7 Steps to Web 2.0

7-steps to getting Web 2.0 into your Intranet

We have all wondered how can we start using Web 2.0 in our businesses. Well, lets start small. Business people, CIO's, and high level management have always had a hard time changing their businesses on the fly. This is why Ford is still making SUV's, in such a weak market. The rise in gas prices didn't just hit, but Ford's production lines can't change overnight. Thats the beauty of technology. IT people can welcome change overnight, with buy-in from the right people.

1) Find out the homepage of you CIO/CEO/and high level management. Now I am not going to condone this, because your companies policies might be different, but why don't you put a little tracking on your firewall or check their actual computers. We are IT people, we all know how to do this. I can tell you, this is a great way to start building your "new" intranet to be productive. This will become evident later as to why we did this. I mean how many of us actually have the intranet as our homepage beyond the first week we have our machine. I personally use my Google page.

2) Get a copy of your intranets source code. Now this can be more complicated than most people think. Small company IT departments, you will have no problem, however larger companies guard their secrets even on the inside. However, there is a way around this, download the HTML and write your own backend prototype for later use. It will look the same, but for proof-of-concept it will work great. After all, the internal team can integrate your contribution a little later.

3) Setup a virtual machine to run an instance of intranet++. Sorry, I couldn't resist with the ++. So you are going to need a development environment, simple is king. I recommend a simple LAMP stack from RPath, after all you probably aren't on the actual infrastructure team.

Now for the fun part:

4) Get information out of your intranet. To do this, I would recommend using javascript to allow hiding and showing of divs. This will keep your content people happy, as the information is still on the page, but it will make your users happy, because they can hide the information they don't want. You can check out webmaster world: http://www.webmasterworld.com/forum91/441.htm. This will simply hide those ugly tables of stock prices, unnecessary links, and irrelevant stories.

5) Create a few widgets for the pages from step 1. Using your management chains homepages you will really hit home the power of Web 2.0. Get the RSS feed, tie into their API, or just take and make a simple iFrame (not quite so web 2.0). If you use the API, make sure you get generic functions that will allow all users to use the widget. These widgets can now be placed into the space created earlier by hiding the divs with simple javascript

6) Catch your management chain the next time they walk by your office. You just ask them to stop by for a minute and say, "Hey, do you know who is in charge of the intranet, I had a few ideas like, (DEMO TIME)". Another option is say, "Have you heard of Web 2.0, over the weekend I threw some ideas around and wrote this up, what do you think", or if you aren't comftorable with that just implement it as a secondary intranet and spread it around virally, like viral marketing in Web 2.0 really works. Grassroots has been beneficial for many companies.
DISCLAMER: Make sure you don't alude to the fact that this might have distracted you from your normal job, I don't want to be responsible for a rise in unemployment.

7) Prosper

Management will notice that they can get all the information they need, all on one page. They should quickly see the benefit of having more homepages set to the intranet. You can get company data directly to the users, while allowing them to keep the same functions they are used to.

I wish you the best of luck, and if none of these steps work, I will give your intranet team a call. Send me an email with their phone number, and I will give them a piece of my mind.


As always
John