IPIP

I think this site/effort should be getting more buzz. Premium IT is, among other things a fantastic repository of best practices for IT organizations. The site include blogs, white papers, and trends. While it surely is a strong marketing strategy for Intel, the site is still quite valuable and really hits the mark for large IT organizations. If you haven't explored the site I recommend a visit, IPIP.

I recently had the opportunity to attend a premium IT event here in Minneapolis. Excellend sessions that layed out roadmaps for Intels next generation of processors, plus sessions on virtualization and security. What was most interesting to me was a session on Intel's efforts to implement social networking at the enterprise level. In my last post I asked whether you thought tools like twitter had a place in your design environments. The message from Intel, was a little more direct. If you want to attract talent and retain Gen Y employees it's a "must do" not a "should do".

I also suggested that you have a choice in implementation. Roll your own, or use existing tools. Intel has chosen to create their own using enterprise tools to integrate content and social media sources - twitter, facebook, and blogging features are aggregated into a very facebook like interface, but inter-connects into other data sources, groups, and team information are included as well. Recognizing that some R&D efforts must have restricted access, at least early on, they have also chosen to include permission and authentication features not common in consumer based social networking tools. 

Interesting points were made too about the need for ease-of use and the need to meet the demands of clients whose expectations for collaborative tools are derived from the consumer space and not the, can I say traditional IT space. The tools are obviously for Intel employees only, but I couldn't help notice how much the examples looked like facebook - this isn't the future of enterprise collaboration, this is what teams expect and need today to share and interact. This isn't MS SharePoint, or older file post and retrieval collaboration tools like we might be more familiar with. If your thinking a web page, or heh, ProjectWise, then maybe revisiting requirements is in order.