All Drupal developers have experienced this nightmare. You have been creating a great project, now it’s time to deploy it. No one wants to deal with it. No one wants to be the responsible of doing it.

If you are building a simple site, and there’s only a one time deployment, it’s not a big deal. You just have to follow the largely discussed and know simple rules.

The Rules:

1. Use SVN (or CVS) to keep your code updated among the developers
2. Deploy to production by backing up/restoring the database
3. Create scripts to make the deployment process automatic

That’s all, the unique problem you could have is maybe that you will have to delete the test content/users and change some settings before going live, but in summary, it’s pretty easy.

When it’s about deploying code, it’s still easy to do if you followed the simple rules. You will have only to update your SVN branch and you are done.

When the nightmare begins?

The problem is deploying changes made in the CMS, but without wiping all the existing data. In other words, merging the database changes, the settings and content stored in the database.

Scenario 1: Big (or huge) Drupal projects

You have to deploy a project in multiple phases. So while the first phase is deployed and working in production, you have a bunch of developers working on the next phase (this means, implementing new code, creating new nodes, creating new views, editing existing ones, changing settings, users, permissions, etc.)

Read more of Cesar Salazar’s take on: Enterprise Drupal: Project Configuration Management and Release Management.

When driving and looking for a certain destination, men usually wait a lot longer than women until they stop to ask someone for directions. That is a fact, I’ve read research on that (sadly I cannot re-find this research, so at one point in the future I probably have to go and ask someone). That is probably also why so many men are hooked on GPS devices – they promise to save us from having to ask other people for directions (help).

So what if women in general are better than men at deciding when it’s more efficient to ask someone for an answer than it is to continue looking for an answer themselves? If that is true, then women will be the kings (or queens?) of the real-time enterprise which according to Gartner is all about “using up-to-date information, getting rid of delays, and using speed for competitive advantage”.

Elgg 1.7 was released this week. Elgg is an open source social platform and is made for individuals, groups and institutions to create their own fully-featured social environment. This new version of Elgg introduces some new features but much of the development time was spent improving the core API to make Elgg a stable platform for future development.

Some of the significant changes in Elgg 1.7 include:

• Proper UTF8 support in the database — This allows developers to use MySQL’s native string functions in queries
• A new data directories layout to work with standard filesystems
• Full-text search
• A new core API for retrieving entities
• A functional REST API
• Unit tests

Elgg 1.7 is available at Elgg.org on their downloads page.

The focus of this session is on use cases in using Social Networking in the Health IT world.  I thought I would attend to see how these tools are being used here.

• Patients want to feel connected
• Recruitment is an ongoing challenge, the next generation is connected
• Promote discovery, better treatments and efficiencies
• Large gap between seeing the value and using the tech in Healthcare (90%  to 35%)
• Some Risks
• Public domain when using common tools
• HIPAA violations
• Health professionals "friending" patients (Thinking that practices would have fan pages)
• Value vs Time Wasting (People have always found ways to goof-off and waste time)
• Like phone conversations, communications through Social Media need a policy around them.
• (Social Media Policies are under discussion. I added to the conversation that the policy should address communication with external entities and not focus on the tech.)
• You have to be out there monitoring because people are talking about you out there.
• Enterprise 2.0 came up in conversation. It was noted that it isn’t a slam-dunk deployment, but worth investigating.
• Another risk is medical advice. "This is not Medical Advice, you have to pay for Medical Advice."
• A warning against hiring Social Media "Experts" without researching to be sure that they actually know what they are doing. (Check references. If they don’t have them, maybe they aren’t worth the money.)

One more session left and then heading home.  Heading to see the Military Health Portal.

Disclaimer

All information in this post was gathered from the presenters and presentation. It does not reflect my opinion unless clearly indicated (Italics in parenthesis). Any errors are most likely from my misunderstanding a statement or imperfectly recording the information. Updates to correct information are reflected in red, but will not be otherwise indicated.

For 40 years, scientists have searched for a way to bring nuclear fusion to the masses. If successful in bringing fusion online, we all could have an inexhaustible form of power to meet our world’s energy needs. The promise of fusion is a dream that many have hoped to see become a reality in their lifetime.

Perhaps not for as noble of cause, Drupal users have sought better themes for their Drupal sites. Four years ago, it seemed to me that creating a good theme for Drupal was almost done as an afterthought. There simply were not too many places for a user to go for a quality Drupal theme. I recall spending a lot of wasted time maintaining my own (boring) themes for Drupal sites. The Drupal days of version 4.4, 4.5, 4.6 and even 4.7 for themes were dark days indeed. Luckily, Drupal 5 introduced us to a new theme called Garland. Garland may not have been a perfect theme but in my opinion the theme marked the beginning of an era for a new style of Drupal themes.

In the past few years, the number of Drupal themes provided under open source or via private companies have exploded. Along with that explosion, various starter and base themes have been introduced too. On the top of my head I can think of Zen, Genesis, Basic, and AdaptiveTheme. These starter/base themes offer theme developers opportunities for everyone to build or use professional sub-themes. In fact, this site used Zen in the theme’s early years and today we’re currently using a Genesis based theme called Extreme Updates (slightly modified). With each passing year, the theme offerings for Drupal has steadily improved in quality and quantity. This year is no exception and brings us a new official base theme to carry us over into the next generation of themes made for Drupal.

The year 2010 brings us Drupal’s newest base theme, Fusion.  Currently, there probably isn’t a Drupal theme that offers site owners more control over layout and style than a Fusion based theme. Fusion has the support and backing of well-known Drupal theme shop, TopNotchThemes. TopNotchThemes appear to be serious enough about Fusion revolutionizing the way themes are done in Drupal. This week they publicly announced their new line of themes and a website called Fusion Drupal Themes. Most of the themes offered at the site are for a price, but there are a couple free themes also being offered that should give you a chance to see what Fusion is all about.

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The latest buzzword in document creation is collaborative work.

Who will drop in next?

While there exist various approaches to support collaborative work and varying definitions of what the term means, they all revolve around tools that allow knowledge workers to work together on documents.

Indeed, collaborating in the creation of a document can take different forms.  With cloud-based solutions such as Google Docs or Zoho Writer, collaboration means sharing, i.e. the document is distributed via a link in an e-mail message as opposed to sending along an attachment.  Since only one reviewer at a time can open the document, the annoying document version conflicts that plague workers in the information age are eliminated.

Working together on documents is nothing new, but the processes that are most prevalent are also very inefficient.  Indeed, a majority of knowledge workers send documents as e-mail attachments to multiple reviewers, which then causes version confusion, difficulties in incorporating edits, and missed edits and comments.  A remarkable 20% of knowledge workers say they print out hard copies to send to coworkers.

A different approach to solving this vexing problem is to allow knowledge workers to work on a document at the same time from different locations, be they in a real-time collaborative work session or simply working on the same document independently of one another.

In the forthcoming Office 2010 suite (currently in beta), Microsoft has added Co-authoring to Word, PowerPoint, Excel, and OneNote.  The new feature requires SharePoint Server 2010 to link the applications and store documents.  Co-authoring allows people to work on a document concurrently, so that one person could be working on introductory text while a subject matter expert fills in details on charts.  Areas that are being accessed for edits are locked to prevent conflicts; the locking is possible on multiple levels including sentences, paragraphs, objects, textboxes, fields, headers and footers.

When entering a document, the user is alerted to other authors who are working on the document via a notification box on the bottom of the screen.  By hovering over the box, the authors who are working on the document at that time are displayed, with contact information so that communication by phone, instant message, or e-mail can be initiated with a click.

If an author is working on a section, it is locked to prevent simultaneous edits by others and changes and additions are only shown to other authors when the document is saved.  If changes have been made to the document, bubble notifications appear to show other users what edits have been made and who made the changes.

People expect the knowledge economy to run on twenty-first century time, which means that knowledge workers need immediate feedback on documents from multiple collaborators at once.   Microsoft’s Co-authoring functionality has the potential to support faster movement of information while improving what today is a grossly inefficient and error-prone process.

Cody Burke is a senior analyst at Basex.

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.

Kudos to Box

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.

Taking it to the Business

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.

That Pesky Term

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.

”Throughout the primate world, social networks provide a fast conduit for innovation and information-sharing that help the group as a whole to adapt to its environment.”

Alex Wright, “Glut – Mastering Information Through The Ages”

The future workplace will be hyper-connected, meaning that we will use multiple means of communication, so that we can be more innovative, quickly adapt to a changing environment, and access and use all the best resources we need to do what we need to do, no matter where the resources are located.

More and more, work will be treated as something we do, not a place (building). Knowledge / creative work is highly collaborative by nature and we can’t let time, space and organization stop us from collaborating with the right people at the right time. Virtual collaboration will become the norm and face-to-face meetings will be seen as one of the many ways of meeting each other.

The previously so common 1:1 relationship between organization and enterprise will be very uncommon. A typical enterprise will be made up of people from many different organizations, and a typical organization will be involved in many different enterprises. People might belong to an organization, but it is secondary to the work do and who they work with.

The network will need to replace the hierarchy as the primary model for organizing resources. As work becomes more and more network-oriented, so will the way we organize ourselves and other resources.

New generations that enter the workplace will be always connected, they will be more open to making new connections, and they will be more connected than any generation before them. The will understand and nurture the value of their relationships, with a solid understanding that “no man is an island” and that their success and well-being depends on with whom they are connected, how they are connected, and how they mutually benefit from using these connections.

Our focus will shift from producing and organizing documentation to communicating and interacting in real-time, with documentation as a by-product. We will need to spend more time on building and maintaining relationships and less on trying to find information and people, recreating information we cannot find, and creating documentation as an activity separated from our daily work.

Right now, we are just seeing the dawn of the hyper-connected age.

This brings back
memories. The Most Admired Knowledge Enterprises (MAKE) award has been around
for some time. Back when I was with a large consulting company and involved in
our knowledge management practice, I spoke at the awards meetings in London several
times.  These were the days of
better travel funding and the relatively early days of KM. I am pleased that
this award is still around and still relevant.

For the first time, Apple was named the
overall Global MAKE Winner. North America took top honors with 7 Winners,
followed by Asia (5 Winners) and Europe (3 Winners). Teleos in association with
The KNOW Network conducts this award. There were also 5 'Global' Winners whose
organizational structures reflect the 21st global knowledge economy.

A panel of experts made the picks based on these
criteria:

- creating an enterprise knowledge-driven culture

- developing knowledge workers through senior
management leadership

- developing and delivering knowledge-based
products/services/solutions

- maximizing enterprise intellectual capital

- creating an environment for collaborative
knowledge sharing

- creating a learning organization

- delivering value based on stakeholder knowledge

- transforming enterprise knowledge into
shareholder/stakeholder value

The 2009 winners include some long time winners
and some major companies that you would not associate wit KM in the 90s. 

Rita McGrath at Harvard Business Review has written a blog post on why she hates micropayments.  Micropayments are financial transactions involving very small sums of money (see Wikipedia). For online publishing, a small fee would allow you to view the content for a certain period of time or for a certain number of articles.

Personally, I’m not sold on the concept of micropayments for content which is probably why I was lured to Ms. McGrath’s article in the first place.

The idea has been around a long time — at least since the mid-to-late 90s — with both supporters and detractors weighing in. Millions have been lost by companies seeking to capitalize on streams of micropayments, almost all of which eventually crashed and burned. Myself, when confronted with a request to chip in 99 cents for a one-time glimpse at an article or $2.99 for a week’s worth (as some of my local newspapers are doing) — well, I close that window and go away.

The author of the article discusses further the importance for any payment system adopted to consider “how the payment link of customers’ consumption chains fits into their total experience”. Micropayment systems have a tall order in that they need to be seamless, transparent, and achieve inevitability. Even grimmer for publishers, it’s not only the micropayment experience that needs to be improved but also the non-micropayment systems too.

For the past few years, I’ve paid a yearly subscription to the Wall Street Journal for the print publication and the online subscription. With my yearly renewal coming up very soon, I’ve decided to discontinue my online subscription to the WSJ. Why would I do that? There are some very basic reasons to why I’m dropping WSJ.com. I rarely find myself reading the online content of the WSJ. I either already read the stories in the print version of the WSJ or I have found myself already familiar with the news story because I read a similar story posted elsewhere online. Stopping by the WSJ.com, unlike CNN or FoxNews, never became a daily ritual for me.

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