As you all already know, Microsoft released SharePoint 2010 and thereby really entered the mainstream of ECM. There are already enough blogs and whitepapers that cover the new and improved features of this version. So, I’m not going to go in to those aspects.

No, What really caught my eye was the AIIM industry watch SharePoint – Strategies and Experiences.

An interesting and thorough piece of work. Interesting because, it states that the number of SharePoint implementations is soaring, and deployments are going round and about. “A high degree of Market penetration”, as Gartner states it.

Yet, the true benefits of these implementations, aren’t always realised.

What interested me was the fact that SharePoint remains predominantly an IT implementation. Information Management or the Business aren’t really consulted, nor do they have a real say in the fit for purpose-ness. This gave me a flashback to the old (or quite often still current) days, where file share was the way to go. In the file share paradigm, IT was Information Management and governance was “access or not”. File shares blossomed and, thus, grew out of proportion. Within that paradigm the main “items” used: folders and documents. Result after years of use: a spaghetti of information structures (or chaos, as one might say) existed.

Now lets take that mind-set of items and structures and shift to the SharePoint paradigm.

SharePoint is an impressive and utterly flexible platform. If you want it, you can have it. The pitfall of flexibility is being over-flexible. On the file share the same problem existed, but there you had only two types of items to “worry” about. In SharePoint, that’s a hole different ballgame. Yes, you have the folders and the documents, but you also have sites, site collections, libraries, lists, calendars, discussion boards, content types, wiki’s, charts, collumns, metadata (managed or not), webparts, lay-out, et cetera, et cetera.

What you have, is an utterly flexible system. What you have, is the risk of “uber spaghetti”, “File shares to the exponent”.

A very important part of SharePoint is Governance; Microsoft states this quite distinctly. And that’s exactly where the statement ends. On Technet there are spread sheets and tools abundant to (start to) implement the system. But a coherent approach lacks. Thus, on the one hand you have the business, on the other “the tool”.

THE most important thing you have to do, to be able to successfully implement SharePoint, is to first align the Business Needs with IT. Translating the way the Business does its work (or wants to do its work; there’s a subtle, but ever so important and difficult to manage difference), to the platform and its mode d’emploi.

If you skip this step (what quite often is the case), you’re wandering into the realm of chaos. Not today, not tomorrow, but soon. The bottom line: one cannot skip this step. Is it hard? Yes. Does it take time? Yes. Do you see the results instantly? No. Can you quantify it in advance? No (if you can, you didn’t skip the step).

SharePoint is like a wild bronco, and a powerful specimen for that matter. But a horse is only useful to us humans, if it’s tamed and does our bidding (of course, bidding in the form of a respectful partnership).

As you tame your horse, you also have to tame SharePoint.

Our approach? First, do the deep dive in to Business, identify its ambition and recognize its strategy. From that, go in to its processes, talk to enough employees, ask feedback, do workshops, encounter enough business units. Then, create overview and form the overall strategic work concept, translate this to the product that needs to be realised. Thereby, don’t go totally awol. Stay in tune with the IT system, its do’s and don’ts, but don’t get drawn into the functionality (yet). Then do the implementation; so that system follows business, and not the other way round.

This approach is a form of walking a tightrope. It takes a lot of experience in the field and substantial knowledge of Business Processes, People behaviour, Information Management and IT systems. It requires being the ultimate intermediary.

Mind you, if you take up the glove, and are willing to walk the distance, afterwards you’ll be glad you did.

My advise: Don’t just buy the horse, but tame the beast.

than the inevitable working from home! Fueled by a lot of buzz, the New World of Work (NWOW) or in dutch “Het Nieuwe Werken” (HNW) is gaining more momentum every day. In a few weeks there will be a NWOW Week where workers will be challenged apply the New World of Work for themselves.

Trouble is that 99% will try to work from home and wonder where all the fuzz is about. Working from home does not boost your productivity ceteris paribus and chances are already doing it in some form or the other. Or you just do not want to work from home (as I do for half of the week)!

Catalyst for this narrow view are general remarks like: NWOW has shortened traffic jams, we are “applying” NWOW at our company or NWOW is working anytime or place you want. The numerous folks that are working on NWOW projects are either defining projects to narrow or way to big. NWOW is not IT. NWOW is not working from home. NWOW is not confined to a subset of the workingclass like the VKbanen argued a few weeks ago. NWOW does not discriminate workers nor work it self!  NWOW is not entrepreneurship nor innovation. When reading the twitter feed on #hnw you will see an impression on where talk is about.

the WOW is about innovating the way people work to increase productivity on the long run. It is not about a single factor of work, it is about a disruptive change that makes improvements on a large scale covers all factors of work. Innovation on the way you work requires out of the box rethinking of your processes, procedures and individual workstyles. This means looking at the individual, teams and the organization as a whole and taking into account all facilitators of work: the physical, technology and the human aspect of work. What will the role of the office be in your WOW? How will you manage employees that make their own choices in work? Does your technology enable flexibility but avoid certain risks?

The World of Work is so much more than just flexibility in working hours and locations, it is a big puzzle with a lot of pieces. This puzzle is different for each organization and even for each individual. Only if all the pieces are there and placed at the right spot your NWOW will make you more productive. There are a lot of people on the puzzle board: you, your boss, your IT departement, your Real Estate / Facilities departement, your HR departement and your CEO/Management Team. These guys have a lot of puzzles to solve but your WOW has to be one of them!

What is your opinion on all the fuzz about (N)WOW or HNW?

PS notice that I dropped the New piece on The (New) World of Work because the ‘new’ word predicts an end state but renewal is continuous! (N)WOW projects do not finish they only start.

Yesterday at the Smart Work and Smart Travel Experience in Utrecht the campagne was launched on the Week of The New World of Work. The title of this campagne (“Het Nieuwe Werken doe je zelf“) actually does not translate very nice in Eglish but an interpretation would be “It is You New World of Work”. The hey take-away here is that you as an employee can change the way you work yourself, bottom up!

This campagne is a coproduction of a number of public and private organizations and, I guess, unique in the world. Their aim is to promote The New World of Work and really make a change the way we work in The Netherlands. Primary objectives here in The Netherlands are to boost our knowledge economy and to reduce traffic.

The Week of The New World of Work starts on November 8th and lasts until the 14th. During this week a lot of promotion on the topic will be made. You can visit a number of locations to see the New World of Work in action, among those locations are (this can’t come as a surprise) YNNO, Youmeet and CreativeValley. A lot of companies will be hosting workshops and other activities to share knowledge and to spread the word on new ways of working. We will be announcing our program for that week shortly!

Next thursday (September 16th) we will host the official launch party of our building! During this party we will also launch our new online platform on “The Way We Work”. If your interested in coming you can register on linkedin.

If you have great ideas for this week or if you want to visit CreativeValley earlier please let me know!

This post is in Dutch because this is about a dutch event hosted at Youmeet. For more info or a translation please contact me!

Dinsdag 30 november aanstaande is het zover: de tweede editie van TEDxAmsterdam! Deze wordt gehouden in de Stadsschouwburg in Amsterdam. Bij Youmeet willen we deze gelegenheid aangrijpen om live mee te kijken met TEDxAmsterdam EN een levendige discussie te voeren over science and fiction en Het Nieuwe Werken. Dus kan jij er niet live bij zijn in Amsterdam en heb jij interesse voor Het Nieuwe Werken of werk in het algemeen, meld je snel aan!

TED is een jaarlijkse conferentie over Technology, Entertainment and Design. Tijdens deze conferentie komt een select gezelschap bijeen om over de trends te praten ruim voordat deze ontstaan. Passie, energie en creativiteit zijn tijdens deze conference de toverwoorden.

TEDxAmsterdam is een onafhankelijk georganiseerd TED evenement volgens hetzelfde concept als TED maar dan in Amsterdam. TEDxAmsterdam staat dit jaar in het teken van ‘Science and Fiction’ en belooft een groot spektakel te worden.

Youmeet is een innovatief vergaderconcept bedacht en gecreëerd door YNNO. Als protest tegen de suffe saaie locaties waar iedereen vergadert. Youmeet is onderdeel van Creative Valley in Utrecht, een van de meest spraakmakende kantoorgebouwen van dit moment.

Rondom de simulcast vanuit het concertgebouw willen wij graag met elkaar discussiëren over dit fantastische thema! Het definitieve programma volgt.

• Datum: 30 november 2010
• Locatie: Youmeet, Orteliuslaan 11 in Utrecht
• Tijdstip: vanaf 8:00 ben je welkom om de hele dag het programma te volgen
• Kosten: toegang is gratis maar we vragen een kleine vergoeding voor eten en drinken van €15. Over het diner en de borrel zijn we nog niet uit. Suggesties zijn welkom!
• Aanmelden: stuur een email of een DM naar Robbert met jouw gegevens en waarom je TEDxAmsterdam@Youmeet. wil bijwonen! Let op we hebben beperkte ruimte dus meld je snel aan.

Tot ziens op de 30ste!

In an interesting article, Chris Anderson and Michael Wolf argue the decease of the Web. Mostly the article covers the commercial end of the Web. My question would be if the stuff they describe in their article is applicable inside the firewall. The consumer world is setting the trend for technology inside organizations these days as it once was the other way around. This would imply that at least some if not all of the article will apply to organizations some time in the future.

The mayor paradigm shift Chris Anderson is describing means that apps are taking over the position of the browser. This shifts was accelerated by the introduction of the iPhone and iPad recently. The total amount of traffic of websites will get smaller and smaller the coming years.

Would this mean that the intranet as we know it will move away from the browser? At the moment workers predominantly use PC’s and laptops for work, either at home or at the office. Smartphones are on the rise and are already taking over as a primary email client. The characteristics of apps is that they offer a closed and limited set of functionalities. The intranet has to be cut into small pieces of homogenous functionalities and be fitted to app size.

We are starting these discussions with our clients with success. Because the examples in the consumer world are ubiquitous (for instance LinkedIn for iPhone or Twitter for Blackberry), everybody can imagine how this will look like. The idea of a peoplefinder like functionality on your smartphone has added value because when you are on your way to a meeting you generally speaking only have access to your smartphone. There are already apps to use your SharePoint intranet available. If Chris is right than we will see this paradigm shift as-well inside the firewall. The primary catalyst will be be shift away from the normal screen and towards iPad or Tablet like hardware.

What do you think? Can you share an example of an app that offers intranet functionality? Would be great to hear and share ideas!

As promised this post will cover my reading of the 10th anniversary edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto. What a great book and I feel a bit embarrassed that I didn’t read this book 10 years ago. This book is entertaining, insightfull and still ahead of it’s time. A lot of things the authors talk about is taking place in some organizations but is still a long way for most organizations.  

Obviously the first lessons is that “markets are conversations” and as Jake McGee outlines it is very hard to fully understand this thesis and truthfully apply it. How can you have real conversations? What is your voice, what is your opinion? How can I start a conversation? With whom?

The second lesson for me is a construct of the following theses:

8 In both a internetworked markets and amoung intranetworked employees, people are speaking to each other in a powerful new way

53 There are two conversations going on. One inside the company. One with the market.

56 These two conversations want to talk to each other. They are speaking in the same language. They recognize each other’s voices.

57 Smart companies will get out of the way and help the inevitable to happen sooner.   

For me the lesson is about the conversations between comployees is equally important than conversations in the market and the conversation between employees and the market is even more important. If you understand that there are more smart people working outside your company than inside, the only smart think to do is to enable conversations between employees and the markt. This lesson is also about the changing role of the organization, embodied mostly by the communications department. Your role has to change to get out of the way and help the inevitable happen sooner. That is you need to facilitate conversations and not be the one that talks to the customer and the employee. Your work needs to move up one level and you need to think about ways to improve conversations that you cannot  manage.

The third important lesson is quoted from Dan Gilmore “The ultimate [journalistic] tool is the human brain: our ability to learn, absorb and adapt. In a conversational mode, we do all of the more effectively. And what is the first rule or a conversation? To listen” Listening is also the most difficult part, that we all have forgotten how to do. Being generally interested in one and other and taking the time to focus on the other. This means to forget about your iPhone or blackberry for 10 minutes! Stop all these interruptions and focus! For a nice article on interruptions and attention look at this post form Nick Carr (thanks to @driessen).

For a great explanation of listening, watch the TEDtalk by Evelyn Glennie!

What were your important lessons from the Cluetrain?

June 30 this year was the release date of the revised edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto. This book was written by four gentlemen: Rick Levine, Christopher Locke, Doc Searls and David Weinberger. Here I must admit the I have only read the start of this book on it’s first release 10 years ago. So I am going to make it up to myself actually and I am going to read it now. Bonus for not having read the first edition that in this edition some commentary is added by Jake McGee, J.P. Rangaswami and Dan Gilmor. I have added their blogs to the digital workspace blogroll on the left side. With one exception: the blog of Rick, Seth Ellis Chocolatier (sorry), the blog tells the story of founding a small chocolate manufacturer!

Later on this year I will blog about the revised edition of The Cluetrain Manifesto!

When you look at a definition of social media I came across in a research paper that was made for Kennisnet by Mark Schoondorp of Winkwaves. The definition Mark used is “Social Media facilitates organized forms to act together”. I interpret acting together as to add value together in a work setting.  When you think of social media as channels or platforms that can be used to facilitate adding value together, you might come up with the following three types of channels: digital channels, physical channels and organizational channels.

Digital channels are the usual suspect. Tools like twitter, blogs and wikis can be used to add value together at work. These tools get a lot of attention at the moment. But physical channels or platforms can be a great accelerator for adding value. A office design that is inspiring will add value. A layout can enable the right social connections. Even the organization itself can be a channel. Can organizing get-togethers to tell stories or a off-site teambuilding session be social media?

I my opinion these three types of social media need to be aligned for the best results. If you interact with someone on twitter you only enter a new level of trust if you have met offline. Storytelling events in the company restaurant will have a bigger impact if they are continued online. Standalone will work and facilitate your efforts but a new level of performance will more likely be reached when all social media types are aligned.

Before my holidays I had a session on the new world of learning. During my preparation I spent a lot of time surfing the web, checking out examples on new and innovative school buildings. There is a lot of great stuff out there! Great examples of complete new buildings like a college in Kopenhagen and some great classroomsetups from the US.

In The Netherlands the New World of Work has hit mainstream and a lot of companies are thinking about new ways of working that integrates IT, Buildings and the way work is organized. More and more organizations are grasping the fact that a new way of working has to facilitated in a number of ways and that a integrated approach will ensure a better result in the end. Education has also been looking for new ways of learning stimulated by new legislation. For schools and universities in the Netherlands an institute that is called ‘Kennisnet’ is making a great effort to stimulate the use of innovative technologies.

What struck me is that a great institution like ‘Kennisnet‘ could be of great help to other sectors like healthcare but also general business. But also education could be helped a great deal by a institution that is stimulating the use of innovative building and teaching facilities. There is a lot happening in The Netherlands as well on innovative new building concepts for schools. Examples are the Niekee School in Roemond and ROC Leiden. A institute specialized on innovative school buildings would be able to gather and spread important lessons learned and be a collector of knowledge on this subject!

In this post I will compare five free apps for the Iphone to use SharePoint on the road. I am going to review iShare, iSharePhone, mDMS, Moshare and iSharePlusLite. These five apps are available form the appstore for free.

iShare did not log onto my SharePoint site so a test run was impossible. iSharePhone is also free but requires some server side stuff which is not an option and a viable model in my opinion. mDMS requires some server side stuff as well. This leaves only Moshare by Moprise and iSharePlusLite by Southlabs.

Moshare is easy to set up. My account is recognized immediately and I can browse through our portal at once. Navigation is nice but our announcements are sorted with the latest item on top and no way to change the sorting. Display of an announcement is nice and even lets you edit or delete the item! Documents can be views in both office 2003 and office 2007 formats. When viewing a document there are two options. The first is to copy a link to the clipboard and the second is an option to email a copy of a document. The latter option is somewhat unnecessary for the hardcore SharePoint users. Navigating you site structure is easy, showing subsites on every level and with the back option you can move easy. Moshare does not offer a breadcrumb so it is not easy to see where you are. Blogs and Wiki’s cannot be opened so there is a big flaw there. The app does not let you change settings so if green is not your color then you will not like the interface… Search enables you to search inside SharePoint and retrieves some great results.

SharePlusLite is a free app that has a pro version as well. Setting your portal up is straightforward. URL’s need http or https. SPL shows your subsites and content directly. Your announcements are sorted the right way, so the newest announcement is on top! The view of an announcement is not that great trying to show everything in an item, I only want the title and body that cannot be viewed directly. The icons of the announcement indicate if an attachment is present. Documents are not opened right away but PDF, office 2003 and 2007 formats are recognized.  An option is presented to email the document but not to copy the link. Icons for the different content are the same as in SharePoint. Blogs do not work in SPL (although they claim they work) but wiki pages can be viewed! Search is only filtering the items shown, no real SharePoint search here.

Actually I cannot choose… The interface of SharePlusLite is much more complete and better. But the functionality in Moshare is much better with better item viewing, editing and real search capabilities. Conclusion is that there are some apps around but quality needs some improvements, but then again what can you expect for free!

One other consideration is: is this any better than the mobile interface, standard since SharePoint 2007. Well actually the interface is quite nice but lacks the ability to browse site structure and is really simple (and loads a lot faster than the apps!).

Question remains how does this work on an iPhone 4 with SharePoint 2010?