Telling the Irish Tech Story
WITHOUT MUCH FANFARE, the webworks at Tipperary Institute revised much of the way information flows out to the desktops of people when they boot onto the intranet. Some clever technology is serving just-in-time data, refreshed by tools tried and tested by Irish technologists. For people like James Corbett, who cannot see the results since they unfold on a local area network, some additional explanation is required about how we hope to tell the Irish tech story by adopting some of its best parts into a corporate intranet unfamiliar with the newest forms of social media. The Tipperary initiative blends news alerts, blog posts, and event information in one view without any scrolling required to see details.
1. Grazr widgets serve dynamically refreshed, cascading data. This means we can set up trusted nodes of upcoming events and they will display in front of employees as calendar items. Using the Grazr back end and the familiar "items for diaries" notation helps promote joined-up thinking. Issues remain about posting items to places like Upcoming.org but when people know that using one allows many to share the information, the practise of electronic calendaring will extend beyond Outlook.
2. Blogs can be personal journals, sets of photos, microblogged content or video shorts. In the case of Mike Kiely (shown behind camera), a hyperlink for his blog actually points to Intruders TV, a joint undertaking between Tipperary Institute and Edgecast Media. Faculty and staff after returning from summer break see the service and think it's a television channel. "So a blog can be a personal TV show?"
3. We have discovered people will hang onto the front page of the corporate intranet when they can sense a story unfolding. This is a tactic I did not anticipate. To capitalise on this human behaviour, several staff bloggers need to connect their thoughts across blog space. Mike Kiely and Conn O Muineachain need to ensure their videos are crafted as stories as well. The technology segments need to have clear beginnings, middles and ends. For the most part, that's the way they're crafted but when there's something missing, I've watched people stop watching within a few minutes. As an aside, people like the tension of the background scenes that are muted in the technology coverage.
The revision of the Tipperary Institute intranet is incomplete. However, even in its earliest manifestation, it appears that Sharon Fitzgerald, the lead designer who is directing Mike the cameraman in the photo, has flexed her media training towards ensuring the default intranet screen now delivers more compelling content now than ever before in history. That's a major leap for lecturers who are training the next generation of knowledge workers.
Hats off to Mike Cox for seeing through this initiative. Screenshot coming.
