One of the notable trends within intranets is the move to mobile: the ability to access intranet content and function in a webpage or app format. For many businesses, it’s seen as the next obvious frontier and a great way to engage a larger enterprise audience. But to consider mobile intranet as just simply a way of broadening access is to miss a trick. Embedded in nearly every smartphone these days are GPS chips and gyroscopes (and soon NFC) which provide new intranet opportunities: in short, your current intranet knows who you are, your skills and when you’re available, but through a mobile phone, it will shortly know where you are and, curiously, which way up you’re standing!

So how might these new features be used on an intranet? Here are a few ideas.

half-baked

adjective (of an idea or philosophy) Not fully thought through; lacking a sound basis

The halfbakery is a community-based ideas bank used by people who wish to propose and develop (not always serious) half-baked inventions. It’s been operating quietly since the mid-90s, generating thousands of ideas every year – it was, and still is, a social network and a fully functioning collaborative space way before such phrases had been conceived.

At the recent IBF24 event, hosted by Paul Miller and the team at the Intranet Benchmarking Forum, the second annual “My Beautiful Intranet” competition was held. The winner was a good looking site from the Government of British Columbia. Congratulations to everyone who entered and in particular to the team behind the winner.

However, much of the debate online and offline surrounding this intranet beauty pageant concerned a number of key questions:

1. What is ‘beautiful’?
2. What is the point of aesthetic beauty without functional beauty?
3. What can we learn from the participants and winners?