I spent most of my day yesterday at a J.Boye Intranet Strategy and Round TableMeeting. For those of you unfamiliar with J.Boye, the group facilitates closed-door, confidential, and vendor-free conversations between intranet managers and similar professionals across a wide range of industries. They meet quarterly to have very open and honest discussions about intranet related issues, with the goal of helping each other to solve problems, discover new technologies, and to develop professionally.
“The intranet is dead” – and discuss, @jboye meeting in Toronto.
— Zena Applebaum (@ZAppleCI) March 7, 2013
By the end of the day, however, I was starting to think that maybe I had been too hasty with my tweet. The intranet isn’t entirely dead, though I can’t help but think that maybe, rather than greater evolution, the intranet needs to devolve a bit. Let me explain.
The concept of an intranet will undoubtedly change as the demands from users change, and as more and more firms start to make content available through mobile browsers, tablets, and the like. The question is not how we can make the current intranet more effective, or what direction we should take the intranet next, but what direction will its organic evolution take once it is driven by user demand and not by hot dog vendors?