IBF24 from The Netherlands: Focus on new ways of working
The portion of IBF24 hosted from The Netherlands was short and sweet, with two excellent intranet tours and two interviews with authors. Both interviews focused on the new ways of working needed to succeed in this modern, digital age of knowledge workers.
The first intranet tour from The Netherlands was led by Chloe Chavardes and Sarah Muirhead from the European Space Agency (ESA). The ESA intranet, winner of a past “My Beautiful Intranet” competition, demonstrated a clean and rich user interface. ESA’s intranet also demonstrated some high quality user-generated content on community pages, including a page of sustainability tips and a carbon footprint calculator.
The second tour from The Netherlands came from Marco Kooman from DSM. The DSM intranet design offered a striking simplicity, with clean lines and plenty of white space. DSM capitalized on personalization throughout their intranet to create a highly personal, very useful experience for employees.
The first interview during the IBF24 segment from The Netherlands was with Dirk Bijl, author of the new book Journey Towards the New World of Work. One of Dirk’s cornerstone arguments was that business today is still designed around the principles used to organize workers during the industrial revolution. But today’s companies operate in a post-industrial age where knowledge and flexibility play a huge role in success. Bijl also took IBF24 viewers down a fascinating path, discussing how “feminine” (not “female”) work style is more cooperative & supports effective collaboration. Holland is leading the way forward towards new ways of working in this digital, services and knowledge-oriented world of work.
The second interview from Holland was with Peter Hinssen, author of the book The New Normal: Explore the Limits of the Digital World. Hinssen made IBF24 viewers keenly aware of the gap that usually exists between consumer technology and the much more antiquated computer technology most of us use in the office. A favorite quote from the session was “Work is the period in my day when I have to use old technology.” According to Hinssen we’re about halfway through the digital revolution that is transforming the way we work. The big question: How will we do during the next half of this revolution?
While the IBF24 segment from The Netherlands was short, it brought us two riveting intranet tours and some important questions about how we work and what we expect from our work environments.
Categorised in: Collaboration, DWG24
