[Sigia-l] Intranet strategies and fundamental assumptions - to portal or not to portal?

[tom smith]

On Thursday, March 13, 2003, at 04:06 PM, Lamantia, Joseph C. wrote:

> At the moment, we're leaning toward a concept that I would quickly 
> summarize as "a portal-style interface into a knowledge sharing 
> platform that is designed and deployed - UI, taxonomy, CMS - by a 
> small central team, but fed with content by the community of employees 
> within the firm"

I am working on a number of intranet projects (some big some small) and 
If I am honest, we fell into the trap of trying too hard.

Recently we have been experimenting with wikis within the intranet, as 
opposed to classically structured data, and the intranets are "coming 
alive" with useful content,  documentation is actually getting written 
(wow!) and discussions are sprouting up all over the place. No 
moderation, no content strategy,  no incentives, no baroque interfaces 
to learn, no workflow (besides unlimited undo).

So if your web forms are flowing off the page, and your database tables 
seem to just keep coming, and no content is getting created despite 
your fantastic taxonomy it might be time give wikis a whirl. (If not 
wikis themselves, then the wiki concept)

It has to be pointed out that the wikis become more useful the more 
they are used and it took a while for everyone to "get it". The 
intranet itself does have a portal style front page and sub pages, but 
lots of the information contained is wiki content.

Working with wikis can be a bit scary, because programmers, bosses and 
designers all have to be prepared to relinquish some level of control, 
which is  a political minefield,

regards

tom



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tom smith
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