The Workplace Blog

Avenue A | Razorfish offically announced its Google Enterprise partnership today. Avenue A | Razorfish has joined the Google Enterprise Professional program, which helps customers get more value out of their Google enterprise search deployments. The partnership further enhances Avenue A | Razorfish’s Enterprise Solutions practice dedicated to the design and development of user-centric enterprise intranets, extranets and partner portal solutions.

” The Web is evolving. There’s a little bit more maturity now, in terms of business models with advertising coming in, with some of the late-’90s mistakes understood. But we’re probably, as an industry, making some of those same mistakes. And that’s OK. The ferment, the creativity, is incredible to see,” says Bill Gates at MIX06 Read his exclusive News.com interview where he talks about Web 2.0, Microsoft, Office Online and Ray Ozzie.

Visual thinking is fast becoming an important skill in the workplace. Employees that can visualize solutions, imagine business scenarios and depict processes in an easily understandable manner, invariably get ahead of others who cannot communicate as dynamically. Dan Roam, a former Avenue A | Razorfish employee is publishing a book this fall titled, “The Back of a Napkin” which illustrates how visual thinking drives success using examples from the worlds of media, manufacturing, golf and politics. Take a look at the book when it hits the stores this fall, you may find it interesting. In the meantime, visit Dan’s Digital Blog.

Read Martin White’s article for Econtent Magazine on how you can benchmark your intranet. To quote, “Very few organizations can answer that question with anything more than an emphatic “It’s fine!” If the question is instead, “How good is your intranet compared to other organizations like yours?” then the answer involves usually a more sheepish “We have no idea.” Also visit his Intranet Focus Blog.

In another example of how podcasting is catching on, MBA students at the Ross School of Business will soon be able to get news and events information on their ipods. The school has joined forces with Apple Computer to provide the business school community with free events seminars and news content that they can listen to at any time and anywhere. The podcasts are available using the same login information required to access the school’s intranet. They are housed on Apple’s iTunes U Website, which uses the same technology as the iTunes Music Store

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft spoke at the Avenue A | Razorfish client summit today. He was asked to do a repeat performance of his developer, developer, developer battle cry. He surprised the audience by responding that the new battle cry is advertising, advertising, advertising. Microsoft believes that the rich experiences of Live.com and their other media properties like MSN present incredible advertising opportunities in the future. We hope to be getting a copy of the video soon.

Some of his other comments addressed how the professional and personal lives of people were merging with people doing more personal activities at work and professional ones at home. He felt that technology needs to support these mixed needs and allow people to engage with their own media in ways that suit their lifestyles. He referred to this new world as the “My Lifestyle.”

In talking about online media and my lifestyle, Ballmer also mentioned that he didn’t realize how special Origami was until his customers, business partners and personal friends kept asking him questions about it. Without any budget, two Microsoft employees had discussed it on their blogs and the word about the product spread like wildfire through the internet.

James Surowiecki of The Wisdom of the Crowds fame addressed the Avenue A | Razorfish Client Summit yesterday. Making a strong case for why organizations and groups should depend upon crowds to make better decisions, Surowiecki said that cognitive diversity is extremely important in the groups. He also stressed that random groups will always make better decisions that the smartest person in the room acting alone. When asked how large these groups should be, Surowiecki said that groups as small as ten or even twenty people will make better decisions. He also emphasized that building consensus is different to collective intelligence because when everyone is trying to compromise you get the worst decisions. Rather, creative conflict with people being able to express their individual opinion are most important for the best thinking to develop.

In a crisp, insightful and practical report that’s brimming with useful tips, James Robertson takes the reader into the world of intranet search. His recommendations, which include focusing on simplicity, prioritizing search by audience, and doing the hard work as an intranet manager (instead of the user having to do it) are all important thoughts that we’re not reminded of enough.

Each year, Avenue A | Razorfish hosts an invitation only client summit that brings together Fortune 1000 marketing and technology executives from the company’s client base for 2-1/2 days of fun and knowledge sharing. The theme of this year’s event is “The Art and Science of Digital Marketing.” Steve Ballmer, president of Microsoft, and James Surowiecki, New Yorker writer and “Wisdom of Crowds” author are keynoting the event. Watch the blog for updates from the event.

Yahoo Search is hoping to redefine the way we search in the future. They believe that most people are more interested in search results that are validated by their peer group. So for example, if you search for apples you’ll probably get a million results. However, if you specify that you’d like to first search just the sites visited/bookmarked by your peer group, you’ll get fewer and hopefully more useful results. That’s what social search is about.

Interestingly, no major search vendor is talking about social search behind the firewall. Arguably, the benefits of social search are much greater for employees. On most intranets it is hard to know what page tied to a specific topic is most useful. But if the employee knew that everyone else in his department had bookmarked a specific page, he or should would know that’s the best result among the hundreds returned to him. That’s the power of social search.