Last week, I had the great pleasure of attending and presenting at the intra.NET Reloaded event in Berlin. Subtitled “From broadcasting to collaboration”, the conference focused on the evolution of intranets from a publishing (and broadly internal communications owned-channel) into the social collaboration space that many companies are now launching. The event was very well attended, with strong representation from eBay, NASA, Wells Fargo, Pfizer, Dell and my own company.

In early March, I attended the London Designing intranets that work masterclass led by James Robertson (@s2d_jamesr) of Step Two Designs. If you haven’t already heard of James, read his blog or own one of his books, then you need to fix that immediately. James knows intranets, therefore you should know James.

I was looking forward to attending James’ masterclass because he promised an interactive day full of:

• design principles and concepts
• practical techniques, including card sorting, tree testing and usability testing
• pros and cons of the homepage design

Did he deliver on that promise? I think so. Ok, I am not saying James didn’t deliver what he had promised, nor am I saying I was disappointed in the masterclass. Actually it is the exact opposite, but I was disappointed in the debate. I wanted more from my fellow attendees!