8:00 a.m.
Continental Breakfast & Networking

8:30 a.m.
Chairperson's Opening of Day Two

Michael Rudnick, Global Practice Leader, Intranets, Portals and Collaboration
TOWERS WATSON

8:45 a.m.

How To Effectively Use Your Intranet To Foster Positive Employee Satisfaction And Improve Morale

Retaining a qualified and effective workforce can be challenging within the limitations of the public sector, especially during tough budget times. Employees who feel appreciated and know senior managers are listening to them are more content and productive, and internal communications plays a vital role in fostering employee satisfaction.

Using both traditional and new media communication tools on your intranet can enhance the interaction between employees and senior managers and help improve employee morale and cultivate a positive work environment. The Washington State Office of the Attorney General is using YouTube, Facebook and an in-house built intranet.

In this session, you will learn how to use effective communication tools on your intranet, including blogs, videos, and anonymous suggestion boxes to:

• Keep employees engaged, connected and informed
• Help employees accept change and transition
• Recognize employee achievement
• Improve employee health and productivity
• Maintain high employee morale

Sarah Lane, Director of New Media
Washington State Office of the Attorney General
@AGOWA

9:30 a.m.

Communications That Connect: Six Creative Ways To Take Your Intranet To The Next Level Using Web 2.0

As employees embrace a Web 2.0 world, old school intranets simply don’t support the levels of innovation and knowledge sharing required for success and staying power. Discover how SAS, FORTUNE Magazines No. 1 Best Place to Work two years running, blends the rapid pace of new technology integration with the timeless importance of helping employees stay productive, knowledgeable and connected. You will be shown how SAS engages the internal audience with creative uses of new technologies that your organization can also implement, including:

1. A social networking platform (Socialcast – internally known as the Hub) that invites individual feedback, supports group interests, and reveals answers in real time
2. Compelling and timely daily internal news coverage, including live and breaking news stories with open comments from employees
3. Employee-generated photo galleries and video spots
4. Talk-show style live webcasts with company leaders, including unscripted interviews and online audience polling
5. An internal RSS news stand, integrating regular updates from more than 60 different departments into one simple subscription application
6. More than 700 active employee blogs to capture and share opinions, ideas and areas for improvement

Becky Graebe, Corporate Communications Manager
SAS
@beckygraebe

10:45 a.m.

Building The Foundation For A Collaborative Intranet: How To Align Your Organization And Drive Long-Term Success

The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) is a vibrant organization with a motivated workforce who that shares a collective passion for the environment and wildlife conservation.  With a strong culture of collaboration, innovation and mutual assistance, it was imperative that NWF develop an intranet that supported their mission and corporate culture, as well as to develop a long-term vision, tools and processes to ensure that the intranet remains up-to-date, useful, drives long-term success and is relevant into the future.

This session will walk you through their multi-faceted approach to building a strategy that not only considers strong navigation and content management, but business processes, collaboration across geographic regions, community-building, and innovation management. 

Shannon Ryan, President & CEO
NON-LINEAR CREATIONS

11:30 a.m.

Enabling Employees To Effectively Converse And Collaborate In The Digital Age— And Reap The Benefits For Your Organization

There’s a digital conversation going on right now. All over the globe, individuals are sharing information, expertise, making decisions, building relationships, and more, without even leaving their seats. Sentiment and knowledge are being created around topics that could have a direct impact on your business. Are you out there? Are you part of the conversation? Are your employees? Are your competitors’ employees?!

In today’s digital world, the employee and the relationships and conversations that employee has in the digital space is defining the brand. Because of this, we need to ensure that our employees have the tools they need to reach out so that they can effectively participate in it: from conversing about topics they are experts in, to relationship building, to globally collaborating on projects with other employees, partners, clients, peers, and the general public. The more digitally active your employees are both inside and outside your company, the more current, credible and responsive your company will be viewed.

Using examples from IBM, you will learn lessons on how to:

• Enable employees to build and share their expertise inside and outside the company
• Generate, aggregate and promote social conversations of interest to your company
• Create a globally collaborative employee culture both internally and externally

Kevin Winterfield, Social Systems and Digital Influence
IBM
@kmwinterfield

Join a group of your colleagues for lunch with an informal discussion facilitated by one of our expert speakers. Take this opportunity to join others in a small, interactive group setting to network and brainstorm solutions to your most pressing internal communications concerns.

1:45 p.m.

Group Exercise: Brainstorm Solutions And New Ideas You Can Use

Interact and discuss solutions to your intranet and SharePoint challenges with your fellow attendees and our experienced speakers. You will leave with new tools and hands-on experience and ideas for more successfully applying best practices to your own intranet’s initiatives.

Prior to the Wells Fargo and Wachovia merger in 2008, both companies had a robust intranet portal. But now, with more than 260,000 team members worldwide, Wells Fargo transformed the go-forward intranet into an online global workplace. In this session, you will hear how they successfully transformed their intranet into an online global workplace, and how you, too, can:

• Build community through merger and organizational change
• Overcome the challenges of a regulated environment
• Use an integrated social approach, from engagement to adoption
• Connect and doing work online
• Understand the many opportunities for the future

Kelli Carlson-Jagersma, VP – Collaboration Strategy
Wells Fargo
@Northstar

3:15 p.m.

Afternoon Refreshment & Networking Break

3:30 p.m.

Communication Challenges And Solutions In The Web 2.0 Era: How To Improve Internal Communication, Promote Social Media And Increase Your Intranet Usage

• Augment emergency preparedness
• Target messages appropriate to the audience
• Improve intranet usage and adoption
• Promote employees’ sense of team in a distributed workforce
• Address Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery issues
• Help resolve HR and benefits communication issues
• Address and ensure internal compliance concerns

Steve Zimmer, Director Information Technology
GENESEE COUNTY, NEW YORK

Andre Godfrey, President & CEO
ENTRE COMPUTER SERVICES

4:15 p.m.
Chairperson's Recap: Key Takeaways And What To Do When You Get Back To The Office

We’ll recap the highlights of the past two days and ask you to share key insights and next steps with the group.

Michael Rudnick, Global Practice Leader, Intranets, Portals and Collaboration
TOWERS WATSON

4:30 p.m.
Close of General Sessions

• Post-Conference Morning Workshop C:
  8:30 a.m. – 11:30 a.m.:
  How To Develop Engaging Content For Your Intranet: Overcoming Common Obstacles And Practical Solutions
• Post-Conference Afternoon Workshop D:
  12:30 p.m. to 3:30 p.m.
  Developing A SharePoint Governance Plan: How To Gain Control And Achieve Your Business Goals