaganza’ had all the makings of a good night. A late start, meaning we should get to the turn of the year by the end of the meal. A good looking menu. A good reputation. A trendy location.

Unfortunately we were disappointed. First we were led downstairs to what some might call the atmospheric area of the restaurant, although I would call it more dark and dingy. We were taken straight to our table. There was no opportunity to mingle with the other guests over the champagne and canapés. The canapés themselves had all the finesse of an Iceland ‘Buy 3 for £5’ offer. The dinner then proceeded through a series of courses which clearly suffered at the hands of a chef not used to cooking a large number of the same dish to be served at the same time to a restaurant full of people. It really did feel like a canteen.

The serving staff did their best and were efficient at keeping the courses moving along. However, they were not attentive and didn’t therefore create the kind of intimate and friendly atmosphere the occasion deserved. At close to £100 a head for the evening I expected better.

We won’t be going back soon. Shame.