The first thing I noticed when I registered for IntraTeam 2016 last week in Copenhagen was how many people there were around the conference area. This year over 200 delegates turned up, the best attendance since 2012. Tuesday was workshop day. I was giving a workshop on content migration in the afternoon so took the opportunity to participate in a social business adoption workshop led by Luis Suarez (@elusa) which was exceptionally interesting. For the first time I understood what ‘working out loud’ was all about and apart from much else gained some new perspectives on expertise identification and exchange. There was also a warning against the use of gamification. This was especially welcome as I often seem to be the only intranet consultant that sees little value in this approach.

A number of people have already blogged about the conference, notably Sam Marshall and Wedge. You can track comments and downloadable versions of papers at #IEC16. As well as presenting a paper on information risk while dressed in a heavy anorak and gloves (it’s a long story!) I took part in a very good final review session with Luis and Nina Nikolaisen (COWI) in which we tried to summarise the themes and outcomes of the conference. There certainly seemed to be confidence in the air, with a number of large scale intranet and search projects being presented. The Skanska and Robin Partington and Partners intranets were miles apart in scale but not in how well they had been aligned with business requirements. The majority of the intranets were search-driven, and it was interesting to see that the search sessions had to be held in the main conference room as there was not enough space in the other rooms. Other important themes included the management of social networks (including a very polished presentation from Shell) and knowledge management/social business. As always time-keeping and the overall organisation were spot on. There was a neat presentation in one corner of the room set up by Mads Møller of over 40 examples of home pages, each with a pie chart of the balance between News, Tools, Library and Collaboration, which stimulated a lot of discussion.

Although the delegate base was large the number of delegates from outside Denmark and Sweden was quite small. For the UK it could be that Intranet Now is providing a domestic forum, with the 2016 Intranet Now event taking place on 30 September. More details on that very soon. Because most of the delegates are already IntraTeam community members there was a very good buzz around the conference, and about a third of the audience (on a show of hands) had been to three or more previous events. It also meant that in the presentations and in discussions over coffee and pastries delegates were as ready to share the problems they had experienced as well as the successes. All that I missed was any consideration of content quality. At the end of the event I was interviewed for a video that no doubt will be used to promote IntraTeam 2017 (28 Feb-2 March). I was asked if I had met any interesting people. Without thinking about it I responded that everyone I had met was interesting, and on reflection some days later that is a good summary of my experience at the event. My thanks go to Kurt and his team for the invitation to participate.

Martin White