One line of conversation at the recent IBF24 event that really struck a chord was provoked by a simple one line tweet “The intranet is dead”. At a time when so many organisations, including my own, are investing in their intranets, it was a striking comment.

Alex Manchester believes that the name ‘intranet’ certainly carries too much baggage but that conceptually, it’s hard to say if intranets are dying a slow death to be replaced by the digital workplace.

Intranets are strange beasts. Hidden behind the corporate firewall, they’re very often the practical hub of an organisation serving employee needs. Equally, as we learnt during @thoughtfarmer ‘s presentation, an intranet can be an ignored sink hole of woe. Optimised for Netscape 4.0 indeed …!

I enjoy events such as IBF24 as much for the official comment as the peripheral insight afforded through Twitter. Viewing other company intranets is an opportunity that many corporate intranet folks do not often receive and, frankly, they should grab it with both hands. Grab too some excellent ideas: Who could fail to be impressed with the Ernst and Young people networking graphical tool, or the slightly more achievable British Airways Outlook email signature creator? I’ll be including both in future developments.