Infovark

What did happen to the Intranets? Beats me.

When I first started as an intern, Lotus Notes was all the rage in my department. People would create Lotus Notes databases on share drives for everything. Access controls were few, administrative access was plentiful, and the thing grew like you wouldn’t believe. The phenomenon, termed “Notes Sprawl”, meant that everyone had their own little mini-silos of information scattered around, trying to solve everything from financial reporting to whose turn it was to bring the cake to the next morning tea.

Of all these Notes databases, by far the most popular on my local Notes server was a forum that allowed all the people in my building to talk to each other. Everyone would log in every day to chat about various topics — some corporate, some personal. Occasional flame wars would erupt. Both meaningful and frivolous discussion flowed. It was probably the first functional online community I’d ever seen.

It didn’t last. When the IT team discovered its high rate of growth and restricted access to the forum, employees had nowhere to go. At about the same time, Internet access arrived on our corporate PCs. The once-healthy corporate community dispersed into fragmented Internet communities.

The social elements of our forum, which were the actual reason that people were using the corporate intranet, could be served just as well by the public Internet. Each individual ventured forth to pursue their own interests with other like-minded cake connoisseurs and amateur radio operators. But business concerns could not be aired on the open Internet in the same way as before. A valuable corporate communications channel disappeared. Employees retreated to their established chains of command for corporate information.

Sam Lawrence, over at Jive Software is absolutely correct when he points out that Facebook is a success because it’s people centric. Intranets, on the other hand, have been seen more as content repositories.

Here’s the thing: People don’t care about content as much as they do about people. The conversation you have about the content is equally, if not more, important than the content itself. And the conversation you have about the content depends on the people involved in the discussion. Getting the right people together is essential.

Yet the whole concept of “The Business Intranet” is hampered by very Web 1.0 thinking. It’s treated as a static place to get information, rather than an interactive place for people to connect. It’s an Employee Manual on a computer. (Nobody reads those either.)

If Enterprise 2.0 is going to deliver improved utility in the workplace, we have to stop thinking so much about the content. The content is an artifact of the conversation. We have to start thinking about the people and their human need to connect with others.