Are publishers' needs opposite to users' needs?

When talking with publishers they often talk about their aspirations for their site along the following lines

1. Different

2. Interactive

3. A place to put all of the relevant documents

4. All of the content related to my project in a single place

5. Ways to get users to look at things that I want them to

Compare that list to the typical things that users say they want from websites

1. Consistent

2. Simple

3. Not just a list of PDFs

4. Content arranged by what I am doing - without having to know the organisation structure

5. Don't let anything get in the way of what I'm trying to do - don't make me wade through irrelevant links

Okay, I may have slightly stretched the point, but it is certainly interesting to compare our drivers as intranet publishers and managers with those of the user. 

Do you have any examples of the tensions between users and publishers needs? I would love to hear them. 

Should we call it web 2.0?

The other day my boss challenged me to really get some energy behind web2.0 on our intranet. He is an enthusiast for all things web and really wanted to get going with this web2.0 thing. I agreed with him and said I would get going at once. I went back to my desk and listed out some of the things that web2.0 included and how it might be used in our business. Every time I came up for a use for web 2.0, we had already implemented it or were already working on the idea. In fact, most of the issue with existing implementations was either lack of management engagement or lack of relevance to mainstream users.

This was quite a breakthrough as I spend quite a bit of time (as you probably do) in meetings with people who just WISH we were doing web 2.0

This need to ask for web2.0 reminds me of the old story of a man who was stranded on a desert island. He prayed to god for help and soon after a rescue boat arrived. He told the rescue team to go away as he was sure god would save him. Later, a helicopter came over and he told the pilot the same thing. A passing boat signalled to him and he signalled back that he was waiting for god to save him. Of course after a little while the man died. Arriving at the gates of heaven he asked god why he had not answered his prayer and saved him. God replied 'Of course I answered your prayer - I sent a rescue team, a helicopter, a boat...'

My learning from all this is that sometimes we need to step back from the buzz and deliver projects and intranets that just work. In intranet circles so much energy is put into the 'redesign' or the 'relaunch' and so little into the basic hard work of running something that is based on needs of the user and the company. By calling something web2.0 we are setting ourselves an impossible challenge that will never go away even if everyone in the company has a blog.

What do you think - should we ban the phrase web2.0 on our intranets?