Hang on to your woman if you got one
Remember in El Paso, once, you shot one.
She may have been a whore, but she was a hot one
- BILLY

Sorry, so very sorry, dear reader. This isn’t a real post. But it is research for a real post. You see, I’m test driving a new analytics package which, on first impressions, is awesome. Problem is, my blog doesn’t get enough traffic to make any screenshots interesting. Which is why you are here.

So, before you leave, browse around and read some shit. It’s all in the interest of science. Retweet it, leave a comment, tell your friends and make my screenshots the busiest darn screenshots any analytics review ever had. If you’re very very lucky, you might even notice your visit in a picture in my next post.

Let’s see if 1337 Twitter followers are worth anything. I’m serious. I’ve got elite followers. And I’m sure I’ll lose a whole bunch of them pretty damn soon.

UPDATE: You can read the real blog post now – It Can All Change In a ChartBeat. And I only lost 2 Twitter followers. Fuck ‘em.

There is a new version of mojoPortal out and about. Version 2.3.5.1 of mojoPortal offers some new features and improvements including:

• A new jQuery UI Skin – Read Joe Audette’s blog post for more details on this new feature.
• Feature Setting Groups – By adding groups, one can organize the settings into logical groups that make it much easier for the user to digest because they can view one group at a time.
• User access control by roles
• Upgrades for rich text editors TinyMCE abd CKeditor
• Upgraded to the latest MySql Connector
• Updated Italian and German resources
• The Extra Skins download file has a new skin

Additional details about the new features and bug fixes for mojoPortal 2.3.5.1 can be found in the official release announcement at mojoPortal.com.

A few days ago I read Deane Barker’s excellent post Editors Live in the Holes (go ahead and read the post and then come back) and I have been thinking about it ever since. I have had the same experience several times and it is a good reminder for developers to pay special attention [...]

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I spent time last week at the UPenn Wharton UI Conference 2010 in Philadelphia, where I was treated to a session that was music to my ears.

“Your CMS is Not a Toaster,” led by Jen Yuan, an IT communications analyst in Penn’s IS and computing department, hit the nail on the head: CMS is NOT the greatest thing since sliced bread. It’s a tool to help you achieve your website goals. Nothing more, nothing less.

There was a lot to take in from her session (more in a later post) but it was her research into CMS systems currently being used on campus that really made my eyes pop out.

A few months ago, Yuan conducted a survey targeting anyone who manages CMS or CMS-like systems on campus. In all, 64 people responded. The slate of questions included one asking which CMS a given group or department was using.

Care to guess how many CMS systems are in play at Penn? Five? Ten? Go higher.

Yuan’s survey identified approximately 20 (yes 20) CMS or CMS-like systems in play at Penn. The leader by far: open-source Drupal, being used by at least 14 separate departments or groups on campus, followed closely by “custom systems” (eight) and Joomla (seven).

And, old friend WordPress was cited six times by respondents, recalling for me the debate we sparked here at the Myth a few months back with our post, “Is WordPress a CMS?”  But I digress.

Rounding out the remainder of the systems consisted of a who’s who of systems and tools: Adobe Contribute, Documentum eRoom, Open Text/Red Dot CMS, Expression Engine, DotNetNuke, Sharepoint, PaperThin CommonSpot … the list goes on.

Granted, Penn’s like any other large, decentralized university operating with many, many fiefdoms that don’t easily roll up into a central web authority. But it would seem a natural to try to rationalize at least some of the systems in an attempt to standardize, save on costs, reduce the range of programming expertise required, and so on. I know – easier said than done.

It begs the question: How many CMS (or CMS-like) systems are in play at your organization? And, what are you going to do about it?

Related posts:

1. Is WordPress a CMS?
2. What Ben Franklin Can Teach Us About Web CMS
3. Does it Matter Which CMS Product You Choose?

Most new site CMS implementations (as opposed to site migrations from one CMS to another) start off with a set of HTML mockups. This can be a convenient starting place because, in addition to showing how the pages should look and informing the content model, having the HTML gives a good head start to [...]

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Alan Pelz-Sharpe always has a way of getting me thinking. His latest post, ECM Coexistence and the Vuvuzela,   remarks how vendors and customers alike are looking to integrate new content systems with legacy content systems rather than replacing them. Connectors and API’s and standards are all the rage. What I wonder though is why the change and [...]

This is the eight in a series of my notes
on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers the
session, Enterprise
2.0 Value Propositions. It is led by Oliver Marks,
Sovos Group and ZDNet blogger and Dennis Howlett,
Industry Blogger at ZDnet and other places. . Here is the description. My notes follow.

“The promise of
Enterprise 2.0, success stories and a constellation of technologies from tiny
2.0 point solutions right up to secure global platforms can all be hard to
circumnavigate in order to identify where there is value pertinent for your
specific business needs. 
This session will help demystify, discuss common use
cases and provide context to help you plan and focus your strategic and
tactical thinking.”

Dennis blogs for ZDNet and rarely takes
the vendor or consulting view but writes from the user’s perspective.  He is a social psychologist who worked with
category A prisoners in the UK (these are rapists, murderers, terrorists)
Dennis said it taught him how to deal with difficult people. His degree is in
social psychology. I can relate to this as I also have a degree in psychology
and near the beginning of my career I worked with geriatric psychotics. Not as
intense as the group Dennis worked with but still quite a learning experience
on how to deal with difficult people. Oliver said this puts a new spin on the
concept of social.

Dennis began with the core value of
e20.  There are two sides to the
equation. Like email there does not need to have an ROI for social media as a
utility. However, most people work to live rather than live to work so they need
to see what is in it for them.

Oliver said he works with firms where
people are often over burdened. They are looking for simplicity.  Dennis asked if you were faced with an
emergency would you tweet or pick up a phone? How do you get people to see the
value in a tweet? When people are stressed they will go back to what they know
best.  Dennis said that he does not
have an issue with the revolutionaries as he is a child of the 60s but firms
cannot live in chaos.

Oliver asked about change management.
Dennis said the issue is how are you going to manage change management? How
will you get organizations to do the change management activities?  There is not a clear answer here

Oliver went on ask about the core value
of E20. He feels it is people first and then tools.  Dennis said the missing link in discussions so far is
process. He feels that content with context but outside of process is not
useful I would agree completely. 
He works with SAP so is very process oriented.

If you can embed e20 tools within the
sales process then it becomes useful. E20 allows you to do this over such prior
tools as IM with transparent, accessible content. This is spot on. I agree
completely here. Whenever I saw a successful KM effort, it was embedded in a
process.

Oliver said most people are disengaged at
work. How do you get them excited about these tools? Dennis said to you have to
make it fun. Most people do not see work as fun. Most people are cynical on new
tools. You have to show them how the tools will make their job easier.

Oliver asked how do you evoke change
management to promote innovation in a company were there is no permission to
fail? Dennis said this is hard. At SAP you have permission to fail. Oliver said
what about non-tech companies? He said that tech companies make tools that work
inside their environment. But this is a problem as other companies are not like
them. Dennis said you find simple easy things that work and let it grow from
there.

Oliver said that the big problem with
free tools is that they can change without consequence or notice. This can
leave users high and dry.

Oliver asked what do you do when there
are more silos with best of breed e20 tools that do not connect? Dennis said
that department selection leads to different tools that are unaware of each
other. What do you do?  There is
business value in bringing the isolated groups together. Luis Suarez asked how
long is this going to take? Dennis said if it takes too long he would not sign
a check for this. Luis said this a big problem that we only think in quarters.

Dennis said that if we are honest the
only tech company that has lasted two generations is IBM (and they had to
reinvent themselves) so we have to be realistic about the short-term needs for
survival. 

Dennis said that if you come to him with
any attempt of business case he will be more likely to listen than if you come
with the email argument of no need for an ROI.  He added that no one really goes back to see if the ROI was
realized. It is a sales tool but at least it shows you are looking at business
value.

A person asked if the ROI works the same
for E20 as it has for the past 20 years. Dennis said no when we are talking
about social tools it is very different than ERP. It is not so concrete. It is
very different when people talk about their complaints at the water cooler and then
put these thoughts in a blog.

Oliver asked how do you get people more
innovative? Dennis said he is wary of rewards. He finds the reward that carries
the most value is peer recognition over material rewards.  This makes workers happier and those
workers are likely to stay. Jaguar in the 1950s had apprentices creating racing
cars on their own time at night and wining races because of pride in their
company. Dennis said that people are irrational and we need to remember
this.  You cannot put this on a
balance sheet but maybe we should look more of this to find the value for
social tools.

It was asked about tangible balance sheet
benefits, Dennis said timesavings. I think this is a problematic unless it is
tied to process because what do people do with time saved? It needs to be more
tangible to get on the balance sheet. Perhaps that is what Dennis had in
mind.  Good session. 

This is the seventh in a series of my
notes on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers
the session, Social
Behavior, Usage Patterns, and Adoption. It was led by Nahum Gershon,
Senior Principal Scientist, MITRE. Panelists
include: Walton Smith, Senior Associate, Booz Allen Hamilton, David Millen,
Research Scientist, IBM Watson Research Center, and Sean Power, Consultant and Analyst, Co-Founder,
Watching Websites. I have interviewed both David and Walton about their
organizations and looked forward to this session.  Here is the description. My notes follow.

“Regardless of
how useful an application might be, its success is as much a factor of
anthropology and sociology as it is of features and cost. To maximize the
chances of success within any application initiative, you need an adoption
strategy. Should you roll out the tool company-wide, or create false scarcity
by limiting deployment? Should you have an extensive testing cycle, or instead
plan for frequent upgrades and invest in feedback tools?



Internet giants like Twitter, Facebook,
Skype, Basecamp, and Gmail all succeeded where others had failed because of
their unique adoption strategies. In this session we’ll examine successful
application deployments—including those of some of the largest and most popular
sites on the web—and see how to apply the lessons they learned to our own
delivery strategy.”

Nahum asked the panelists to introduce
themselves in 140 char or less. Then he asked about where does social media
work? Walton began by noting the large numbers of people they are hiring and
added that social media can help onboard them. The Federal government is
projected to hire over 500,000 people. 
How can they be on-boarded? 
Social media can help here also. I have written about the Booz Allen
effort called Hello. Here the latest (Booz Allen Extends its Collaborative Platform)
and here is a summary of the prior ones (Implementing Enterprise 2.0 at Booz Allen: The Series).

David pointed out that within IBM the
average employees tenure is under 5 years. Their collective knowledge needs to
be shared. Here is a post I did in 2005 of their efforts then (IBM’s Social Software Initiatives: Blogs, Wikis,
Tagging, and More – Part Three- Internal Applications).  They were pushing innovation in this
space then and still do.

Walton said that traditional KM only
captures a small amount of the collective wisdom. He noted that Andy McAfee
yesterday said you need to have it in the workflow and this can capture much
more of the collective knowledge.

Nahum mentioned seeing a demo of the Booz
Allen collaboration system. Walton said at the time that most of the
conversations within the firm are now online and accessible fro sharing.

Walton said that in Hello you can get
feeds based attributes and people. This provided great benefits for the
individual so it drove adoption. 
Nahum asked how do you get people to use e20? How do you drive passion?
What about people who say this is just for teenagers?

Sean responded that there are two
different worlds of social media. There is the external facing conversation and
communities.   You will have
90% lurkers and 10% contributors. 
The other is very different when you deal with communities around
business processes.  The adoption
is much higher for use around processes.

Walton said that 50% of his budget is for
change management to get people to use it. He asked for getting the best people
from the client practice to staff the change management. They start with
business problems. It is not like rolling out a tool like Outlook that is a
utility.   Tool selection
needs to wait until after business issues have been defined.

David said there is a complementary use
that is not always anticipated. When they did social bookmarking at IBM though
Dogear it contributed to the enterprise search that everyone uses, not just the
Dogear users. (Social
Bookmarking in the Enterprise – IBM’s Internal Tagging Tool – Dogear)

Sean said that people always say it is
the business issues and not the tools but people still look at tools first.
This is especially when the tools have been paid for. Now the people who paid
for them want them to be used.

Nahum said he has a corporate blackberry
and a person iPhone.  He tends to
use Twitter for personal but he asks tech questions on it and gets good
responses that he can share that within the organization

Walton said the e20 tools really benefit
large organizations.  They are
building a first responders community of practice to link these people who are spread
across the country to get answers to questions.

Someone asked about pilot vs broad
adoption. Walton said that you need to make a commitment that you are not going
to stop. People are not going to participate if they do not know if it will
continue.  Walton looks at the
issue of return on engagement for the participants. People need to find value
when they come to the system or they will not come back. Time or engagement is
more the cost than actually money for tools. Walton has told me that many of
the Hello tools are open source.

David said start with a pilot and be
prepared to change and scale quickly. 
He told a story about a pilot tool they were deploying. There is some
risk in getting involved in tools. He got an email from a user saying that he
put all his eggs in the basket of the new tools and hopes it was not dropped.

It was also asked about structure and
unstructured data. Shawn said he is a big believer in unstructured data. There
are many social media startups. He treats social media initiatives as a startup
and they should be lean. He referenced lean methodology.  Most implementations will not be right
the first time. You need to be nimble and treat them in a startup fashion.

Walton agrees 1000 percent but with the caveat
that you need to listen to users carefully. You need to go beyond the power
users and get the reluctant people involved.

An audience member said you need to get to
scale quickly to get the benefit. They more people involved the more the
chatter.  How can do a managed
viral campaign and not be overwhelmed. 
Walton said you have to be transparent that it is pilot but invite
anyone to participate.  You can be nimble. Walton gave an example of when the Southern
command in Miami was seeing a demo of a collaboration system that Bozz Allen developed for the US Pacific Command. When the Haiti earthquake happen they switched form demo to fill system right away.  Walton saw that the conspiracy theorists said that this proved that the US military caused the earthquake as they never could have implemented the system that quickly unless they anticipated the earthquake.

An audience mamber asked how to get middle
managers to participate. Walton saoid most of his change managemtn effort is
targeted at middle managers. They reach out on how to solve business
problems.  Not how to use tools.

Walton said do not pilot by org chart.
People do not passion about e where they are on the org chart. Look for issues
that people are passionate about that cut across the org chart.  Going across the org chart also helps
with viral; message and growth. Also integrate with other systems to get
content already entered.

Walton said you need to keep adding
better tools. People will not agree to go backward.  Nehum said you need community practioners to monitor and
support the community to get what the group wants and to get people to try the
system.

Walton related a use case as social can
serve as an ambient alert system that tracks events within the enterprise.  There was an issue around a new smart
phone roll out.  The IT people
responsible for this began to see concerns on the microsharing system long
before the volume of help tickets rose to alert status.  They were able to quickly address the
issue through the microsharing system and other channels, indicate they were
aware of it, and add that a fix was on its way. The speed of detection that
microsharing offered turned what could have been a black eye for the IT people.

Walton said sunlight is best disinfectant
for bad behavior.  Do not put
anything that you do not want your boss or mom to see.

David said some conversations are not
just inappropriate but illegal so you need to be able to monitor.  Walton said that getting senior leaders
to participate helps because that sets the tone for what is expected and making
it known that senior people are listening.

An audience member asked about social
media bing seen as waste of time. Walton said that the water cooler has been
around a long time. The social tech just makes it more powerful. 

David said that if people are simply
reading blogs you have won. You do not have to have everyone writing the
blogs.   He also addressed the
issue of official vs informal content. 
He gave the example of a medical advice system. How do you deal with bad
content when it can affect people’s health. They are still working on this
issue and medical advice can have big impact.

Nahum said they hope to continue to conversation
using the Twitter hashtag – #e2conf-37 for the session. This was the only session
I attended that suggested a continuation of the conversation. It is a good
idea, especially for this useful session. 

This is the sixth in a series of my
notes on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers
the keynote: Are CIOs Ready to Bite? It
was led by Alex Wolfe, Editor In Chief,
InformationWeek.com.  The speaker
is Ted Schadler, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Inc. Panelists include: JP
Rangaswami , CIO and Chief Scientist, BT Design and Murali Sitaram, VP/GM Enterprise Collaboration
Platform, Cisco. I have been
on a panel with JP before and greatly respect his views and I have reviewed
some of Ted’s reports. Here is the description. My notes follow.

Enterprise 2.0 projects to date are
largely departmental initiatives led by business leaders and technology
strategists who voice frustration over legacy applications and IT's slow
response to initiate sweeping improvements.  view more 

But many CIOs continue to cite
concerns around security, privacy and a lack of enterprise-grade, interoperable
solutions. While the stalemate continues, businesses are reaching a crisis
point in information management and need workable solutions to keep pace with
tools found in the fast-paced consumer web. Have we reached an impasse in
business-wide adoption or are CIOs beginning to show signs of Enterprise 2.0
acceptance?”

Ted said that to get traction on E20 you
need to find some one with a business need. If you cannot you are in trouble. Murali
said they get a lot of ROI questions but more questions on increasing productivity.
How do you measure this? JP said they are some things you need to install like restrooms
because they are important to the to the enterprise and has yet to se an ROI on
restrooms. He said when they implemented Twitter for social software it
increased customer satisfaction and number of cases an agent can handle.

Alex asked but what about inside the
enterprise? Ted said it is artificial to separate inside and outside ROI.

JP said when you empower the enterprise
you do not know what will happen. Now people have no choice but to share to
remain competitive. You can create new value that was not imagined before.
Early on when they used web at BT some groups ordered coffee and others solved
business problems. Murali said each user will use tools
different and you need to be flexible.

Ted refereed to a book he wrote. People
use the tools in their own ways but they know what to do. IT needs to develop
new skills to support collaboration. They need to have community managers and
they will support groups to better use these tools

Alex said that maybe CIOs are not the
best people to implement E20.  JP
said the CIOs have to learn to get out of the way.  He compared it to Facebook.  Let the users choose which services they want.

Alex asked if there is a tension here. IT
knows budget cycles and users are supporting community managers. Murali said in
Cisco the community managers are from the business units. Implementation is
being driven by people in business functions.

It was asked if there will there be top
down enforcement of best tools? CIOs will want people to use enterprise tools
and not unsecure web tools. However, people will want the best of what is on
the web so they will not go to the Web if they do not get this.

JP said it took IBM 40 years to be evil.
Microsoft took 20 years. Facebook took 5 years so enterprise 2.0 will go there
even quicker, There will need to be afederation and standards for communication
and data.

Alex asked if video will take off. Murali
said video will take off and the price point will fall. Ted said it is the sleeper
app. His 9 year old daughter’s teacher uses YouTube in the class room.  JP said there is a difference between
YouTube and interactive video. There are also times when people do not want to
be on video. He related his experience with his children. All channels will be
there text, audio, video.

Alex asked about what happens when the
younger generation arrives at work place. JP the shakeup will happen. These
people use the web for communication. They use YouTube and Flickr. What not use
these tools?

The younger generation feels empowered
but they do not have positions of power yet. It was noted that younger people
where not in this audience. JP mentioned the concept of employer will change.
His father had one job, he will have seven and his son will have seven at
once.  He asked do you remember
benefits anyone?

Social networking is your personal brand
and you want to take this wherever you go.   JP noted that his first three employers including
Burroughs do not exist and their buildings have been torn down. You need to be
able to take you identity with you.

Murali said the spread of E20 needs to be
viral but you need to have some guidance. 
JP said start open and only close down when needed – also get out of the
way.   This was good closing point. 

This
is the fifth in a series of my notes on the Enterprise 2.0 conference in
Boston, June 14- 17. This post covers the panel, Microsharing: It is All About the
Tools. It is Not About the Tools. It was led by my Marcia Conner, now a partner
with the Altimeter Group. Panelist include: Eugene Lee,
CEO, Socialtext, Tim Young,
Founder & CEO, Socialcast, J.B. Holston,
CEO & President, NewsGator Technologies, Inc, Mike Gotta,
Principal Analyst, Burton Group, Steve Apfelberg,
Vice President of Marketing, Yammer. I have written about the four products and
know Mike and Marcia so this was a must see session. Here is
the description. My notes follow.