This year is shaping up to be the best year from a business perspective since I set up Intranet Focus Ltd in 1999.  Among the highlights so far have been

• Writing a research report on enterprise mobile applications for the Intranet Benchmarking Forum
• Working with SparkNow on a KM project for a development bank
• Having my Intranet Management Handbook published by Facet Publishing in the UK and Information Today Inc in the USA
• Working with Information Today Inc to set up the Enterprise Search Europe conference that takes place on 24/25 October
• Winning a project from the European Commission to prepare a report on the future of enterprise search in the EU
• Working on an intranet technology roadmap project for a leading reinsurance company

For the last two months I have also been engaged on an intranet/information management strategy development project for multi-national industrial company, working alongside Gerry McGovern and Brian Lamb from Customer Carewords.  This has taken me away from the office desk for extended periods of time to conduct senior management interviews, and as a result I’ve had to put blogging and tweeting in my pending tray.  There are still two months of this project to go, and  I am now in the process of developing some scenarios for 2012-2015  and with associated implementation plans. What is interesting about this project is that the vision is to create a digital workspace environment, rather than just smarten up the intranet platforms, and there are also some fascinating networking/knowledge management issues to consider

Both this project, and the EU enterprise search project will not be completed until the end of September.  SharePoint-related projects have also been a feature of 2011. My diary for the rest of the year includes participating in some excellent conferences, notably KM World in Washington, the JBoye meeting in Aarhus, Intrateam meetings in Stockholm and Copenhagen (an enterrpise mobility workshop) and of course the Enterprise Search Europe conference. I’m also looking forward to the publication by NetStrategyJMC of the Digital Workplace Trends 2012 survey. Have you completed a questionnaire? It is not too late to do so.

On a table in my office are a collection of books that are worthy of review, and over the next few weeks I will be blogging on these books and some other resources I have come across.  I also plan to work on my Search Check enterprise search benchmarking methodology for release at the Enterprise Search Europe conference, and update the resources section of my web site.

Martin White