The Workplace Blog

This may not be web 2.0 or intranet specific but it is worth drawing attention to. Steve Jobs recently gave a speech at Macworld and nearly simultaneously Bill Gates and Michael Dell spoke at the Consumer Electronics Show. These speeches were striking contrasts in style and substance.

Maybe enough for us to understand why Apple gets so much attention even though it is so much smaller than Microsoft and Dell. Look at the tag clouds from the speeches to see what words were used. This might help the next time you need to make a speech or give a presentation. The tag clouds highlight the importance of using the right words when making the case for something. Words that excite people rather than tired jargon that bore. Click to see the actual tag clouds.
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For the first time in several years, I am not going to recommend buying the Neilson Norman Top Ten Intranets Report. Jacob Nielsen and his team have done a lot of good for intranet design and the usability profession too. I have a lot of personal respect for Jacob Neilson as well but I think this report can be better. Just by reading his 10 Best Intranets of 2007 alertbox, you will see why I have gotten turned off. Here are a few of the reasons.

I struggle with the methodology and some of the conclusions drawn in the report. As a PhD with a commendable track record of publications behind him, I would have thought that Jacob Neilson and his team would be more careful about some of the statements made. Apparently, because the buyers are mostly from the business world, the authors don’t feel that intellectual rigour is necessary. And for most people maybe it isn’t. But since the Nielsen Norman Group prides itself on its academic credentials, I had hoped for more from them.
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The red light zones are places on the fringe of an organization where most of the innovation takes place. These are zones that aren’t officially sanctioned and they survive through a combination of stealth, compromise and accommodation. They are on the edge of acceptable organizational behaviour. In many companies, they’re treated as an organizational necessity. Scholars have rarely paid to red light zones though increasingly more are researching the phenomena (Google Claude Ciborra and Chrisje Brants for more information).
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At Avenue A | Razorfish we bridge the consumer and the enterprise worlds so we’re always making a conscious effort to learn and leverage from each side. It brings new ideas to the table and greater value to our clients. With that in mind, check out this analytics report published by our digital marketing team. This report answers 14 questions every marketer and Web site owner should ask in order to get better results from Web analytics. The report is free but registration is required.

Over the last two years here at Avenue A | Razofish we have talked about the consumerization of IT. We’ve discussed how consumer technologies are invading the workplace and changing it for the better. We called this the Google Affect. When we launched the corporate intranets best practice report last summer, we included a special section discussing consumer trends influencing the workplace too.

Everyone else is talking about the trends now. The Economist magazine has a story about consumer technologies invading corporte computing. They use Google’s Apps for Domain as an example of how some companies are ditching their email infrastructure to use the Google service. The article also discusses Salesforce and the software as a service model too. It’s worth a read.