Both a recent vacation and the tragic events of September 11th have prompted me to revisit an old, nagging question of mine. To what degree is the current state of exponential growth of technology, the infinitesimal ways of staying connected, and the intrusion of technology into every facet of our lives actually improving our lives? At what cost to our basic needs and humanity?
Can you remember back to a time when computers, the Internet, e-mail, cell phones, multiple voice mail accounts, and pagers didn't permeate our lives? If so, how did you feel about your day-to-day life's activities? Did you actually go home at the end of a workday and do something radical like spend time with family and loved ones? Maybe even spend time outside in the great outdoors? When you went on vacation, did you truly detach from your work life to rest and take in different experiences?
Now, think about recent times. Has all this technology that purported to make our lives easier, actually done so? Has your time been freed up from mundane tasks so you could attend to more value-added ones both professionally and personally? Has your stress level fallen or gone through the roof? Are you so connected (maybe even expected to be so) that you are never out of reach of someone who might want to get in touch with you?
I don't pose these questions to cast a negative light on technology or progress. I am quick to say technology has improved the lives of many, mine included. After all, most of you reading this (myself included) wouldn't have the careers we have today without new technologies. The Internet has made the world a little smaller with news and information of all kinds just a click away. E-mail has enabled us to stay in contact with friends, meet people and have experiences we otherwise might not have. Cell phones have saved some people's lives, offered some closure, and provided clues during recent tragedies. Businesses and the economy have realized efficiencies of which our ancestors couldn't even conceive.
However, have we lost touch with ourselves in the super fast pace of society, the need to have "the latest and greatest", and the constant desire to "one up" the competition? How often do we take action to truly satisfy our deepest needs versus doing things to appease other people's expectations and perceptions of us?
At what point, does embracing technology morph into being consumed by it? Where do you draw the line? Or, do you let others draw it for you?
What really got me thinking about and harping on this subject was one of several experiences on my vacation. On this recent trip in the middle of nowhere on the coast of Maine, I was on a ranger-led trip to a remote island. Obviously all the passengers on this boat were visitors and on some sort of vacation or day trip, yet several people still couldn't put the cell phones and PDA's down long enough to enjoy the view. Who are all these people talking to and what is that important? Can we not even detach long enough to renew the spirit? Are all of us broken spirits of the world unable to do this due to some deep-seated insecurity that if we disconnect for even a short time, the powers that be won't want us anymore? If that were to happen, do we feel that we would be left with nothing, or, worse yet, forced to spend real time getting in touch with our true selves?
Some of you will write off these thoughts as just a soapbox moment and you will wait for the next article and a helpful tutorial or case study. That is okay. However, for others, now may be more appropriate than ever to take a look at our lives and see how we can embrace the gifts technology offers us without sacrificing our own spirit.
As always, comments, complaints, and suggestions are welcome at paulag@enter.net.
Last time ( A PDF Primer Part I)I told you all about why you would want to use PDFs in the course of your work. I know you’ve been waiting for the how…. so without any ado, let’s cut to the chase and create some PDFs!
What I learned in my last job is that many people aren’t sure when is the best time to use a PDF versus an HTML file versus some native application file for given web content. In addition, people aren’t always sure how to create them and some people wouldn’t know how to view them if the tech support staff didn’t already configure their computer properly so it “just happened” in the background. In this two article series, I plan to give you some rules of thumb for when to use PDFs versus other types of files as well as a quick primer of the different ways available to create PDFs and when to use what.
Your Webmaster delivers the news that she is leaving for new challenges. Are you prepared? Do you have any clue whatsoever what she does? Have you had any cross training with other Web talent in your organization? For that matter, do you even have other web talent in your organization?
P.G. Daly found getting the decentralized businesses in her company to accept intranet standards akin to herding cats, but less enjoyable. In response to never ending inquiries about what skills are required to author web pages, get access to do so, training, and the like, she revamped her standards and guidelines. Given the environment at her company, the limited authority afforded intranet professionals, and the need to lay down the law at least on certain issues, she created a basic framework by which content authors must work. The following article takes a glimpse at the guidelines she setup.
Can you imagine a sales force roaming the countryside selling products without access to up to date customer information? Well, then you can imagine P.G. Daly's reaction when one division explained to her that a third party vendor maintained all the customer data for their division and that the only way salespeople could get this information was to phone the third party vendor, have them run a report, and then have it sent via fax or mail. Certainly not the most efficient or cost-effective process on the planet. Why not use the Intranet?
After much ado and a very long wait, I recently gave my Intranet a new look and feel. Originally, the project was supposed to encompass a number of process and procedural changes as well, but these got sidelined in light of a number of political and resource roadblocks. Nevertheless, I decided there were enough improvements to be had with just updating the look, feel, and navigation of the Intranet, so I forged ahead.
After her last column, people asked P.G. Daly about other big success stories from her intranet, so she thought she'd share another "real big one" with you. One of the most sure-fire ways of driving traffic to your site is putting something employees absolutely need on the site and making that the only way they can get it. Sound simple? It can be (at least sometimes).
About a year ago, one division of P.G Daly's company came to her with the problem of disseminating weekly sales reports. The problem was that they had about 60 sales people across 2 different sales forces (product lines) that had to submit sales reports to the corporate office on a weekly basis. These reports needed to be distributed to an audience of 40 or more people from regional sales managers to upper management. The process in place was to have everyone e-mail their weekly report (in a Microsoft Word Format that had a common template) to an Administrative Assistant who would photocopy and assemble packets that got sent through the regular inter-office mail. Needless to say, this occupied a good piece of this assistant's time the beginning of each week and wasn't the most timely distribution of information. This article shows how P.G. Daly and the company's Intranet came to the rescue.
Recently, a number of people have asked P.G Daly questions about directory structure for Intranets. Namely, what is the best way to structure folders and files for my site? This question is valid both in the macro sense of an entire Intranet as well as for each individual author creating their own little piece of the pie. So, she got to thinking about how effectively she set things up on her company's Intranet many moons ago. What does she recommend as good practices? What would she suggest avoiding?
Many readers want to know how P.G. Daly designed and administered her intranet usage survey. Rather than answering a number of e-mails privately, she thought it would be best to share these details on the survey experience with everyone, so as to help readers implement their own intranet survey and put this knowledge to good use.
In her last column, P.G. Daly shared with you the key conclusions from her recent Intranet survey. This time, she'd like to address the answers to the important questions of -- What do users want to see? What would encourage them to use the Intranet more often? And, most critical, what recommendations and actions does she have planned to address some of the biggest issues?
After over 18 months since the intranet was "officially rolled out", it was time to formally ask users if they were using the intranet or not and to find out what they found useful or useless as well as determine what would get them to use it more. Here's how I asked went about sending out and intranet survey and the type of feedback I recieved in return.
Your Company just formed an E-Business. What
technical skills does this organization need to be successful? Even if
most of the large technical projects are outsourced, surely the group
needs a core of technical skills to do some development and maintenance
in-house, and even more importantly, to understand what systems are
being implemented by these vendors and how it all fits together.
Unless you are in a high-tech company, or just plain
got lucky, there is a reasonable chance that upper management is not
quite as active in their support as you might like. So you're building
the success of your intranet one "worker bee" at a time with some degree
of grassroots effort at play. Can you truly grow an intranet
organization-wide one person at a time? Maybe not quite that slowly, but
you can increase usage and usefulness one niche at a time.
P.G. Daly's recent articles on creating and managing
intranet content ("Creating and Managing Content" and "Authoring Tool
Standards: Critical? or Form Over Function?") generated an overwhelming
response from readers. In this column, She shares some of the most
helpful comments and insights.
No matter how flashy the design, advanced the technology, or just plain cool your intranet is, the question still remains: are people using it? Although all companies have users on both ends of the PC savvy scale, overall, how would you rate your company's Technology IQ?
What about new authors or PC savvy folks in an MIS Department that want to publish content? Should they be forced into the "old" standards or allowed to branch out and try a new approach?
Content is king for an intranet. Yet if content is so important, and users desire it, why is it so difficult to create and maintain large amounts of information on a company-wide scale?
As Intranet professionals, we tend to think most about technology (if we are techies), design (if we are designers or artists) or functionality (if we deal with the business users). But how often do we consider the basic organizational dynamics of our company?
"Build It, And They Will Come". It may have worked for
Kevin Costner in the movie "Field of Dreams", but chances
are this philosophy alone won't work for your company's
Intranet.
Images
[
Home | Discussion Forum | How Do I... |
Lotus Notes Intranets |
Microsoft SharePoint |
Products |
Shopping
]
