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'Designing intranets: creating sites that work' and 'What every intranet team should know' - books now available on Amazon #intranet

Since the publication of Step Two Designs' first book in 2009 - What every intranet team should know - we've been fulfilling orders direct from our Sydney office. 

Now we're very pleased to be able to offer the books direct from Amazon.com and Amazon.co.uk, making for much faster and cheaper delivery to US and European customers. Of course, Australian and New Zealand customers can still buy direct from Sydney. 

All details can be found on the Step Two Designs site, or you can head straight to Amazon at the links below. 

What every intranet team should know

This is the definitive ‘quick start’ guide to intranets, providing intranet teams with a to-the-point overview of how to plan, design, manage and grow intranets. A beautifully printed A5-sized 110-page book, this will not stray far from the hands of the intranet team.

Amazon.co.uk - £18

Amazon.com - US$22

Online from Step Two Designs -$22

Designing intranets: Creating sites that work

The definitive textbook for intranet teams on how to design intranets that work for staff. In 275 pages, this book walks through a practical user-centred approach to the design process, richly illustrating each step with full-colour screenshots from organisations across the globe. A perfect complement to What every intranet team should know.

 

Amazon.co.uk - £35

Amazon.com - $54

Online from Step Two Designs - $54

Designing intranets: Creating sites that work

Last week was a huge one for Step Two Designs, as we celebrated the publication of Designing intranets: creating sites that work, the brand new intranet book from James Robertson.

This is a truly awesome piece of work – 275 pages full colour, and packed with ideas, examples and screenshots. It also maps out Step Two's core intranet design project methodology and makes it easy to follow.

Essentially, this book is a must read for anyone involved in intranets and intranet projects of any shape or size, and whether you're new to the topic, taking an intranet on as part of a broader team or role (such as communications manager), or a seasoned intranet manager or owner.

For further information, a full break down of chapters, and details on how to order, head to the Step Two Designs site.

 

SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration - available now

Michael Sampson's (@collabguy) new book, SharePoint Roadmap for Collaboration, has been published and is available for order right now. You can even download the first chapter for free.

This is Michael's second SharePoint-focused book and in a chat last week he explained to that me it's quite a different beast from Seamless Teamwork. Needless to say, it's already getting great feedback:

• Craig from Australia ... "I'm on chapter 6 of SharePoint roadmap and have already been singing its praises around the office. It's refreshing to get some fantastic content on SharePoint from a non technical perspective."
• Paul from Australia ... "Your new book is awesome - better than your first." (@paulculmsee)
• Shanon from New Zealand ... "I am thoroughly enjoying your book .... I am highlighting like mad and the margins are heavy with notes and I hope that I can pass on some of the lessons I am learning."

Register to purchase your copy over at www.sharepointroadmap.com

High quality and free book resources on Enterprise 2.0

The first chapter of Andrew McAfee's new book, Enterprise 2.0: New Collaborative Tools for your Organization’s Toughest Challenges, has been made available for free by Harvard Business School Press. All you need to do is register your name and email address with the publisher.

I haven't had a chance to read it yet, but the first chapter is downloaded and waiting for some time. You can register and download here.

The blurb for McAfee's new book is as follows:

"Web 2.0" is the portion of the Internet that's interactively produced by many people; it includes Wikipedia, Facebook, Twitter, Delicious, and prediction markets. In just a few years, Web 2.0 communities have demonstrated astonishing levels of innovation, knowledge accumulation, collaboration, and collective intelligence.

Now, leading organizations are bringing the Web's novel tools and philosophies inside, creating Enterprise 2.0. In this book, Andrew McAfee shows how they're doing this, and why it's benefiting them. Enterprise 2.0 makes clear that the new technologies are good for much more than just socializing-when properly applied, they help businesses solve pressing problems, capture dispersed and fast-changing knowledge, highlight and leverage expertise, generate and refine ideas, and harness the wisdom of crowds.

Most organizations, however, don't find it easy or natural to use these new tools initially. And executives see many possible pitfalls associated with them. Enterprise 2.0 explores these concerns, and shows how business leaders can overcome them.

McAfee brings together case studies and examples with key concepts from economics, sociology, computer science, consumer psychology, and management studies and presents them all in a clear, accessible, and entertaining style. Enterprise 2.0 is a must-have resource for all C-suite executives seeking to make technology decisions that are simultaneously powerful, popular, and pragmatic.

As you'll likely know, Andrew McAfee is the guy who coined the term "Enterprise 2.0". His work (including his blog) is often a great read, and his video presentation and live Q&A at the 2008 Enterprise 2.0 Executive forum was a highlight of the event.

That memory brings me nicely on to another superb Enterprise 2.0 resource that you can find online, and one that I've been meaning to link to for a while.

Ross Dawson's recently published Implementing Enterprise 2.0 report is available in hard copy from Amazon (and as business reports go it's a work of art), while a good deal of the content has been published online. The free chapters include the implementation framework, a chapter on Governance, and more. The full outline is as follows:

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 technologies and approaches can be a key driver of competitiveness and profitability.

However since Enterprise 2.0 sits at the nexus of technology and organizational culture, there can be no one-size-fits-all approach.

Implementing Enterprise 2.0 Report provides detailed practical insights into how to create substantial business value with web technologies, supported by numerous case studies of successful implementation and lessons learned.

If not already consumed and you're keen on keeping up to date with the latest thinking on this topic, then these two resources should be high on your reading list, and it's great to be able to see a good portion of them online before you order the whole schebang.

Successful Enterprise Search Management

Martin White has announced and previewed his new book/report, Successful Enterprise Search Management, co-authored with Stephen Arnold:

"This is the first book to be written on the entire process of justifying, specifying, evaluating, selecting and implementing an enterprise search application," says Martin.

Stephen Arnold comments on his blog: "Key word retrieval is no longer enough for today’s increasingly savvy and demanding users. Few people want to guess what magic sequence of key words unlocks the information in an enterprise search system. Users want to go "beyond search" with the system providing suggestions, delivering answers, and providing actionable information. Laundry lists just aren’t what users want today."

You can preview the full contents and find details on how to order at a special pre-publication price over at Martin's site.

Intranets can't just be about conversations

Reading Niall Cook's new book - "Enterprise 2.0" I'm struck by his early thoughts (Page 18) on social tools within the workplace. To quote the book:

The Cluetrain Manifesto predicted the downfall of traditional one-to-many marketing techniques in the age of the Internet. Perhaps less well-known are the insights into the changes that might take place in the workplace:

• Companies make a religion of security, but this is largely a red herring. Most are protecting less against competitors than against their own market and workforce.
• As with networked markets, people are also talking to each other directly inside the company - and not just about rules and regulations, boardroom directives, or bottom lines.
• Such conversations are taking place today on corporate intranets. But only when conditions are right.
• Companies typically install intranets top-down to distribute HR policies and other corporate information that workers are doing their best to ignore.
• Intranets naturally tend to route around boredom. The best are built bottom-up by engaged individuals cooperating to construct something far more valuable: an intranetworked corporate conversation.
• A healthy intranet organises workers in many meanings of the word. Its effect is more radical than the agenda of any union.
• While this scares companies witless, they also depend heavily on open intranets to generate and share critical knowledge. They need to resist the urge to "improve" or control these networked conversations.
• When corporate intranets are not constrained by fear and legalistic rules, the type of conversation they encourage sounds remarkably like the conversation of the networked marketplace.

_________________________

Given the book's title Niall's perspective here is obvious. Intranets can be fantastic connectors for employees. I mean, let's break the word down: intra (inside) net (network). To use them solely as top down information dumping grounds, as inferred above, is a waste and a misuse.

I don't think he's saying there isn't but, of course, there is still plenty of room, and moreover plenty of need, for HR policies, organisational forms and so on. Multi-tiered use of intranets is a must. We need (and now expect) the cool stuff, but we also need the form to book a holiday while we're at it.

It's a good book so far. I'll post more as and when I get through it.