It”s been a while since I blogged, but then I”ve managed to fit 14 flights into the last seven weeks, four of them across the Atlantic. Today I only had to go as far as London for a meeting of the Intranets Forum. The keynote speaker at the meeting was Adam Pope, the Network Content Manager at Arup. His role, which you would not guess from the title, is to manage the extensive Communities of Practice application at Arup, which has been highly successful. Many intranet managers complain to me that they cannot get any momentum into their discussion groups. Adam has certainly succeeded and I had the pleasure of congratulating him on winning a Gold Award in this year”s Intranet Innovation Awards, sponsored by Step Two Designs. If you want to read more about Adam”s work then you can find full details of all the award winners in a report that has just been published by Step Two. This year Arup were also commended for their Projects Database, and I think that is the first time that one company has featured twice in the same year.

There were about twenty people at the Intranets Forum meeting, and what was really interesting was that no one had the title of Intranet Manager. Jane McConnell has commented with customary insight on the range of titles that people work under when managing intranets, but to find no Intranet Manager at the event today was  quite surprising. There was a very interesting discussion in the second half of the meeting of how the Intranets Forum could be of more value to its members, and some excellent ideas for 2011 were identified.

It was through a project that I undertook for Arup in 1996 that I became aware of the initial development of intranets in the USA, especially at companies in the IT sector. The objective of the project was to develop ways in which the consulting engineers in the company could share their knowledge. In the course of the project I tried to persuade the company to experiment with the technology. The timing was not right for Arup, but I felt there was a consulting opportunity for me and I set up Intranet Focus Ltd in 1999.   So congratulations to Arup, and to all the winners and to those who were highly commended. Next year will you be one of the winners? Register your interest today.