It’s sometimes very hard to explain to people who aren’t especially 2.0 savvy what difference it makes to use 2.0 solutions on their intranet. And to make them understand there’s no competition but complementarity between both.
In fact, as we all know, intranets mainly stores informations (or datas for those who makes the difference). What’s on the intranet can be considered as facts as it’s been validated and , since it’s published, must be considered as some kind of undisputed truth.
But, in many cases, when we have to face a similar case, or want to improve what has been done, we don’t only need facts, we need to know how where those facts are coming from. Why did we build such a process, how did we come to the conclusion that in such case we must have such answer. Because context always change, applying the same reasonning may bring different solutions depending on outside factors. That’s why we need not only to have the solution,but to keep formalized the way we get to it.
Most of time, getting to a solution is an informal process, made of talks, choices, arbitrations…a very informal process that brings to a formal solution. But since we have the solution we often forget the past and months or years later, nobody can explain the “why” of choices, arbitrations, no trace of the amount of ideas that were suggested on a brainstorming… Of course because it’s an informal, process which content can’t be seized and capitalized.
In the era of knowledgeworking the “how and why we thought” is as important as the “what’s our conclusion”, it’s clearly valuable.
Intranet 2.0 is the place were those informal and social practices may take place, a virtual place for interactive relationship between distant people involved in a projet. An as things take place on the intranet, we can keep trace of them, and so doing learn from the past and be able to improve easily what’s been done before.
