The perennial “what is a CMS” debate broke out this week, with a fairly innocuous tweet from Dirk Shaw, “I am sorry but wordpress is hardly a web content management system.” that many of our CMS community waded into and included this post on CMS Myth arguing in favour and just about everyone arguing against… and crikey [...]
The perennial “what is a CMS” debate broke out this week, with a fairly innocuous tweet from Dirk Shaw, “I am sorry but wordpress is hardly a web content management system.” that many of our CMS community waded into and included this post on CMS Myth arguing in favour and just about everyone arguing against… and crikey [...]
Social Media is moving
into television on an increasing basis as I have covered a bit on this blog.
This is the theme of a post by Tim Dillard on TheNextWeb: Will 2010 be the Year
of Social TV? For example, fans of
certain TV shows from different time zones are saving the latest episodes of
their favorite shows and then arranging common viewing times with their friends
to watch the shows whilst discussing the action together on Skype,
The shows themselves are
also launching efforts, sometimes with mixed results. In the UK, high profile
post-apocalypse drama, BBC's 'Survivors', launched with stream of tweets from
'survivors'. They were supposedly trying to get messages out to a world in
which most of the population had been wiped out by a mystery virus. However,
the effort did not last. In another failed case, Fox tired integrating Twitter
during reruns of sci-fi series 'Fringe' in the US. It got criticism almost
immediately from the show's fans by swamping the screen with tweets from the
cast and crew of the show, thus obscuring much of the action. Sounds like those
tweets do blast you with multiple tweets in a row, except even worse.
It seems the most
successful efforts so far are user generated. For example, with Twitter,
real-time conversations about TV shows at the shows are broadcast live are
linked together through the use of hashtags. This is the same with online communities. The television
shows will need to move better in this direction by listening to their viewers
and being creative.
This is the second installment of “The Problem With ‘E’ in ECM” – Follow this link to read the first post.
When you look at the impact SharePoint has made in the content management arena the metrics are truly astounding. So much so that we now talk about SharePoint as a market unto itself. ISV’s and integrators [...]
A few weeks ago, I wrote a post about Box.net. In case you missed it, I basically called their term for their solution, which I refuse to use again, “market speak” and hype while implying much worse.
A week later, Aaron Levie, the CEO and cofounder of Box.net, was interviewed on Fierce Content Management. Here he espoused a solid vision for Box’s hosted version of Content Management, though that term was heavily featured, again.
During all this, a very surprising thing thing happened, Aaron contacted me and asked if we could setup a time to chat so that I might better understand their vision. I accepted his offer. Our scheduled meshed today and I thought I would share.
I just want to send Kudos to Aaron for reaching out. I wasn’t kind to their term, and to reach out like that, knowing that a second post would likely follow, takes a certain amount of gumption. For it not to be someone in marketing and be the CEO himself, even more. The only pre-determination was if the conversation was public or private. He choose public.
That said, character will only get you so far. You have to deliver and have a direction. They have a good vision. They are trying to achieve Omnipresent Content Management now. They are starting down that road towards realization of that vision.
Oh, they have some rather large hurdles in front of them. Identity Management is a big massive humongous one, but they, at best, can only be part of the solution as the world at-large needs to have a solution. They are trying to have the content live in the right places, so that is a start.
Okay, funny part. I think I sold him on CMIS more than he sold me on Box.net. My biggest, and probably only, real issue entering the conversation was their marketing term. Like many, they hadn’t fully grasped the potential of CMIS and how it could actually drive business for them. The fact that he seemed to “get it” will help them in the future.
It is one thing to enable the populace to share documents with each other. They’ve already passed Google Docs on that front in my opinion. It is another thing to support business. Let’s face it, that is where the real money needed to create a true platform is long-term.
They are trying to establish trust. They aren’t hiding behind pay-to-play for individual users. They are also being audited for SAS 70 statement. That takes a little faith, and a commitment to achieve sound operating standards. Maintaining that over time, and not letting it be a one-time thing, is important.
Aaron told me that they are seeing solid traction in smaller to medium sized businesses (SMBs), which is think is their current core market. From experience, non-profits would also benefit. He also said that they are seeing departmental use in larger organizations. I suspect that some of those efforts are born out of frustration from trying to get things done in a bureaucracy (which is itself a solid market niche that can lead to larger footprints).
Is Box.net ready to tackle ECM solutions head-on? No. Are they on the path to get there? Yes. Will people go with them now because it is simple? Yes.
I wrote a basic ECM checklist back in December. They are well on their way overall and have basic routing already. While they are seeking to be broader than ECM and move beyond the Enterprise, and corporate firewalls, they still need to provide the same core technology to serve the broader audience.
I did concede one thing to Aaron. I said that I understood why they used the offending term and why it is a good marketing term. They are a cloud-based application residing in the SaaS layer. There is no denying that or the current fashionable use of the word cloud. They provide Content Management functionality. I’ll give them that, though it is more Document Management at this point (I think CMS Watch might agree) than Content Management.
I can only hope that the winds of change will force the evolution to a new term in the next couple of years so we can all be spared. If the term sticks, I will have to get out of Information Management.
Besides, CCM already means Component Content Management. OCM is cool, but as I said, nobody is ready to offer that yet.
The correct term will be obvious one day. It just isn’t now.
Disclaimer
Just so it is crystal clear, to you and the FTC, Box.net has given and promised me nothing aside from time. Aaron did say that he was considering what it will take for me to type or utter their marketing term outside of my nightmares, but that hasn’t happened and it was in jest.
Besides, EMC is a partner of my company and their reps will buy me the occasional beverage. It doesn’t stop me from issuing a regular dose of brutal honesty to them.
Around thirteen years ago, I helped build a prototype for a custom CRM system that ran on an object database (ObjectStore). The idea isn’t quite as crazy as it sounds. The data was extremely hierarchical with parent companies and subsidiaries and divisions and then people assigned to the individual divisions. It was [...]
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This post combines two FastForward posts as I wanted to continue to share this story with a broader audience. The US military
is using an enterprise 2.0 style collaborative network to help coordinate its
relief efforts in Haiti. As
reported by David Pierce in Wired in Pentagon’s Social Network Becomes Hub for
Haiti Relief:
Transnational Information Sharing Cooperation”) is a new iteration of APAN, the
All Partners Access Network, which was developed by the Defense Department a
few years ago. Initially, the military was using APAN to communicate across
borders, particularly in countries without sophisticated communication
technology. Even in third-world countries, Internet connection seemed to be
frequently accessible, so the APAN system was built to work over the Internet,
to facilitate the sharing of classified files, as well as things like
coordinating calendars.
The system is
designed to be as simple as possible, and is as easy to use as a site like
Facebook, says Ty Wooldridge of the U.S. Pacific Command in Hawaii. It uses
file-sharing applications, wikis, blogs, and calendaring tools, among other
things, to coordinate information and action among people, no matter where they
are. Though there are obvious military implications to that kind of network,
its first battlefield test is ongoing, on the ground in Haiti.”
was involved in the development of APAN to get the details (see my series on
how Booz Allen, itself, uses enterprise 2.0 within the firm). First, I will
cover how it works and then cover how it came into being and then its use in
Haiti.
Haiti but they might be even worse without the TISC. Haiti is the first
activity of scale to use the system. When you are determining ROI based on
number of hospital beds filled and people who receive much needed food, the
benefits take on a different meaning. The TISC concept is to help the US
military better coordinate with NGOs and other countries when disaster strikes.
The objective is to a create system that not only helps with particular
disasters but also builds an archive of best practices, key
people/organizations and useful information to better handle future needs, as
well as a platform for efficient cooperation.
chat and blogs. In the forums, people are able to ask questions (how to find
experts, etc.) and make requests (can you help with this issue, etc.), as well
as offer help or point out resources that others can draw on (e.g., available
hospital beds or safe landing areas). The forum tags content and sets up a
treaded dialog on the specific issues.
The chat tool allows for real time secure communications. Then the content is organized and
placed in a wiki for ease of retrieval. Finally, the best practices are
abstracted and put into blogs to attract comments and be available for use in
future disaster relief efforts. In
the future, there will be expert locators and profiles.
Pacific Command (PACOM) wanted to develop an online community for the free flow
of information between validated people from the US military, NGOs and other
countries. Ty Wooldrige and Jerry
Giles led the effort for PACOM. Booz Allen was asked to create the system with
PACOM, and James Kaina and Tim Gramp are the Booz Allen leads.
support for mobile devices was strengthened. The US Southern Command asked the
PACOM to provide an operational demonstration of the system. The PACOM team was
in Miami for this demo when the Haiti earthquake struck. The Southern Command
said to forget simply doing a demo and decided to put the system into real use
to help with Haiti. Now APAN is providing real-time help, validating the
concept and vision, gathering useful content, and the Haiti effort is providing
a significant test of the system to make further improvements.
knowledge management and the use of after action reviews and lessons learned.
It is nice to see it acting as one of the leaders in the use of Enterprise 2.0
concepts that take the vision of knowledge management significantly forward
with new tools, transparency, and capabilities.
reported on how on APAN has evolved into a broader communications and
coordination tool that's proving vital to those who want to help and those who
need it. Governments, companies and private citizens are using it to post what
they are offering, allowing disaster relief officials to pick and choose what
they need. Defense News also
pointed out the usefulness of Web social media such as Twitter and Facebook, as
well as geospatial systems such as Open Street that was been used to create
detailed maps of damaged areas.
very basic use of wikis helped with the Katrina efforts (see: Katrina
PeopleFinder Project). In this case a call for virtual volunteers to help
populate a centralized missing person database was meet over 20,000 people
within a day. It is great to see social media and its users helping out again
and the evolution of its capabilities. However, the basic human drive to help
others in need continues to drive these efforts. Social media just allows a
much greater way to productivity channel this human drive.
Here is an interesting post
that I can certainly agree with. Aaron Kahlow writes about the information curation potential of
social media in his post, 2010: Social Media Removes the Dam of
Gutenberg-Google.
Aaron begins with the effect
of the printing press. It certainly opened up content distribution way beyond
what the monks doing hand written work could accomplish. However, it
established new controls over what content got out. You still needed to have
the resources to set up a printing press, print and distribute works.
Now there is the Web and you
might think the dam is broken. In one sense it has, as there are very few
barriers to getting content out on the Web. In 2008 there was more content
created than in the entire prior history.
The trick is finding this content, especially the quality stuff. This is
where Google has both helped and created a new bottleneck. As Aaron writes, “With
only 10+ organic results and a similar number of paid results, consumers will
only find content they seek in those 20 places — with less than 20 percent
being relevant as it relates to information they seek.” For example a search on
“green card” will get you a lot of services that want to charge you money for
what the US government does for free.
Aaron goes on to comment
that social media can help break this new dam. Now we can “get good information
through tweets of those we follow, Facebook Sharing, and from others within our
networks who are usually connected online. We have a new discovery outlet and a
new way to find stories, whether mainstream or from an unknown blogger. We find
things based on recommendations of trusted colleagues, friends, etc.” This is how I found Aaron’s post.
Peter Cashmore raises a
similar point in his predictions for 2010 than I commented on earlier (see Reflecting on Peter Cashmore's Web Trends to Watch in 2010). Peter
wrote that, “The Web's biggest challenge of recent years is that content
creation is outpacing our ability to consume it:
"Information overload" has become an increasingly common complaint…
In 2008, the answer revealed itself: Your friends are your filter…
Increasingly, your friends are becoming the curators of your
consumption.” I certainly agree here and Twitter has served this role for
me. Much of what I write about on my blogs comes from my Twitter friends,
including the link to Peter Cashmore’s predictions.
Aaron
offers some good points to make effective use fo social media to get your
content out. Instead of having to
contact a prominent journalist to write a story about your company, you can use
your own channels such as blogs to consistently write good content worth
tweeting and sharing.
You can also leverage your own social networks to start
sharing content.
These are all reasons that we write this blog and participate
in Twitter and other social media.
Darwin
Ecosystem Awareness Engine™ is designed to address this issue of finding
relevant quality content without having to go through the filter of Google or
other search engines. Unlike Google, it does not decide what content is most
relevant but rather lays out the content related to your topic of interest in
clusters of themes and lets you explore what themes interest you. (see: A Comparison of Google Web Search and the Darwin Awareness Engine™).
Darwin
allows you to become your own curator for topics of your interest. You can also
go beyond this to act as a curator for friend or colleagues You can set
attractors on your topics of interest: people, places, concepts, and more. Then
you can see what emerges. This can be especially valuable for niche areas. You
can create your own online magazine. It can cover a much greater array of
source than Google News and it will show the relationships between news items
that emerge rather than simply displaying them. You can adjust your filters to
further focus you’re your curation efforts. We see content curation as one of
the major applications for the Darwin Awareness Engine™.
I was recently in New
Orleans for Webtrends Engage and prior to going made all these plans (see Going to New Orleans 2010 – You Should Go Too) but
then my dog broke his leg and I had to shorten the trip. He is recovering
nicely now. You can see this planning post for some good ideas but I only went
to one. Here was actually happen as I discovered some great new places and went
to a few known ones. You can click on any picture to enlarge it.
and stopped by Mr. B’s for a bowl
of gumbo at the bar. The full service was not open but this was all I wanted at
the time anyway and was a nice welcome back to the city. Mr B’s is an old
favorite that was under re-construction for a while. It is in the French
Quarter at 201 Royal Street (504) 523-2078.
After going to Tipitina’s for Cajun Fais Do Do with Bruce Daigrepont (see post tomorrow for my music explorations) I went to the
nearby Franky and Johnny’s. It is a neighborhood tavern that provides wonderful
Cajun food. I had their gumbo, a crawfish pie, and a soft shell crab po-boy.
They did not disappoint. I noticed
that there were two Red Sox pennants over the bar, along with Saints stuff. I
asked the bar tender about this. He said that he did not put those up by he is
a big Red Sox fan and his aspiration is to go to Fenway Park. I felt very
welcomed. I also read later that a Red Sox bar sports bar in Boston has adopted
the saints for the Super Bowl, as has much of the rest of the country. Franky
and Johnny’s is located at 321 Arabella Street (504)
899-9146.
The next morning I went to Surrey’s Juice Bar. Now it does have good juice but the
rest is not low cal. I had a wonderful shrimp and grits after being tempted by
the sausage gravy and biscuits. The dish was exceptional and a great way to start the day if
you are looking to put on a few pounds. It is located at 1418 Magazine Street
(504) 524-3828.
Lunch was simpler as I had a shrimp po-boy at
Domilise’s Po-Boys. It I described by many as one of the best places for
po-boys and I am addicted to the shrimp ones. It is located at 5240
Annunciation St., 504-899-9126. Roadfood gives it a 95%
rating and says it is a must eat place. I would agree.
Before a night hearing music on Frenchman Street
(see post tomorrow) I had dinner at Coop’s Place in the Quarter. Coop’s is in the quieter part of the
Quarter away from the tourist traps of Bourbon Street and has the feel of a
neighborhood bar, with a more punk rock crowd, that reflects the neighborhood,
than Franky and Johnny’s but the concept is the same, good Cajun (country vs
the city Creole food). I sat next to a chef from another restaurant who said he
often come here on his night off and most of the people are local. I had a
sample of gumbo, rabbit and sausage jambalaya., shrimp Creole, red bans and
rice, and fried chicken for only $12.99 and I could not finish it. It was new
to me but I have often had the amazing fried chicken at Firoella’s located
across the street (1136 Decatur Street) and this rivals it. The visiting chef
said that the two places are known as the two of the best chicken places. Coop
Place is located at 1109 Decatur Street (504) 525-9053. It is also a bar and is open late.
The next day was pouring rain and I made it to Croissant
D’Or in the far and quieter end of the Quarter by going from the protection of
one the many balconies to another. I was still very wet when I got to this
wonderful bakery that I have gone to many times. I had one of their croissants
and a slice of French King Cake. Unlike the NOLA King Cake that is a frosted
white cake, this one is layers of pastry around almond paste and is very good. I dried out and warmed up. It is located at 617 Ursulines Avenue
(504) 524-4663. Unfortunately I
had to leave before I could do much more.
At the airport I did get a shrimp po-boy from the
Acme Oyster House outpost here and ate it on the plane. I used to go to their main place in the
Quarter (724 Iberville Street (504) 522-5973) but now it has long lines so I
cannot vouch for the food anymore. Acme was the place to go for oysters in the 1950s but it
has become very commercial. However, they do have some of the best airport food
anywhere and it sure beats the free snacks on Jetblue.
James Robertson has an excellent post, Future principle: it’s more than the intranet, where he summarizes a movement to replace the term “intranet” with a word that reflects what an intranet could be. To quote:
There are some that would like to dump the “intranet” name, as it’s associated with the “old” vision of intranets [...]
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