It never ceases to amaze me how few intranet conferences there are. Even in the USA there is no conference on the scale of the three-day IntraTeam Event in Copenhagen last week, which attracted around 210 delegates, though in terms of delegate numbers this is well beaten by the 600 who will turn up for Congres Intranet in Utrecht on 15 March.  However I am even more surprised by the lack of intranet training courses. In the UK Melcrum runs an Intranet Masterclass event which covers every possible aspect of intranet management in two days but the 2011 event is already sold out. Now the first structured set of intranet workshops has been launched by the UK Electronic Information Group, of which I am Chairman.

UkeiG has a very high reputation for its training courses, but they tend to be one-off events responding to feedback from the 2000 members of the Group about their current training requirements.  Typically these attract 25-30 delegates and there is not enough time to provide much in the way of individual support. On March 30 the first of three Intranet Roadmap Workshops will take place in London, covering intranet strategy development based on the identification of user requirements, leading through to the preparation of an intranet strategy.  This workshop is being given by me and Dion Lindsay, and attendee numbers are being restricted to 16 so that there is an opportunity to work with each attendee on their own particular issues.   A second workshop in May will cover social media and collaboration, with Dion as the presenter, and then in September I will be covering intranet technology issues.

Each attendee will be asked in advance for their areas of interest, so that the workshop can be focused in on these areas as far as is practicable.  We are also planning to develop a post-workshop community so that attendees can keep in touch with each other, and this will be integrated into the Intranets Forum which UKeiG has been running for some time. Depending on the feedback from the first three courses UkeiG will consider whether some form of ‘certified’ course for intranet managers might be developed for 2012.  But first we need to make a success of the 2011 courses, which for non-members of UkeiG are priced at just £240 plus VAT for each course. That is not a misprint – just exceptional value for money!  Because of the limitation on numbers it would be wise to book sooner than later.

Martin White