Pat’s Point of View

Last night I presented my talk on intranets at the Sydney Web Standards Group meeting. I spoke about the topic of two of my recent posts, namely web developers have the power and intranets: the beast we love to hate. In a nutshell, I covered these points:

1. So what is an intranet anyway? Not an internal website, but rather a core business tool. A place to get things done.
2. Why do we love to hate intranets? There are downsides to intranets, but the reasons I hear from designers and developers tend to be more like they’re boring, they’re not sexy, they’re low profile.
3. What can we do about this? Two things; sharing skills between intranet people and web people, and selling the benefits of working on intranets.
4. Cross-pollination of skills: educating the web community about what a good intranet is and how to create them; learning from the intranet managers and CKOs of the world.
5. Selling the benefits of intranets: there are many upsides to intranets including the freedom to experiment, a ‘captive audience’, more functionality and most of all the greater satisfaction of empowering users in a way which effects their working day in a tangible way.
6. Showing off some of the small innovations being made in good intranets, including web 2.0 features, tailored business ‘apps’, and collaboration tools such as integrated staff directories.
7. So what does this have to do with web standards? The obvious connection is that with the increase in interactive functionality, those who are conscious of standards based web developers have a role to play to keep it all in check, but the not so obvious connection is the role developers can have in driving intranet innovation. As with web standards, accessibility and usability, building good intranets could become an enthusiast [let's be honest the word should really be 'zealot' :)] topic; pushed into focus by the sheer force of will of designers and developers who simply choose to care.

I’ve also posted the slides [PDF 2.4MB] if you’re interested.My slides are now on SlideShare.

I think it all went well and I got some really positive feedback. I was expecting a fairly underwhelmed, if not outright hostile, reception to the topic, so it was great to see that by and large the audience was interested.

Some of the discussions afterwards were also really interesting. For example:

• The challenge of exposing the good work we might do on intranets, and to a lesser extent sharing ideas. I didn’t want to turn the night into a big ad for Step Two, but the ILF, intranet peers and Intranet Innovation Awards are all ways of increasing exposure in this regard.
• How developers can achieve a lot through tinkering and getting stuck into tasks such as improving the code behind an intranet. Without the know-how which web developers bring to the party, inadequacies in the performance/appearance/functionality of the intranet are too often tackled by the ‘5 year IT plan’ mentality which usually involves implementing a very expensive CMS to solve the problem (both ‘throwing the baby out with the bathwater’ and ‘cracking a peanut with a sledgehammer’). Someone who knows how to write good mark-up can improve the templates in a fraction of the time it takes for a corporate platform decision to be made.
• Another selling point for web developers regarding intranets is the transferability of their skills. Opening their eyes to the possibilities of good intranets also opens their opportunities in terms of areas they can move into, and indeed take change of. As we become more complacent about ‘just another website’ then perhaps this will be a big factor. In a market that is becoming increasingly more competitive (even commoditised) web developers and designers and devigners might look to intranets as their next horizon, especially considering much of the skills required are in common (it’s just the paradigm shift they need to worry about).

It would be wrong of me to discuss the evening without mentioning Shane’s talk on developers and designers getting along. He posed many interesting questions which have been floating around for a while but we still don’t have answers for. What exactly does it mean to be a designer and where (if at all) does the line exist between development and design? Do you need to know how the thing will be implemented (or at least an idea of what’s possible) in order to design? Would be a good topic for a panel session.

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