You are here: Home / Events / Intranet Global Forum 2014 LA

Intranet Global Forum 2014 LA

Global Conference for Intranet Executives, Managers & Contributors

March 6th and 7th, Los Angeles, California

The Intranet Global Forum 2014 is North America’s leading dedicated conference on intranets with a specialized focus on the design, governance and management of enterprise intranets and social intranets.

The Need

The corporate intranet, long neglected and underfunded, has bounded forward several evolutionary leaps in the past two years. In particular, social media and SharePoint are dominating most intranet agendas, or considerations for the future. Many organizations, however, still suffer from sub-par intranets with poor funding, governance, and continual problems regarding content, search, and information architecture.

The Intranet Global Forum 2014 provides intranet executives and managers in communications, IT and HR with all the tools they need to understand the recent changes, and the fundamental skills for designing, deploying and governing a new era intranet.

Audience

The Intranet Global Forum is ideal for executives and managers that are involved in a new intranet launch, redesign, or technology shift, and for those that manage technical, business and content components of a corporate intranet or portal.

Case Study Presentations

Best Western
Cisco Systems Inc.
Middleburg Bank
Unisys

Topics

How to Build a Social Intranet

Intranet Activity Streams, Engagement and Internal Communications
The Intranet as the Center of Social Business
Overhauling your Corporate Intranet
Developing a Meaningful Social Intranet
Trends and Opportunities in Developing a Social Intranet
Building a Social SharePoint Intranet
Communication Teams and IT...So Happy Together: How to Work with IT to Create the Intranet of Your Dreams
Internal Social Visual Communications

Keynote Speakers

Shel Holtz, Principal, Holtz Communication + Technology (USA)

Shel Holtz 2013 Shel Holtz, ABC, IABC Fellow, is principal of consultancy Holtz Communication + Technology. He brings more than 35 years of experience to his engagements. The author or co-author of six communications-themed books, he is a pioneer podcaster and a long-time blogger. Shel is a founding fellow of the Society for New Communications Research and a member of The Mayo Clinic Center for Social Media advisory board.

Toby Ward, CEO, Prescient Digital Media (CAN)

Toby Ward 2013 Founder and Chair of the Intranet Global Forum, Toby is one of the World’s most widely-seen intranet speakers, and read intranet writers, with dozens of leading clients including Harvard, HSBC, Nintendo, Pepsi, Sodexo, and many more.

AGENDA

Day 1: Pre-Conference Workshops (Thursday, March 6, 2014)

Time
8:45am

Welcome & Introductions

9:00am	Workshop A - How to Build a Social Intranet Facilitators: Cathy Krznarich, Ecommerce Manager, Best Western, Toby Ward, CEO, Prescient Digital Media, and Tamer El Shazli, VP, Technology, Social Business Interactive
	No one said it will be easy. Fear not: this comprehensive "how-to" workshop will provide the process and steps for redesigning an intranet, recommendations for securing funding, checklists for migrating to a new technology, or upgrading an existing platform (including SharePoint). Attend this session and you'll come away with a clearer idea of how to create an intranet plan and governance policy, how to make a business case for an intranet or intranet redesign, basic design principles, and tips on how to best use SharePoint 2013. This workshop will include hands-on planning and redesign exercises, and will feature an in-depth case study from Best Western International: Best Western International, Inc., headquartered in Phoenix, Ariz., is a privately held hotel brand made up of more than 4,000 BEST WESTERN®, BEST WESTERN PLUS® and BEST WESTERN PREMIER® hotels in more than 100 countries and territories worldwide. Best Western’s “member portal,” an intranet/extranet for the brand’s member hotels, is the company’s primary resource for sharing news, information and resources with its hoteliers. Last year Best Western successfully redesigned its member portal to improve user satisfaction and engagement with the site, using Adobe CQ5 as the platform. As part of the redesign process, the team examined and more clearly defined the strategic direction, goals, governance and content management processes for the site. Cathy Krznarich, Manager, eCommerce, Best Western International, Inc. In her role on Best Western’s digital marketing team, Cathy Krznarich oversees the strategic direction and daily operations for a number of the company’s marketing websites targeting specific audiences, including the company’s global hotel portal and corporate employee portal. Cathy has more than 15 years’ digital marketing experience, with a primary focus in the hospitality industry.
12:30pm	Lunch Break (1 hour)
1:30pm	Workshop B - Intranet Activity Streams, Engagement and Internal Communications Facilitator: Shel Holtz, Principal, Holtz Communications + Technology
	Communicators in companies large and small are finding increased readership of their formal content when they move it from a magazine-like homepage format into the same activity stream employees use to ask questions and share information. Adopting an activity stream as the dominant feature of an intranet home page has other benefits not the least of which is raising the level of employee engagement. In this pre-conference workshop, Holtz will outline the role that communications plays in employee engagement and how activity streams accommodate most of the communication criteria for engaged employees. Those who attend this session will learn what it takes to pivot away from email, how to create content to increase readership, and how to use an activity stream as a real-time employee monitoring system. Shel Holtz Holtz has written numerous books on social media. He counsels clients on the adoption of social and digital media and is a long-time blogger and co-host of the first and longest-running communication-focused podcast, For Immediate Release.

Day 2: Intranet Global Forum Keynotes & Sessions (Friday, March 7, 2014)

Time 8:45am	Welcome & Introductions Speaker: Lee Hornick, Honorary Chair, Intranet Global Forum

9:00am	Session A - Morning Keynote; The Intranet as the Center of Social Business Speaker: Toby Ward, CEO, Prescient Digital Media, Conference Chair of Intranet Global Forum, IntranetBlog.com The social business phenomenon has gathered significant momentum in recent years; many organizations are using social media inside, and out. More than 80 percent of medium-to-large organizations have implemented, or are testing, at least one intranet social media tool. However, investment and execution of internal social media lags far behind external social media efforts. Toby Ward Ward will compare and contrast the findings of this year's Social Business Study with the findings of least year's Social Intranet Study, examine some of the best practices, and highlight some of the leaders in creating and developing social workplaces. He'll cover what tools are being used in organizations of all sizes, and underscore the lessons learned from others who have implemented SharePoint and other social media initiatives.

9:45am	Session B - Case Study: Unisys: Overhauling Your Corporate Intranet Speaker: Gloria Burke, Global Portfolio Leader, Unified Social Business Practice, Unisys Unisys' unique and holistic approach to enterprise social business transformation led to a complete overhaul of its intranet, extranet environment and content federation with unisys.com in 2013. In this presentation, Gloria Burke, Chief Knowledge Officer, describes the strategy, framework and approaches that they developed for this transformation and shares a glimpse of the social networking platform and community-based collaborative ecosystem that is at the heart of this award winning, industry recognized implementation. Gloria Burke Burke is the Global Portfolio Leader for the Unified Social Business Practice at Unisys and is one of the company's senior thought leaders on Enterprise Social Business and Culture Transformation. Burke also serves as Chief Knowledge Officer and is responsible for the development of the company's Enterprise Social Business Strategy and its supporting social culture adoption and change management initiatives. She has authored numerous articles and blogs on enterprise social business topics, which have been featured on unisys.com and in Social Media Today. She is a frequent conference presenter and panelist on these topics. Recently Burke was ranked second by Information Week Magazine as one of the Top Ten Social Business Leaders of 2013.

10:45am	Networking Break (15 minutes)

11:00am	Session C - Case Study: Cisco Systems: Developing a Meaningful Social Intranet Speakers: John Allen, Managing Editor, All-Employee Communications, Cisco Systems Inc. and Heather Gallegos, Senior Manager Internal Communication Channels, Cisco Systems Inc. The answer to any question by any Cisco employee is "check the website." Cisco Systems has gone to great lengths to web-enable almost all work-related information and nearly every single work function on its corporate intranet. The effort has translated into an annual return on investment of more than US$800 million. What are the winning characteristics of successful corporate intranets such as Cisco's? Learn the five winning characteristics of leading intranets that will help drive intranet success. During this session, John Allen and Heather Gallegos reveal the inner workings of the acclaimed intranet at Cisco.

12:00pm	Networking Lunch (1 hour)

1:00pm	Session D – Trends and Opportunities in Developing a Social Intranet Panelists: Thyda Nhek, Social Collaboration Lead, DirecTV and John Cloyd, Co-Founder, President and CEO, JCS Consulting During this session, a panel of intranet experts will interact with you and discuss the newest trends and opportunities to develop, implement and measure your intranet.

2:00pm	Session E – Case Study: Middleburg Bank: Building a Social SharePoint Intranet Speaker: Marybeth Muir, Senior Vice President, Strategic Planning, Middleburg Bank Middleburg Bank (established 1924) is a full-service commercial bank in Virginia. Over the past ten years, Middleburg has grown to include 13 financial service centers, an operation center, and over US$1.2 billion in assets. With the company's recent expansion, it became evident that their existing information system was not adequately supporting their growth strategy. Senior management made a decision to incur the expense and implement a new intranet system using SharePoint 2013. Learn how Middleburg planned, designed, and built a brand new intranet from scratch, and in the process quickly migrated more than a half million files and added social media to the new SharePoint 2013 environment. Marybeth Muir Marybeth Muir leads the process improvement initiative, examining current processes and implementing changes that streamline the workflow. Marybeth has been Senior Vice President of Process Improvement at The Middleburg Bank since September 2012. Prior to her current role, she was VP of Marketing at Middleburg Bank, and SVP, Branding and Communications at Bank of America.

3:30pm	Refreshment Break (15 minutes)

3:45pm	Session F – Communication Teams and IT…So Happy Together: How to Work with IT to Create the Intranet of Your Dreams Speaker: Rob Colwill, CEO and Founder, Coldwater Software Strategic business initiatives are critically important to the health and growth of enterprises. C-level executives are often charged with developing critical business objectives and measures while business leaders and managers within the company are required to drive the strategic initiatives forward with limited information and tight timelines. IT is often included as an afterthought and asked to support the initiatives in short time frames with limited budgets. This session will discuss how communication professionals, IT professionals and business analysts can work together in order to use SharePoint and web-based services as the internal technology platform for driving strategic initiatives. By working together, these critical teams can bring the skill sets required to create a comprehensive framework for the evaluation of social, mobile, desktop and web-based services that enable scalable, cost-effective and powerful initiatives across the strategic life cycle. Key Takeaways: Attendees will leave the session knowing what questions to ask IT to properly enable your strategic initiatives. How to speed up your project by using a comprehensive technology selection framework. Understanding how to ensure internal alignment by involving IT to evaluate cloud based tools and services. Best practices on working with IT to reach remote employees and employees on mobile devices. Rob Colwill Colwill has 13 years of experience in information technology, specializing in defining and managing complex software features and initiatives. Colwill has a passion for innovation and seeks to consistently refine scope and deliver on the vision. As the Global Portal Manager at Newmont Mining, Colwill delivered a global portal upgrade with custom branding, business solutions, taxonomy and search. As a senior program manager at Microsoft, Colwill developed deep experience in all aspects of the software development life cycle, including enterprise software, large-scale web services, productivity and database applications. Colwill's project design and management experience includes work on a variety of world-class products including SQL Server, Office, and Windows Live. Colwill has defined and led research projects, UI design projects, architecture projects, standards projects, and more.

4:30pm	Session G: Afternoon Keynote: Internal Social Visual Communications Speaker: Shel Holtz, Principal, Holtz Communications + Technology Image-driven communication is becoming a standard component of most communicators' plans. A confluence of trends have driven images to a new level, led by the adoption of mobile devices as a primary means of consuming content. The rise of Instagram and the role Facebook, Tumblr and other social networks play in the sharing of images suggests that photos have taken on a new role. Rather than simply chronicling a moment for posterity, they are a means of communication of what we're up to right now. Brands have carried the idea of images-as-communication to another level, with 40% of shared images on Instagram coming from marketing efforts. Despite evidence of the widespread adoption of image-based communication, the practice has not yet found its way into internal communications. You can be a step ahead of that trend! In this session, Shel Holtz will help you: Understand the new and emerging role of images in modern communication. Develop an image strategy that supports your internal communication goals. Use infographics and info-posters to tell stories. Take advantage of Instagram's private account features. Shel Holtz Shel Holtz has written numerous books on social media. He counsels clients on the adoption and use of social and digital media and is a long-time blogger and co-host of the first and longest-running communication-focused podcast, For Immediate Release.

Cost

For both the workshop and forum (6 and 7, March 2014)
IABC members: US $1,400
Non-members: US $1,600

For the forum only (7 March 2014)
IABC members: US $895
Non-members: US $1,195

For the workshop only (6 March 2014)
IABC members: US $495
Non-members: US $595

IABC members receive a 20% discount