J. Boye Aarhus 11 News

New perspectives on key digital trends

November 4, 2011 | analytics, expert panel, innovation, mobile, standards & technology, success, user experience | No Comments

If you are eager to untangle some of the many fascinating industry trends and find out what they actually mean for you, you may read a book, ask a consultant or even go to a conference. The problem with these approaches is that you typically only get one perspective on the topic, i.e. too much emphasis on the IT experience at the expense of say strategy and governance.

To address this and to provide a more balanced perspective we always invite 3 speakers to participate in the expert panel session – this year held on Thursday November 10th from 14:00 – 15:00 in Aarhus:

• Cathy Marshall, a principal researcher at Microsoft Research in Silicon Valley and hypertext pioneer who is currently working on social media ownership issues among other topics
• Michael Fienen is Director of Web Marketing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas. He coined the digital marketing term remixology
• Olle Olsson is the Swedish World Wide Web Consortium representative. Recent work includes exploring innovative uses of ICT in e-government

I will host the session and have asked each to submit a few themes that they’ve been working on this year and curious to understand better. Here are 6 to get the conversation started:

• Digital success: Planning for digital success around organizational limitations
• Disruptive innovation: Is the change just beyond the horizon or will the future be more of the same?
• Measurement: What to measure on your site and why? How to untangle web analytics
• Mobile: Is it mobile-first, content-first or social-first? What’s the best model?
• Standards: The industry has many standards, but from the customer-perspective they often seem to be too cumbersome to implement and difficult to actually see the business value
• User experience: What’s the role of users in design? How to make best use of scenarios and personas?

All delegates are encouraged to participate in the discussion, so bring your own perspective on the above themes and any others themes – and you will probably find that you leave with a few more!

Real, useful data through better designed surveys

November 2, 2011 | design, surveys, Usability, user experience, UX | No Comments

We all want to plan our online developments and activities around the requirements of the users. But what are they? There are several ways of finding out. One way to get answers and data fast is through surveys. Quickly and easily distributed and the data comes back in a uniform format. However, we are all being bombarded with surveys in our inboxes, in pop-up windows, on the social media networks etc. and many of them are frankly not particularly intelligently designed and the questions not very well written. This leads to a tedious experience for the respondent (whom often ends up dropping off before completing) and it also results in poor data ending back with the survey sender.

But don’t despair: you can acquire the skills needed to create the perfect survey at one of Tuesday’s half-day tutorials: Surveys in Practice and Theory. We have invited UK based usability expert, Caroline Jarrett to share her experience – which includes working on improving form usability and designs at the national tax authorities of both the UK, the US and Australia. She promotes user centered design and has lectured and written on this and related topics.

Her tutorial will focus on how to improve the quality of your surveys, leading to better quality data as a result. Areas covered:

• How to write questions that are easy to answer
• A practical process for turning a list of questions into a planned survey that delivers real value
• What the theory tells us about an ideal process for developing your survey.
• The importance of different types of error in surveys: sampling, non-response, and measurement
• Tips from the survey methodologists on improving your survey.

Caroline would like to hear from you if you have any specific questions about surveys which you would like covered in her session. You can post your questions and ideas in the comments field below or send it directly to Caroline: caroline.jarrett@effortmark.co.uk

Beyond the devices and platforms in healthcare communication

October 28, 2011 | ehealth, online health, smartphone, social media | No Comments

The rapidly increasing use of smartphones and online social media platforms in the interrelation between patients, care providers and other stakeholders in the healthcare space receives a lot of attention. Much of the focus thus far has been on the technical solutions themselves and the functions they enable; the phones, the applications, the virtual platforms etc. There are lots of obvious benefits in opening up more channels of communication in this space.

Less focus has been devoted to the issue of how the introduction of those devices and channels are impacting on the way in which the various stakeholders approach how they communicate with each other. In other words: the human element. Many complex challenges arise when sensitive information is being published and personal stories and experiences are being shared via all the new channels.

• How should the providers and managers of those channels respond to this?
• How should these changes and challenges be sensible embedded in for example the communication strategies of care providers, pharma and others?
• How should they respond to the fact that they are no longer merely publishing their version of the story on a website, but have to engage with a stream of “raw information” coming the other way?
• And how does all this impact on areas such as marketing?

We have a number of cases on the online health conference track at the J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference, which explores some of those difficult, but fascinating issues:

• Poul Jasczcak is a chief surgeon at Herlev Hospital and also Chairman of the Danish Medical Association Ethics Committee and will be talking about “Digital strategies & methods for communicating”.
• Abir Al-Khalemji is a doctor and Ph.D student at Odense University Hospital and will be looking at Social Media Success Criteria.
• Line Berg Østergaard is heading up digital marketing at Zimmer, a global pharmaceutical firm and will be exploring how to communicate with patients from the perspective of her industry
• Jens Ole Henriksen, until recently CIO at Odense University Hospital, who will talk about the implications of using smartphones in a clinical environment.

We have also got a roundtable on the program, where participants will have the opportunity to discuss the topics in more detail.

Using website analytics as a design tool

October 26, 2011 | analytics, higher education, user experience | No Comments

For most web professionals, website analytics is little more than a set of reports for management and another task on your already long to-do list. Analytics can help measure popularity and better understand your users, but too often web professionals don’t find the time to really take action on the numbers. In fact, most find that they are overwhelmed with data, but have too few resources available to crunch it properly and follow up.

To help you take the next step with the usage of website analytics, we’ve invited Michael Fienen, Director of Web Marketing, Pittsburg State University to give a fascinating presentation called Chaos in context: Informed design through analytics. The talk is on the higher education conference track, where Michael will show how numbers can be utilized as a design tool and how you can effectively merge analytics with user experience design.

One of the key take-aways in the talk is a new way to think about redesigning your website. As websites age, the act of redesigning serves a necessary, but costly role. According to Michael, it can frequently be a much better use of resources to constantly be realigning instead. That is – making a consistent stream of smaller, incremental changes over time. To do this, information contained within your analytics can help resolve tools that are failing, falling out of use or are not being understood.

How video really works on the web

October 25, 2011 | case study, expert presentation, speaker, standards & technology, video | No Comments

For a long time video has been hailed the content medium of the digital era. However, most websites are still heavily text-oriented and organisations still struggle with integrating video into their online channels. In a white-paper from 2010, the world’s largest maker of computer networking equipment Cisco Systems reported that:

“[...] by 2012 Internet video will account for over 50 percent of consumer Internet traffic. [...] The sum of all forms of video (TV, video on demand [VoD], Internet, and P2P) will continue to be approximately 90 percent of global consumer traffic by 2015.”

These are indeed impressive numbers, which could indicate that organisations without an online video presence are falling behind…

At the J. Boye Aarhus 11 web and intranet conference, we have dedicated a session to explore how video works on the web. The idea is to go behind the scenes and look into some of the possibilities and barriers for organisations using online video. In the session we have two presentations:

• TV2, a publicly owned television station in Denmark, and their Video Infrastructure Manager Tenna Gaarde Falkenby will share how they get their video onto the internet. She will also share how to deal with copyrighted material and how to get video onto different devices.
• Advice A/S, an interactive communications agency based in Copenhagen which specialise in strategy and digital media. Senior Advisor Katrine Emme Thielke will share her insights on when and how to use video. She will also cover what users expect from your videos and why they watch videos – and why they sometimes don’t.

So if you want to learn more about the new/old trends concerning video on the web, make sure to visit the Standards and Technology track Thursday 10 November at the J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference.

Enterprise Search: Looking for a breakthrough

October 24, 2011 | intranet, search | No Comments

When employees are asked ‘What contributes the most to the value of an intranet?’ then the answer ‘the ability to find information’ ranks right at the top. Yet these same employees also think that this is the area on their current intranet that needs the most improvement.

Enterprise search holds the promise of addressing this apparent contradiction, but research from Jane McConnell shows that employee satisfaction with the features and the quality of the internal search engine is low. Even worse: it is still at the same low level as it was 2 years ago.

So what makes enterprise search so hard to get right? Why has progress been so slow? And most importantly: What can you do about it in your organizations?

If someone has the answers to these questions, then surely it must be Martin White. Martin has carried out numerous consulting and strategy assignments on the topics of enterprise search, intranets and information management. He is the author of several books on these topics and a regular speaker at conferences around the world.

At the J. Boye conference in Aarhus, Martin will challenge you to reflect on your current search engine, on what works well and what doesn’t, and explore the root causes. He will propose solutions and help you to:

• Identify how you can assess search satisfaction
• Use analysis of search logs as a key improvement tool
• Understand the value of integrating search with analytics
• Adopt a search benchmarking methodology

Martin’s presentation is one of many on the conference’s packed intranet track. Not registered yet? It’s not too late to sign up!

Is cloud technology mature enough?

October 18, 2011 | case study, speaker, standards & technology | No Comments

“The cloud” brings many interesting promises to the table: Scalability, performance and easier maintenance. However, relatively few organisations have actually moved their web operations into the cloud. Is it because the technology is not mature enough? Are customers still feeling insecure about the new approach?

Oxfam is a global humanitarian, development and campaigning organisation working with others to overcome poverty and suffering. Oxfam GB recently moved to the cloud, so we have invited them to present their case study on this year’s Standards and Technology conference track.

The web is fundamental to Oxfam GB’s operations.  It is a key tool for fundraising, campaigning, communicating with supporters and other stakeholders, coordinating festivals and events, etc.  However, Oxfam’s web infrastructure has grown in a piecemeal way — it has invested in web facilities as it needed them for individual projects.  This has increased costs and complexity, and reduced the overall reliability of the systems.

In mid-2010, Oxfam decided to investigate shifting its web systems (website, e-commerce site, intranet, etc.) into the “cloud”.  The presetation – Moving to the cloud – will describe the lessons they learned as they procured cloud services and as they migrated their systems into the cloud.  It will address questions such as “Is cloud technology mature enough for production use?” and “What are the key aspects to consider when moving to the cloud?”

The case will be presented by Stewart Marshall, Enterprise Architect at Oxfam GB and independent consultant (and many times J. Boye conference speaker) Graham Oakes.

Digital Brand Management

October 14, 2011 | brand management, digital marketing, online communication, strategy | No Comments

How do you define digital brand management? I would say, good brand managers make dead sure that the organization has a consistent representation of the brand on the web.

Large brands in particular will have lots of different websites addressing different segments and products. Decentralization is a good way to address different market needs, but the consequence is it leads to more diversity of your brand.

So where to start with your digital brand management?

Let us dive into one small part which is often underestimated: domain management. Of course, managing brands is way more than just managing domains. Very often domains are not even managed by the brand manager.

This can lead to having a portfolio of domain names which do not represent the overall digital brand strategy.

So why not start with getting your domain landscape in order? Researching which domains your organization owns and putting them down on paper is a healthy process. It will show how your digital brand is seen from outside of the organization. I would not be surprised if this landscape is out of sync with your internal view.

Never trouble trouble till trouble troubles you.

Of course, doing such research might result in waking up sleeping dogs. Problems may come up, domains you think you own but in fact you don’t and a lot of domains you own but you never need. You will find silos representing your brand and maybe even domains owned by your competitors which belong to you.

What you will further on discover when looking a bit deeper into that data will be discussed by Ulrich Gröpke and Martin Küchenthal in the digital marketing track at our conference in November. You will learn how to use domain management as a strategic tool to optimize your digital brand strategy.

What are your experiences with domains? Do you as marketing or communication manager in charge of domain management? What other aspects of digital brand management are you interested in?

Digital has Changed the Game in Health

October 13, 2011 | e-health, mobile, online health | No Comments

It is exciting times for those promoting better engagement of patients. The rapidly evolving online and mobile platforms are enabling better and more effective channelling of information, better mutual access between patients and care providers and is generally bringing the concept of participatory health closer to everyone.

This is an area with great potential for those with expertise in managing the online and mobile solutions in the health industries – which is what we will focus on at Thursday’s Online Health track. We will be featuring projects that have been making strides and hear the experiences from the people behind, such as Jens Ole Henriksen, until recently CIO at Odense University Hospital who will talk about the use of smartphones in a clinical environment: “EHR, Self Care and Information in Your Pocket”.

The world over, health care costs are spiralling. While medical innovations, in the form of clinical technologies and prescription drugs, have lengthened lives and, in many cases, enhanced quality of lives, they are usually cost-increasing. What can be done to stem the health cost spiral while fostering innovation in health? The answer is engaging people-patients more integrally and intimately in their care; leveraging information and communications technologies as platforms for connecting patients with providers, health coaches, and trusted health advisors. All research shows that the patients and clinicians alike are increasingly happy to embrace the new channels and are starting to realize the huge benefits.

The conference track will be opened by Dr. Kent Bottles, who has a long and distinguished track record in this area and who comes at it as both a clinician, an academic and a technology expert, thus bringing together all the main areas in the field of online health. Dr. Bottles who is normally based in Philadelphia, will discuss how Web 2.0 concepts are transforming health care delivery, touching on social media, epidermal electronics and the quantified self movement, captology and simulated environments for cybertherapy, gamification, and smartphone apps. Join the online health track for an overview of developments in the field and a series of recent real-life cases.

Love or hate SharePoint? What’s the real experience of your peers?

October 11, 2011 | CMS, intranet, SharePoint | No Comments

SharePoint is a hot topic for many intranet managers and web professionals these days. A growing number of organizations are actively using it, others are considering an implementation or are in the process of migrating to the latest version.

At the J. Boye conference in Aarhus, Denmark, from 8 to 10 November, web and intranet professionals with hands-on SharePoint experience will present and discuss various case studies. A few examples:

• Edwin Mac Gillavry and Michiel Hazen will present how the Public Prosecution Office of the Netherlands is using SharePoint applications for knowledge sharing and collaboration.
• Danske Bank is a major user of SharePoint technology, especially for its external websites. Web manager Henrik Sørensen will talk about his latest achievements, but will also address challenges of security and governance.
• Dan Lewis from the Judge Group will share an interesting mobile intranet story, which includes why they decided against SharePoint.
• And don’t miss the many SharePoint industry experts that will be attending the conference, including higher education consultant Bob Johnson, CMS evangelist and expert Thom Robbins and of course Martin White, one of the world’s leading authorities on all aspects of intranet and information management.

You can also check out some recent SharePoint-related postings, to get a flavour for what will be discussed at the conference.

Would you like to learn how your peers have implemented SharePoint in their organizations? Do you want to know the success stories and avoid the pitfalls? Then join web and intranet professionals from around the world at the J. Boye conference in Aarhus 8-10 November and leverage their collective experience.

What is the role of an online strategist?

October 10, 2011 | keynote, strategy | No Comments

As many aspects of the web are evolving, the role of those working with web and new media strategies has changed.

In this brief video Michael Edson, Director of Web and New Media Strategy, Smithsonian Institution explains his thinking on how the role is different today compared to 10 years ago:

In the video postcard from inside the Smithsonian, Michael shares the underlying theme of his keynote on Wednesday, November 9 in Aarhus titled Going boldly into the present. In his talk, Michael will explain how he recently realized that the role as an online strategists, has moved from crystal ball gazing to looking clearly at what can be done now with the tools and platforms we have at our disposal today.

According to Michael the future we until recently could only dream about with crowdsourcing, community co-creation, cheap ubiquitous technology, commodity web hosting, cloud and powerful mobile computing which is in fact happening right now.

You can still secure your ticket for J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference, and hear Michael talk about design patterns for organisational strategists from all types of organisations and how you can benefit from those new possibilities.

How to select an open source CMS?

October 5, 2011 | speaker, wcm, web content management | 1 Comment

Open source content management systems usually fly below the radar in large organisations when they consider a new system. Often there is a limited pool of large, experienced system integrators to buy consulting from and other comparable customers are few and far between. This has historically made it hard for organisations to select an open source CMS.

What most organisations want is basically to make a safe decision – both in terms of technology and intangibles (such as history, economy and road map for vendor and partners). Customers simply want to make sure that they get a platform that meet their requirements for several years and that there is a solid vendor and partner ecosystem behind the CMS. These requirements can be challenging to meet in the open source CMS market.

At this years J. Boye Aarhus 11 web and intranet conference, you can meet two very different organisations which have both chosen open source content management systems:

• Kilroy is a large travel agency in the Nordic Region. They recently chose to migrate all their web activities from a dated proprietary system to the open source CMS Umbraco. They will share the ups and downs of this process + technology and discuss whether open source really is all that it’s cracked up to be. Read more about Kilroy: Changing CMS – The ups and downs
• TV2 is a part public service / part private  TV broadcaster in Denmark that has existed since 1988. In 2011 they chose Drupal as the strategic platform for their many current and future websites. They will share how they managed to make this decision and how they are moving to the new platform while building up internal competencies. Read more about TV2: Selecting and implementing a new CMS

Kilroy and TV2 will present their case studies on the Web Content Management conference track Wednesday 9th November. On the track you can also join sessions on Website Relaunch, Keys to success for running a WCM solution; Change and Innovation and The Future of WCM. See you there!

Can you measure marketing efficiency in a multichannel world?

October 3, 2011 | digital marketing, measurement, online communication | No Comments

We all know it’s difficult, but only few take it seriously. Measuring how efficient our online marketing really is.

So how do we measure online marketing in a world where multiple channels are blurring the picture?

In his talk “How do you measure marketing efficiency in a multichannel world?“, Kristoffer Ewald, an experienced speaker, will discuss the challenges faced by Marketing Managers wanting to maximize their Return on Marketing Investments.

Consumers expect consistent messages and services across touch points including new venues in the retail space and elsewhere via Location Based Services, QR codes etc.

The talk will outline the challenge and newest innovations in marketing, show a Multi Channel Case for an E-business Retailer and conclude with a view of the future of advertising and a Q&A session.

Kristoffer Ewald is an internationally recognized digital marketing and strategy consultant with 15+ years of experiences and will be speaking at the Online Communication track at the J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference.

He leads the strategy efforts at Guava that deliver data-driven optimization strategies to clients.

Kristoffer has also been active in the Web Analytics Association since it’s early days and have participated in the Research Committee ever since.

Currently Kristoffer is a member of the board at Danish Digital Agencies. Kristoffer is a very popular and well received international speaker with well over 60 talks on his resume.

He lives with his wife and two young kids in Copenhagen where he rides his bike to work and dreams of the days when there was still enough free time to go adventure racing.

Intranet portals: What’s in a name?

September 29, 2011 | governance, intranet, portal | No Comments

Are you confused by the terminology surrounding intranet portals? Do you wonder when an intranet stops being an intranet and becomes a portal? Should you care?

Intranet portal technology has been around for quite a few years and has by now earned its right under the sun. In parallel, regular intranets have also evolved over time. They are no longer the static, one-way communication channels of the past; they now integrate many different sources of content, resources and tools. And in the end the objective of both approaches is the same: to provide employees with a single, centralized and user-friendly access to all the information and applications that they need to do their daily jobs.

At the Dutch government, this objective was the driving force behind the recent project to replace the 16 various intranets of the individual ministries by a single portal. Raymond Boissevain, communication and online media expert at the Dutch Ministry of General Affairs, will share his experiences with the design, the rollout and the adoption of the new ‘Rijksportaal’. A key element of the success has been the focus on proper governance: keeping stakeholders fully engaged at all stages along the way.

Raymond’s insights should be of particular interest to other government or complex non-profit organizations, but also commercial firms can learn a lot from his approach.

Interested to see more intranet case studies? Join the J. Boye conference in Aarhus, Denmark, from 8 to 10 November 2011 and don’t miss the full-day, dedicated intranet track!

What is ‘Remixology’?

September 21, 2011 | digital marketing, higher education | No Comments

We live in a world of remixable media in marketing where there is potential value in giving away something for nothing. While we usually avoid new terms and try to stay with plain English, we think that Michael Fienen, Director of Web Marketing at Pittsburg State University in Kansas, has coined a useful and innovative term: remixology.

Remixology impacts on how we think about digital marketing and when deconstructed it is made up of 3 key ingredients:

• re; (prefix) – indicating repetition of an action
• mix; (verb) – 1. to combine into one mass, collection, or assemblage, generally with a thorough blending of the constituents. 2. to put together indiscriminately or confusedly.
• logy; (n combining form) – indicating the science or study of. 2. indicating writing, discourse, or body of writings.

According to Michael and many other experts, the future of marketing lies in communities. Facebook, Twitter, YouTube – wherever your audience is, they are talking about you.

In a session that should be popular on the digital marketing conference track, Michael will share how as our audiences become more sophisticated and their expectations evolve, it is no longer good enough to market at them. You have to consider how you engage with them, and in turn creating a culture of brand evangelists. But it isn’t easy.

When we look at some of the most successful videos on YouTube, one of the most common themes is how they manage to mix content. One specific example of remixology in action is remix.nin.com, an interactive community for creating, sharing, and listening to nine inch nails remixes.

As we begin to consider new, fun, engaging ways of interacting with communities, it is important to consider what role remixable media will play in promoting your brand. Some brands have tried and failed. Some have found success. Others still are missing huge opportunities.

To dive deeper into this topic, learn more and prepare for the conference, visit the blog Everything is a Remix and start with this Part 1 video on Everything is a Remix.

How open can you be in your web project?

September 20, 2011 | wcm, web project management | 2 Comments

To some, “open” is just another buzzword. To us it is an often overlooked success factor in web projects. Today, technology still steals much of the the limelight. This makes it difficult to strategically use the web presence to achieve change and innovation.

We have a session focusing on openness and we’ve invited Karoliina Luoto, development manager and self-proclaimed openness spokesperson working for the Finnish Innovation Fund Sitra, to present on the web content management conference track. In her talk, Karoliina will share her experiences with running an open, collaborative web project for cultural change.

This year, she has been working on the Sitra.fi project, which aims to renew the website, so that it provides tools for collaborative development work around Sitra’s fields of work. The project also aims to summarize and visualize knowledge around Sitra’s themes (that are often hard to grasp).

Unlike most others, this web project has been open, so that main outcomes (source code, learnings, tools like document templates) have been shared for anybody to utilize. During the project, a publicly available project blog has covered topics such as:

• Design in an agile way
• Getting things done with the servers
• Managing the budget
• Usability challenges we’re facing

Is this taking openness a step too far? Attend the session and get new perspectives on the potential of more openness.

A guide to achieving a 90% positive website rating

September 19, 2011 | higher education | No Comments

The 90 percent positive result achieved by Susquehanna University in the Customer Centric Index reviews stands out from all the others higher education websites in the US, Canada, the UK, Norway and Sweden over the last two years. At this university, future students and parents even gave high positive ratings to the “search” capability.

We’ve asked higher education marketing expert Bob Johnson to share the survey responses and examples from Susquehanna in an interactive session on the higher education conference track.  Such positive experiences contribute to increasing respect for the Susquehanna brand in an era when website first experiences play a major role in successful student recruitment.

Since improvement is always possible, Bob will also review the recommendations to further strengthen an already powerful website.

The Customer Centric Index was developed by Customer Carewords led by Irish web pioneer Gerry McGovern and his partners in Europe and North America. It is based on a quick online poll, which gets customers to rate a website against 13 critical customer‐centric factors, grouped into three major categories:

• Content
• Information architecture
• Social

At Susquehanna a unique combination of attention to visual appeal, layout, and clear menus and links when creating the site helped secure the high score. As an example take a look at the Admissions page: The page is easy to scan, what users see is what interests them, and the links indeed take them to the right content. Sounds simple, seldom is.

You can prepare for this session by reading Susquehanna University: Amazing Results in Carewords CCI Research or view the slides from Bob Johnson’s talk on achieving a 90% positive rating given back in May at J. Boye Philadelphia 11. He’ll be giving an updated version of this talk in Aarhus.

Mobile intranet: nice-to-have or must-have?

September 16, 2011 | intranet, mobile | 1 Comment

Mobile access to the intranet has been on the radar of intranet managers for some time, but actual implementations are still scarce. According to last year’s Global Intranet Trends for 2011 report from Jane McConnell, 7% of participating organizations have optimized their intranet for access by mobile devices (smartphones and tablets), while another 25% are in a planning or piloting stage.

So what is holding organizations back? Clearly, intranet professionals with mobile aspirations still face quite a few challenges. To list just a few:

• Defining the initial scope and required functionality: Mobile versions of the intranet are not just slimmed-down copies of their bigger brother. Instead, they need to deliver specific functionality that the targeted group of users need when they are on the go.
• Getting management buy-in: All too often, senior management is not yet convinced of the benefits and is reluctant to invest.
• Making the right technical choices: This will vary from one organization to another. For instance, the choice will depend heavily on the type and the amount of different smartphone platforms to be supported.

In his presentation at the Aarhus 11 conference, Dan Lewis from the Judge Group will address all of these challenges. He will make the case that mobile access to the corporate intranet is no longer an optional feature. Join Dan in the intranet track on Thursday 10 November to hear how Judge Group’s new mobile intranet is boosting productivity, and discover what it will take in your organization to go mobile!

Responsive web design in practice

September 14, 2011 | user experience | No Comments

Responsive web design has gradually become a trend in the world of user experience. The publication in 2010 of the popular Responsive Web Design book by Ethan Marcotte has undoubtedly been a contributing factor. Today readers of the book and other UX converts struggle to believe that we once served web content in boxy little hardwired layouts left over from the magical but inflexible world of print.

In order to show how to move the concept of responsive web design from theory to practice, we’ve invited Jesper Wøldiche Rahkonen to give a presentation on the user experience conference track. Jesper works as web designer at the Municipality of Aarhus and is also a W3C Invited expert in the HTML5 Working Group. His talk will focus on designing for mobile and on presenting a sustainable, responsive approach to the mobile web.

Even if your organisation still does not have a mobile strategy and if the number of mobile users is limited, your audience is still likely to find ways to be mobile. The mobile trend is growing at a rapid pace and is driving significant change, in particular for user experience professionals. Mobile websites have traditionally been created as separate projects targeted towards a small handful of devices or as an afterthought to the desktop version. The results are increased costs, content duplication, failure to match current business goals and inflexible web designs in the face of an ever increasing variety of web enabled devices

Jesper will share how you can combine a mobile-first design strategy, responsive designs and progressive enhancement to create effective, future-proof web presences across all devices.

A digital team of excellence is what you need

September 14, 2011 | governance, speaker, strategy | No Comments

Over the past year the J. Boye groups on web management, strategy and governance have spend much time discussing the role of their team. The discussions mostly stem from the positive fact that most enterprises have become more mature in their use of digital media. However it also raises a few potential issues for the web manager:

• What is the justification of a central web team when all other business units are integrating digital activities naturally and competently?
• With emerging new opportunities in the area of digital media, where does the responsibility of the central web team end? For example: Is social media part of marketing, communication or PR?
• How important is experience, when your area of expertise is changing quickly and the job market is flooded with people who have actual degrees in E-commerce and Online Marketing?

The need to redefine the role of the central web team is pressing for an increasing number of web managers and some are acting.

Lars Bøgner from Leo Pharma has more than 10 years experience from classical corporate web teams. This year he renamed his team to the “Digital Center of Excellence” and whenever he talks to his peers about it, they envy him. Come listen to his talk “The end of the Web Team as we know it” at the Digital Strategy and Governance conference track at J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference in November and understand why.

See semantically enriched user experiences in action

September 13, 2011 | iks, semantic web | No Comments

This year we’ve covered the semantic web extensively and learned many new things about semantic technologies, in particular from our friends at IKS, an European research project.

As with a lot of new and emerging technologies most of the cool stuff remains “hidden under the hood”, so we’ve invited IKS to bring developers to the J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference to demonstrate semantically enriched user experiences.

Web Content vs. Web Applications

September 12, 2011 | No Comments

We all want to create richer and more enjoyable user experiences on the web. Traditionally content has been seen as the main driver behind this – but more recently web applications (apps) have received more focus. From a standards perspective the discussion focuses on whether enriched content and information-rich applications are actually just two sides of the same coin? Is Content really king or will Apps take over as the main driver for the information network we all know know as the Internet?

Fact is that new needs have emerged, driven by user expectations and desires, and by the functionality of software and hardware for new kinds of devices. These new demands is what the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) is trying to make standards for. So at the J. Boye Aarhus 11 web and intranet conference, we have invited Olle Olsson from W3C to explore the space of requirements and needs for emerging standards, and how a toolbox of technologies can support both views of the web in a harmonious way.

This session is also a great way to get a glimpse of which direction the web is going as Olle will share the newest developments on standards like HTML5 and CSS3. Olle will be speaking on the Standards & Technology conference track, where you can also find sessions on cloud computing, open source and video.

A new way to think about digital strategy

September 8, 2011 | No Comments

Five or ten years ago it was difficult for strategists to predict the evolution and potential business value of many emerging technologies. Social networking, mobile platforms and cloud services were new phenomena in the landscape which few expected to reach useful maturity levels anytime soon.

Today, however, the same tools and platforms that seemed like science fiction a few years ago are creating real organizational and societal value while the continued acceleration of technological change has caused predictions about the future that are even weirder and more disruptive than before. What is a digital strategist to do?

In the opening keynote titled “Going boldly into the present” at J. Boye Aarhus 11  Michael Edson, the Smithsonian Institution’s Director of Web and New Media Strategy, will talk about our changing relationship with “the future” and how organizations, governments, and businesses should adjust the way they think about strategy, planning, and work.

In this brief video you can hear Michael explain how his view on the role of the online strategist has changed:

To get prepared for the keynote and get some inspiration for your own work, you can browse the Smithsonian Institute Web & New Media Strategy. Michael Edson also spoke at the J. Boye Philadelphia 11 conference where he shared Jedi Mind Tricks for Measuring Audacious Goals.

In order to make some serious progress on your web and intranet projects, it may be time to rethink a few things. We’re really excited to welcome Michael to Aarhus!

Enterprise mobility: A new working environment

September 7, 2011 | mobile | No Comments

For the past year, there has been a huge interest in proving a wider range of services to staff  using mobile devices such as smartphones and tablets. As work has moved beyond the original confines of the physical office, new issues have emerged and much attention has been given to user experience and design issues, but that is only the tip of the iceberg.

According to a study from International Data Corporation, the worldwide mobile worker population is set to increase from 919.4m in 2008, accounting for 29% of the worldwide workforce, to 1.19bn in 2013, accounting for 34.9% of the workforce.

Joining us at J. Boye Aarhus 11 is UK information expert Martin White, who will open the Going Mobile conference track with a keynote on enterprise mobility. He will go beyond the design of mobile sites and apps and cover some other very important issues, which are affecting the new working environment where employees use mobile devices when working with enterprise applications.

According to Martin White the key enterprise mobility issues include:

• Will there be enough bandwidth for mobile broadband?
• Who will own the handset and pay the bills?
• How will security be managed?
• How will users be able to use enterprise search applications?
• Will business intelligence applications swallow up the intranet contribution?

Martin White is the Managing Director of Intranet Focus, which he established in 1999. Over the last ten years Martin has worked on nearly 100 intranet projects, published several books and spoken at conferences around the world.

Improving complex web forms

September 5, 2011 | No Comments

“Most of your website’s value passes through forms” says usability guru Jakob Nielsen, so what can you do to improve the user experience of your forms? Unfortunately, if you look for advice on forms, you’ll often find that it only relates to simple examples

To help you improve the user experience of your complex forms, we’ve invited Caroline Jarrett, author of the book Forms That Work, to host a session at J. Boye 11 on Design tips for complex forms. Her advice for complex forms include:

1. Find out which parts of it are truly necessary. Can you simplify it at all, or perhaps delay some parts of it until later in the relationship?
2. Try to arrange the fields into groups
3. Use a progress indicator or summary menu to help users keep track of where they are going in the form.

In her talk on the user experience conference track, she will elaborate on these and more including mobile forms. The presentation will give you tips for improving complex, multi-page forms. Tips will include ideas for:

• understanding the users and the business process
• helping users to find the answers
• making a complex form more attractive

If you want to ask a question about forms in advance of the conference, then please feel free to post it below.

How to socialize your intranet – successfully

August 30, 2011 | community, intranet, social | No Comments

More and more organizations are deploying a variety of social features on their intranet. The benefits are becoming increasingly clear: better sharing of company knowledge, improved collaboration across silos, easier to discover and utilize talent across the organization. (read 5 intranet trends for 2011 and beyond for more details on this trend).  The road to successful adoption, however, is less clear.

Some believe very strongly in the viral model: make the platform available, find a few champions and the rest will follow. Others claim that adoption will only happen as a consequence of solid planning, clear governance, and a lot of hard work from enthusiastic community managers. Many have taken the leap to launch one or more applications, with various degrees of take-up. And while everyone agrees that there is no single golden recipe for success, some best practices are clearly emerging.

Are you facing similar challenges with the introduction of a social intranet and are you eager to learn what works and what doesn’t? Claire Flanagan from CSC talked about her experiences in this area on the intranet conference track at Aarhus 11. From her presentation, you will learn how CSC, a global IT services company with 90,000+ employees, built a successful employee community using their industry award-winning adoption practices called “C3: Connect. Communicate. Collaborate.” CSC is now moving the community beyond the boundaries of the enterprise into the larger “eco-system”, including partners and customers.

Claire is Director of Enterprise Social Business Collaboration and Communities Strategy at CSC. She speaks regularly at industry conferences about social business and has received numerous awards along the way such as the Community Adoption Award and The 2.0 Adoption Council’s Internal Evangelist of the Year Award (2009).

A better and more task-oriented conference website

August 24, 2011 | No Comments

Over the last couple of months we have been redesigning the conference website for J. Boye Aarhus 11. The old layout didn’t quite match the top end conference we produce, so we decided it was time for a change.

First step was to look at the statistics for the old site and evaluate what worked well and what could be improved. We worked with Aarhus-based agency Klean, who helped us rethink the overall purpose, information architecture and make new wireframes.

With the wireframes in place, we hooked up with ME!ME!ME! – a creative identity agency, also locally based in Aarhus. They came up with a fresh graphical identity for the website with much more edge, personality and vitality than the previous site.

Finally, our accomplished internal web developer Jakob Viskum Damgaard picked up the wireframes and PSD-files and implemented it in WordPress. On the new site, many things have been reconsidered. This meant that Jakob had to fine-tune the open source system quite considerably. The result is an awesome customised version of WordPress, which is ideal for handling conferences.

So what’s new on the new site?

• Brand new look and feel: Fresh colours, fonts and layout makes the whole website appear more modern and appealing.
• Brand new information architecture and navigation: The old menu was replaced by a new one with only 3 items and a mega-drop-down menu was introduced.
• More information – better organised: We can now add more information about tracks, sessions, presentations and speakers, so attendees can dig in to all the relevant background stuff if they so desire. However, all this information has been toned down, so the different pages and speaker profiles are easier to skim.
• Clear call to actions: We want you to sign up – now you can clearly see how!

We will of course keep fine-tuning the site as we get closer to the conference. Some of the most important projects include an improved sign-up flow (with the ability to pay with credit card) and programme pages that are less overwhelming.

I hope you like it – please let me know if you have any feedback! And a huge thanks to Klean and ME!ME!ME! for all their help.

The future of WCM..?

August 3, 2011 | No Comments

The area of Web Content Management (WCM) remains crowded and confusing. There is a vast number of vendors, technologies and buzz-words out there and it can be very hard to understand the benefits and potential downsides.

To address this challenge at the J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference, we have gathered a distinguished panel for the WCM track. 3 seasoned industry experts will discuss the future of web content management. The session is intended to be highly interactive and questions from the audience are encouraged. The aim is to give the conference attendees a unique opportunity to hear multiple angles on what the future has in store for WCM.

The 3 expert panellists are:

1. Niels Hartvig: Niels has been programming since the age of ten and founded the popular open source Umbraco CMS project in 2001. He is a strong advocate for open source and for transparency.
2. Thomas Lund Sigdestad: Founder and CTO at the Norwegian CMS vendor Enonic, where he has worked since 2000 with everything from sales to technology. He’s a reputable industry experts in areas like search, responsive web design, mobile web and the semantic web.
3. Thom Robbins: Has previously held various executive positions at Microsoft. He’s the author of several industry books and currently works as Chief Product Evangelist at the Czech CMS vendor Kentico.

The panel will be moderated by J. Boye’s Peter Sejersen. The plan is to focus the discussion on the following topics:

• Trends: Mobile, Social, Engagement, Analytics… what is coming in 2012?
• Licensing and pricing: Free open source or licensed commercial offering?
• Standards: Which are relevant and why?
• Cloud: True innovation or fluffy marketing buzz?

We would like your input? Do you think that these topics are the right ones to focus on? What would be good questions to ask for each topic?

Could you win the 2011 European Web Idol?

July 11, 2011 | 7 Comments

Do you have a great software solution to an enterprise problem? Are your users simply stunned when they use your latest release?

Once again software vendors will have the opportunity to participate in the J. Boye Web Idol competition to be held next in Aarhus on Conference Day #2, Wednesday 9 November.

We are celebrating that this is the 10th J. Boye conference and  want this year’s competition to be a talent extravaganza. We are looking for innovative vendors from across the entire marketplace; semantic web, enterprise portal, search, wiki, analytics, blogging, CMS, mobile, social media or something else.

J. Boye Web Idol is loosely based on “American Idol” and is a fast-paced, entertaining set of competitive demos. If you prefer succinct, comparative presentations to long-winded demonstrations, this is the session for you.

The 5 competing vendors will present 6-minute innovative demos showing how their solution can solve a business problem. It could be a software solution, an application for mobile or even a service delivery concept in relation to for example an implementation project. After the sessions, the audience will vote for the winner – who will take over the legendary (and grotesquely large) trophy for a year.

As always, we will have a distinguished panel of judges who will provide some pithy commentary and feedback and at the end, the audience will vote for their favourite idea and select the winner.

The rules are simple: Introduce what you have got that can help solve a business problem or improve a task or work process – and sell it to the delegates using a live demo. Demonstrate the benefits of your offering and convince the audience that your entry is the most impressive and valuable at this year’s show.

The judges will be judging the presentations on:

• Relevance and importance of the business problem you are addressing
• Innovation
• Originality
• Ease of application
• Practicality

Are you up for the challenge? If you wish to enter, you must submit a brief proposal in the comments box below: Let us know what the problem you are addressing is and how / with which solution you are going to solve it.

Download the detailed rules: Web Idol Aarhus 11 (PDF)

Keynote introduction: Michael Edson

June 23, 2011 | No Comments

With more than 137 million physical artifacts and a vast network of scholars and experts, The Smithsonian Institution is the world’s largest museum and research complex. Michael Edson is their Director of Web and New Media Strategy, meaning that he has been involved in practically every aspect of technology and online media.

Michael’s flagship project has been the creation of the Smithsonian’s first Web and New Media Strategy (it was made using a wiki which can be found here). The strategy aspires to update the traditional work of the Institution by catalyzing creativity, innovation, and learning through open online access to Smithsonian resources, expertise, and communities. But how does one measure progress made towards these lofty goals? What facts can be used to persuade and inspire stakeholders? And is strategic planning even relevant in this time of accelerating disruptive change?

In his opening keynote at J. Boye Aarhus 11, Michael will highlight the challenges and opportunities of the Smithsonian’s digital strategy and the new ways that organizations should be thinking about the future and change.

To get a preview of what to expect, check out this interview with Michael, where he talks about their web strategy:

A New Digital Presence: Michael Edson about The Smithsonian Commons.

Michael is an inspiring speaker and a true thought-leader when it comes to online media. His work has resulted in several awards and honors, and in April 2011, the Washingtonian named Michael “Tech Titan to watch” in 2011.

Michael Edson will be giving the opening keynote Wednesday 9.15 – 9.45. See the program.

Keynote introduction: Cathy Marshall

June 21, 2011 | No Comments

Cathy Marshall is digital native who has been involved with the web since the beginning in the early 1990s. She is currently Principal Researcher at Microsoft Research’s acclaimed Silicon Valley Lab in California, USA.

Cathy made herself a name in the industry back in 1996 when she published Forward Anywhere – one of the most innovative hypertext narratives. The narrative/website has an incredibly arbitrary and unpredictable structure in it’s “exploring of a better way to organize data and to represent human experience” (to quote New Media Professor Lev Manovich).

Cathy has been working as a scientist at Xerox PARC for 20 years. Now at Microsoft Research, she is working with personal digital archiving and social media ownership in an interdisciplinary mix of computer science, information science, and the humanities.

With her vast experience and knowledge of the digital area, she is a recognised speaker and has won several awards for best paper at various conferences. So we can look forward to a world-class presentation, when she visits Aarhus in November!

Cathy Marshall will be giving the opening keynote Thursday 9.15 – 9.45. See the program.

More resources about Cathy Marshall:

• Cathy Marshall on Wikipedia
• Cathy Marshall’s personal home page (with links to several of her research papers)
• Cathy Marshall on Twitter

Great ideas at amazing web & intranet conference

June 7, 2011 | No Comments

The J. Boye Aarhus 11 conference is coming up in November. As always we are working hard to make the next edition the best to date. J. Boye conferences attendees travel from wide and far to spend 3 days together in a campus-like environment to learn, be inspired and bring home the hard-earned ideas and experiences from others.

Behind the scenes, we started working on the conference in November 2010, right after the J. Boye Aarhus 10 conference. Our ambition is naturally to improve the conference experience year on year and as always our focus is on the content of the programme. We listen carefully to the feedback from the almost 400 members of the J. Boye groups and our network of partners. The result is a revised programme format optimized for learning and networking with 2 keynote speakers, 10 conference tracks and 4 social events.