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There is lots of information available on how to build a great intranet. (Try Jakob Nielsen, James Robertson and Toby Ward for starters.) But there is little information available on how to launch a great intranet.

Purchase order to launch in 7 weeks

While I was in the front room finalizing contracts with Penn State Purchasing, Bevin Hernandez, the intranet project manager, was already in the back room working on the launch timeline.

They set a hard launch date of January 29th, just 7 weeks away, with a Christmas break in between. This would be a very public launch — they asked all 1500 staff to keep the day free for something very big and very mysterious.

Mysterious postcard asking people to block out the intranet launch date on their calendars.

The team identified a launch risk: not all employees were comfortable with technology. So to coincide with launch, they created a professional development series to help.

Professional development series to introduce newbies to next-generation collaboration technology.

Bevin reports that these classes have been a resounding success thus far.

It’s All About People

The theme of the Penn State Outreach launch campaign was “A Time to Connect.”

In line with that theme, they created posters as teasers for the new intranet’s relational profiles.

The posters were the most successful marketing piece of the campaign. Bevin reports, “I heard references to it in various meetings and classes where people thought it was fantastic and ‘wished they could do that’. The team had to stifle giggles because we knew that they soon would be able to.”

Each employee received a welcome kit that included the agenda for the day and a thumbdrive containing some special documents.

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