MiramarMike: Blog

Have a cracker everyone! Thanks to all the readers, all the commenters, all the workshop attendees, all the listeners, all the clients, all the teachers and to my loving family. (click on the photo to learn how to add your own Santa hat/beard to your Flickr photos)

An Intranet is not a ‘product’ but a ‘process’ that is evolutionary and without end Susan Wiener at Cognitive Communications (NY) If your Intranet has started to stagnate, you may be tempted to go for a big fix. It may be better, however, to identify the key areas that need improvement, and plan for small but effective fixes. A series of successful, small wins will be much more effective than waiting for the one big, and sometimes elusive, win. Don’t let your Intranet grow haphazardly. Try starting with a small project that has a really visible and beneficial result. Make sure it is one you can deliver on. A quick and effective win early on in the project gives you credibility and creates an ‘upward spiral of improvement.’ Measure and report on the progress of each ‘mini project’, tweak your plans if necessary, or even re-evaluate your whole approach if circumstances warrant this. This post was kindly supplied by the fine folk at SnapComms

A great (GREAT!) sentence Enterprise 2.0: It's About Command, Not Control Often when talking to clients about Enterprise 2.0 (or even something as basic as instant messaging) I'll get the feedback that "they might spend all their time messing around". I have to respectfully suggest they have seemingly well behaved employees up to today, and something as simple as instant messaging turns them into serial time wasters then a) they have the wrong employees and b) they have employed some rather strange people who will transform from productive worker to time waster just because they have discovered instant messaging! Trust those highly paid people ... or change your hiring policy

We're young, we're web-enabled and we're funky and we're also (definitely) sons, granddaughters and neighbours AND therefore we're NOT doing anything that hasn't been done before. Sex ... sorry ... was invented by your parents. Social networking was ... sorry ... a precursor to sex. Your parents ... sorry ... maybe still having sex ... as I write this. My point, and I have one*, is let's not get lost in the shiny stuff, the Google-ness of seeing our own house on a computer (no because, I can see it by ... looking at it) and by being Friend-ed/Follow-ed on some webservice. Digital natives - listen to the immigrants because they are make it better. Just like real life. So here's our challenge - between now (Sat, 12:19am NZT) and Monday ((9am, Mike time) - ask a"real person" what they think you're up to and how it benefits them/the company/society .. really, ask them .. why be scared? * I know

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Bollix! Google Docs to Micrsoft Word ( more ... ) And as you can see Google Docs to a stack other formats as well - HTML, OpenOffice, PDF, RTF and Text ... that should do ya! And yes, it is good enough! Getting Microsoft Word into Google Docs ( more ... ) What if you want to go the other way? You can either upload from the site or email them in. And if you have a whole stack of documents then check out the Document List Uploader ( download Windows .exe ). So there you are - documents in, documents out in loads of formats PLUS an API so you can write your own importer/exporter if that works for you.

1: The End of Online Anonymity We'll pay for our services on the new internet with our identity and personal information. When the companies we sold ourselves to use it for their own benefits, our outrage will come too late. We'll only have ourselves to blame. 2: Google’s User Data Empire I don’t understand how prominent geeks normally so paranoid over spyware and whatnot can ignore Google. They function on a higher level than any spyware company in history, and do it all by winking at the webmaster community and acting like they’ll look out for us. “Do No Evil” is the motto of a private company. Not a public company. It’s the antithesis of the free market economy. What is good for the consumer is not good for the company, and that is especially true with an advertising company that has access to so much data. 3: Google Knows Where I Am and Everything Else I Do Just how much does Google know? Ok for Google to control these many bits of data on each user no matter if they use it

Under the fine steerage of Miriam Lips (Professor of E-Government) the fine folks at Victoria University here in Wellington have released their Effective Electronic Records Management in 21st Century Government * research findings. This research project investigated how public servants across the New Zealand government handle emails of significant organisational value. The project also identified specifications for effective electronic record management across New Zealand central government, and made recommendations to government agencies on how to improve email management practices that support compliance with the Public Records Act. Whilst the findings aren't world shattering they do solidify what most of us are thinking. And, even if you're not working within a government agency they have ramifications - here's the summary (my emphasis ) Similar to available research on e-mail management (e.g. Ducheneaut & Bellotti, 2001; Seow et al., 2005) our research findings d