Interesting elsewhere: #intranet questions, answers and award-winners

The four Intranetizens like to read widely on anything to do with intranets – content, strategy, design, technology, and much else besides.

Here’s a round-up of what’s caught our eye this week.

• 2012 Intranet Innovation Award winners: Announced this week, this years winners go beyond simply deploying the latest technologies, to using these leading ideas to deliver tangible business benefits. Competition was so tough this year that our own Luke and Jonathan had to settle for special commendations. Well done to all the winners.
• A round-up of the Innovation Award winners: James Dellow has a run-down on the winning entries and what makes them so innovative
• Can ethnography save enterprise social networking?:  In this detailed and thoughtful piece for Ethnography Matters, Cisco’s @MikeGotta explains how an ethnographic approach can help to make a success of enterprise social, by providing a focus on non-technological issues related to identity, media literacy, and participatory cultures and their influence on how people learn, share, and collaborate
• Mobile enterprise: still a ways to go: Social business consultant Kevin Conroy talks through some of the benefits and pitfalls of enterprise mobility, explaining why mobile should form a key part of your social business plans
• Intranets then and now: Perficient’s Rich Wood takes tour though the history of intranets, arguing that to really understand the value of social intranets today, you have to understand where they came from
• Computer screens are getting bigger:  In his latest Alertbox missive, Jakob Neilsen explains how his research shows larger monitors have finally become the most common class of desktop computer screen, and why we should now alter our design specifications
• Screens are getting bigger, but not the browser viewport: Swenglish UX expert (UX-pert?) James Royal-Lawson takes a closer look at Neilsen’s findings and argues it may not be that straightforward
• The Digital Workplace Concretized: An interesting graphical review of what the digital workplace is by industry expert, Oscar Berg

Congratulations to a few members of the #intranet twitter community who launched their new intranets this week.

Well, after an insane 9 months and a last minute all nighter we have finally 'given birth' to gNet, our new collaborative #intranet. #yam

— Natalie (@natp80) September 27, 2012

and…

Celebrating our new intranet launch – Qonnect. #intranet #cake #QuestBack @ Questback HQ http://t.co/8OaP54ol

— Hope Mears Østgaard (@HopeMears) September 28, 2012

Today is Ask a Stupid Question Day. In honour of that here are our five best questions about intranets currently open on Quora  (none of which are stupid questions at all):

• Who is doing academic research on intranet?
• How often should you consider an intranet re-design? 
• What comes next in enterprise social networks and intranets?
• How has the role of internal communications changed since the rise of social media in the workplace?
• What are some of the best sources and thought leaders on intranet strategy? (and why has nobody listed Intranetizen yet?!)