Everything worked to prepare me.

You often heard it said that we are the accumulation of our experiences. If I had to distill what it was that prepared me for my current position, there are several things that did so over time.

While this is far from the only career path to CIO, this was my path. For many Information Professionals, it can be their path.

Pie the Developer

I wrote my first program in junior high. Later, when we got a computer at home, there weren’t a lot of good games, so to “play” with the computer, I started writing graphics programs in Basica. I went to Auburn, took some Computer Science classes but ended up with a degree in Management Information Systems.

My first job? COBOL developer.

I was solving Benefit Management problems for clients. I later created new systems in Visual Basic in order to move off of the mainframes and take advantage of the growing power of the PC. I then leveraged my database skills and VB proficiency to get a job on a project doing Correspondence Management for the Air Force.

You got it, a Content Management-based Case Management system.

Pie the Systems Consultant

This was a transition, not a light-switch. I was a developer that became an expert in some of the inner workings of PC DOCS. That allowed me to become a consultant for PC DOCS which allowed me to learn about Content Management as a whole, not just specific technology.

The most important lesson I learned?

The wilds of the data center to not equate to the controlled environment of the lab.

That was the turning point. I started learning the wide array of variables that exist in the wild. Firewalls, hardened servers, storage configurations, flavors of UNIX, and the impact of all those silly little security patches.

Over time I moved to a partner integrator and gradually moved up the ranks on various projects. During this time, I did two things, I used various Content Management technologies, not just Documentum, and I worked in different verticals ranging from Pharma to Government to Healthcare.

Pie the Solution Consultant

What I learned was that for all their differences, there are common issues, and solutions, regardless of the technology or the vertical. There is never one way to look at things.

The most useful skills came as I reached the more senior roles. I was working on project that were no longer silo applications. They interacted with multiple business units and systems. I went from thinking, “The system needs to perform X,” to “The solution needs to solve Y.”

That is the core an Information Professional. They look beyond simply implementing information systems. The Information Professional looks at the information and determines how it can be better leveraged to solve business problems.

Pie the CIO

I’m on the next leg of my journey. I’m applying all of this to helping AIIM achieve its goals of being the Global Community of Information Professionals. It helps that I am a long-time member of AIIM and understand its mission, but there has been a lot more to learn.

When I was asked the if my experience had prepared me, the answer is Yes. While there are challenges and the job isn’t easy by any measure, the skills are there.

• Budget: Fixed-price contracts, proposal development, clients with limited budgets, and internal budgets. Check.
• Conflicting System Priorities: The user needs 5 features but we only have budget to deliver 3 plus an architecture change that will maintain stability for future growth. Define that and sell the need while keeping people happy. Three different clients want 4 deliverables and I have to buy my son’s Christmas present. Check.
• Unfamiliar Systems: Jumping to new verticals and learning their priorities. Changing between from

In fact, my vertical industry jumping in the past is probably the most important part of my career path. Having to quickly apply core Information principles to new environments with different priorities has helped immensely.

Moving Forward

Technology is always changing. In the 90s the Web was the new thing that everyone had to have. Now it is mobile. In the 90s, everyone was shifting to a 3-tier system architecture. Now everyone wants to shift to the cloud.

Behind all of it there is the reality that business needs to get done. Technology simply enables information to serve the business.

A final note. This post assumes that I’ll be a successful CIO. Vision and experience isn’t enough. Execution matters.

Time will tell.

As you know, I’m now the AIIM CIO. We don’t use Documentum, though we do have an EMC storage array. We aren’t delivery partners with EMC. Jeetu does sit on our board and EMC does sponsor some of our events. So while we do have a relationship with EMC, it isn’t one that would lead to my attending EMC World.

Then a funny thing happened, I wrote a post about how I still felt part of the Documentum Community. Before I knew it, I had swung by the Developer Conference and I was scheduled to speak at this year’s EMC World on A Brave New World for Information Management.

So I’m back, though I never really went away.

We are only a week away so I thought I’d reiterate my ground rules for this, and any, conference. For those that are unfamiliar, I pretty much type notes at every sessions and hit publish at the end of the session, essentially sharing my session notes with you. These rules are very similar to last years Rules (I even cut-and-paste for a draft), but I’ve updated a bit as I do every year.

All “live” posts that follow these rules will start EMC World 2012:. This is to clearly identify them for everyone. If I write a post before/during/after the conference that doesn’t adhere to what I am laying-out here, it won’t have that prefix.

Just a heads-up, my session mix will vary a little this year. I’ll still hit the keynote, roadmap, Ed Bueche’s, and Jeroen van Rotterdam’s sessions. I’m also going to be spending more time on the floor, blogger’s lounge, and some Big Data sessions. You may have noticed, Big Data is exploding out of the marketing niche and starting to be come relevant for all Information Professionals.

Disclaimers

I’m going to be running a basic disclaimer in all my posts. If for some reason I forget to paste it in, this disclaimer applies to all EMC World 2012: prefixed posts and you can be sure I’ll be adding the disclaimer as soon as I notice that it is missing.  This is because I will be writing the posts during/after sessions and I will hear things that I may misconstrue or that talk about future events.

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 may not be otherwise indicated.

All statements about the future of EMC products and strategy are subject to change at any time due to a large variety of factors.

As indicated, if I learn later that something I posted was incorrect, I will endeavor to correct it, but it may not be immediate.

Topics of Conversation

As a general rule, if I, or the person I am talking to at the time, has a beverage in their hand, I’m not blogging/tweeting it. If it is blatantly clear that the information is public, I will share it in a constructed post during, or shortly after, EMC World.

The issue here is that even in my new role, I have a long-standing relationship with of EMC/Documentum. As such, I am sometimes privy to information that is not made available to the general public. If I start sharing this information, then I would no longer be able to learn any of it in the future. The information is by far more important any benefit that I may gain by posting it here or anywhere else.

This is a fun little line that I have to walk, but I think I’ve walked it well. There are several EMC personnel that have shared information with me since I started this blog and subsequently tweeting.

I have, to date, kept all confidences and will continue to do so in the future.

Twitter

I will be using Twitter some during EMC World.  You can follow me at @piewords.  You can also follow all the Momentum 2012 action at #mmtm12 and all of the EMC World action at #emcworld.

Most information will be going here, into my blog. Random thoughts and where I am going (in my annual quest to maintain my caffeine levels) will be mostly through Twitter. If you don’t have my phone number to text me, your best bet to locate me at EMC World will be through Twitter.

The Time Delay

I am a busy person at the conference, though less so this year.  As such, not all posts will be tagged immediately as I will be focusing on getting them posted and moving to the next session. Have no  fear, the tags will come.

I will also be updating my EMC World page of links at most once every day.  While it is a good index of what I have written, it will not be completed until after the conference is over and I have time to update it. I will try and add links from other blogs, but that is also time dependent.

That’s it…See you there!

1. The presentation is image heavy and even with notes, SlideShare doesn’t really help convey the content.
2. The video was under wraps because it was under consideration for the free Best of AIIM 2012 virtual event in June.

Lucky for you, my session was deemed not one of the very best and I can share it with you now. I’d be upset if the quality of sessions at the AIIM Conference this hadn’t been so high. Billy Cripe gave a great presentation on Two Types of Collaboration and Ten Requirements for Using Them and that didn’t make the cut, but you can see that online now.

So, complete with the Q&A session, Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Cloud-Based Content Management:

If you take anything away from the presentation, remember this:

• The cloud is big and evolving. If your solution isn’t available today, it may be tomorrow.
• You face the same issues if you stay at home as you would if you move to the cloud.
• Creating new Information Islands is the new big trap. Avoid them.

Watch the presentation to learn more details on those takeaways, cloud terminology, and why Darth Vader is in the default image.  I’m also speaking on Moving Content Management to the Cloud: A Practical Perspective at info360 if you are planning to be there in June.

Please feel free to ask questions or add your thoughts in the comments below.

This just seems nuts. In a world where information is growing exponentially, the expert in helping an organization get value from information is going to be marginalized? As I see it, that is dead wrong.

The CIO of the future is going to have to be agile, knowledgeable, approachable, and working in step with every aspect of the business. From experience I can tell you that each business unit isn’t going to wait for their turn. This means that CIOs are going to actually have quality deputies to help out. This implies growth, not the opposite.

Marketing Spending More Than IT?

This is, of course, just an attempt to grab attention. As marketing becomes more driven by data, the need for information systems that can leverage that data is critical. With increasing demands for real-time responses, the lessons from “Big Data” will likely be required. Even so, in five years, marketing will not be spending more than IT. This is unless marketing decides to take over finance, sales, inventory, and content management for the entire organization.

These advanced marketing systems actually fail when they aren’t part of the overall corporate infrastructure. You can buy Marketo and leverage marketing automation all you want, but if that data isn’t connected to every other system, you are creating massive problems.

That is why it can’t  be marketing controlling IT for a large chunk of the organization. Marketing cannot operate in a vacuum. Marketing needs to work with the CIO to identify the right system that can protect information while insuring that everything works together in concert.

The past several months have shown me that IT needs to understand marketing’s mission more than ever before. Marketing automation is critical for the future of many organizations, but IT needs to lead the way with Marketing. Together.

Bypassing the CIO

The other viewpoint I hear is that instead of the budget moving out of IT is the purchase of IT systems by the line of business, bypassing IT altogether.

Generally speaking, if that happens in a widespread manner, the CIO has failed and deserves the consequences of the descending chaos. This scenario will only happen if the CIO is completely out-of-touch with the needs of business and has shown an inability to respond to needs across the board.

Let’s be honest, things can creep up on a CIO. They can launch three innovative initiatives, stretch their staff to its limits, and the need for a fourth initiative can pop-up. The new requirement might be able to wait a week or two but not the months needed to free up resources.

That is when the CIO needs to adapt and work with the business. The CIO can still help find either a bridge or permanent solution for the business. The cloud-based options give CIOs a chance to help solve the problems now, without waiting for more resources.

CIOs can’t restrict the use of these tools. They have to embrace them and let the business know that they embrace these tools. If business think that CIOs are always going to say no, they’ll stop asking. Let them know that CIO is focused on solving the problem quickly in a way that helps all lines of business.

The Enterprise Irregulars had a great article on Consumerization and the Impact on IT. The list at the end covers what a CIO is going to have to do to be the leaders that organizations look to for solutions.

If the CIO is bypassed or controlled is taken over by a specific department, organizations risk the creation of information silos

There were a few responses. Dan Antion related his own recent travels without a PC and how we are moving Beyond the Chasm with mobile devices. Ron Miller took a more conciliatory approach that when he said that the term Post-PC was still open to interpretation.

To help illustrate my point, Dan Levin of Box tweeted that on his weekend trip, the 12 humans had 26 devices. I didn’t ask but I suspect that there were no laptops. Of course, going on a weekend trip, why take anything other than mobile devices? Of course, exceeding a 2:1 ratio is pretty impressive, especially consider that kids were in the count.

This anecdote lends itself both sides of the equation. It shows that by simply surpassing PC sales, mobile hasn’t done enough to move into the PC era as there are more mobile devices than people in many households. On the flip side, it clearly shows the proliferation of mobile tech.

Of course, 10 years ago, there may have been zero devices on that trip unless you counted the dumb cell phones. While some mobile devices are replacing the use of PCs, especially for travel, it is also filling a void. People now use a PC AND a mobile device, depending on the situation.

We aren’t in a Post-PC era, though will get there eventually. That doesn’t mean that Mobile support isn’t critical. It is critical because people always want to be connected. That is the key, connectivity. The whole Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) concept is really what is defining this era. The devices people started bringing were smart phones and Macs. Now it is tablets.

The shift to mobile is just part of the puzzle.

The PC Puzzle Pieces

PCs aren’t going anywhere as sales are up (more so in Asia-Pacific) and not down. They aren’t growing as fast as mobile devices, but they’ve been around for decades. There are a lot less people buying their first PC than buying their first smart phone or tablet.

To illustrate, here is the percentage breakdown of visitors to AIIM’s website by technology over the past month, which included our conference, a highly mobile event. In parentheses are the changes for those changing by at least 1% during the same time period in 2011.

1. Internet Explorer, 49%  (-8%)
2. Firefox, 19% (-3%)
3. Chrome, 19% (+7%)
4. Safari, 8% (+3%)
5. Mozilla Compatible Agent, 2% (-1%)
6. Android Browser, 1% (+1%)
7. Opera Mini, <1%
8. Opera, <1%
9. IE with Chrome Frame, <1 %
10. RockMelt, <1%

Our visitors are moving towards Chrome and Safari from Internet Explorer and Firefox, but that isn’t news. Even if you assume that all of the Safari increase is from Apple mobile devices, that isn’t a massive move towards mobile.

Now, this isn’t representative of the entire Internet by any stretch. Given that we are an association that focuses on the Information Professional, we are a technical group as a whole so these numbers aren’t meaningless.

The PC is still clearly leading the way.

Translation?

Simple, we are moving to a world of Bring Your Own Device. That means PCs AND mobile devices. CIOs have to develop flexible infrastructures that work across platforms and form factors. Aaron Levie, Dan Levin’s boss over at Box, talked about this transformation recently at TechCrunch.

Of course Aaron focused upon the mobile device. The Connected Era needs to not focus solely on the mobile device but enable the mobile user to stay connected when they aren’t at their PC. They need to not lose everything when they switch devices. Organizations needs a way to manage their information in order to protect an organization’s assets.

This is a world that I first talked about two years ago:

leverage consumer applications proven to augment existing work processes (parity plus)

specifically targeted to business requirements and opportunities

access with only a browser and an internet connection

no reliance on proprietary systems or technology

development based on open industry standards

built upon a semantic web framework

embraces and enables BYOC model

no operating system dependency

provides web service capabilities

tuned options for mobile devices

no browser dependency

no net cost increase

no desktop footprint

100% cloud ready

It is an exciting world we are entering, just don’t call it Post-PC.

That all said, if you only like to read my writings about the world of the Information Professional, just move on now.

Still here? Good, let’s proceed.

Where is Henry Clay?

The other day, I was sitting with a group of friends. Living in DC, we are subjected to more news about our dysfunctional government than other cities. The reason is simple…The Federal government is the largest employer and has a say in the running of the District of Columbia.

We are tired of hearing about the fighting. Neither side appears willing to compromise on any issue of substance. They even seem to disagree on items that should be simple, like transportation or jobs. Both sides seem willing to concede a minor point here or there, but too many of the key issues are considered untouchable.

Divisions in politics aren’t new. In the first half of the 1800s, it was Federalism versus States Rights which usually manifested as the North versus the South. There was a lot of heat and anger. There was also the ability to compromise.

The Missouri Compromise, the end of the Nullification Crisis, and the Compromise of 1850 are big ones from that time period. All were compromises by both sides of the issue. Those situations gave each side something they wanted, maintained the balance of power, and allowed each side to save face.

While this is a simplification of history (go read about them), the facts are simple. Sides that were diametrically opposed were able to arrive at a solution that helped our country move forward. The Compromise of 1850 is credited with delaying the Civil War for 10 years.

Why isn’t that happening now?

Look in the Mirror

It is easy to say that there is no Henry Clay to broker the needed compromise. The reality is that it is our fault.

Most politicians start working towards reelection on day 1 of their term. The reasons are many, but one is the 24-hour news cycle. Everything is captured and played back. Politicians seem to care more about how they look in the press than doing what is best for the country.

Politicians are what we’ve made them. People may complain about biased news coverage. It is our fault as stations focus on ratings. They put on the air the things people want to watch, even if that means comparing Presidents to Communists or Hitler. That is what they will do for ratings.

Politicians play into it and there is nobody to blame but ourselves. These same news channels make us angry and our elected officials reflect that anger.

When the sharing of a Golf game can cause a ruckus, there is a problem in this country.

Start Local

If we want representatives that represent values that are worth emulating, we need to exhibit those values. We need to get out of our neighborhoods and help our communities.

• I can help at my kids’ school, but wouldn’t it be better to help a school struggling to make ends meet?
• We can give money to a school, but wouldn’t it mean more to go out and fix the school up?
• We can build a playground, but wouldn’t it be better to create programs that get kids in safe, constructive activities every day for years?
• We can donate food, but wouldn’t it be better if we went to the shelter and help teach skills that help them get a job?
• You can “Adopt-a-Mile”, but isn’t it better to find the messiest parts of the city and go were help is most needed?

The thing is, there are lots of things that we can do to help. Look for things that have longer lasting impacts. Look beyond your neighborhood and gaze out over the city. Think about a community that helps each other instead of rushing home to catch the next episode of Mad Men.

In a world such as this, what kind of people would rise to prominence? When there is trust and faith in your fellow man, what kind of attitude will the politicians take to their jobs.

Can we transform those politicians into leaders that aren’t worried about the next election or sound bite? Not overnight, but over time.

Joseph de Maistre once said, “Every nation gets the government it deserves.” Can we work to deserve better?

It starts local. From there we can take it national.

The second is the fact that we are still trying to automate the same types of processes now as we were when I first started in this industry in the 90s. My first project was a Correspondence Management System. Call it a mail room solution or whatever the latest slang dictates, the problem is the same one I was talking to a large agency about solving in January!

People are asking me to speak on Process and why projects go wrong. Cloud and mobile are dropping as stand-alone topics. They are becoming part of the discussion around how to solve the old problems with addition of these new tools.

Reinforcing the issue are a few fun facts from some recent AIIM research:

• 45% of scanned documents are created digitally
• 77% of invoices that arrive as PDF attachments get printed
• 31% of faxed invoices get printed and scanned again

Depressed yet?

There are lots of reasons explaining why this is the case. They usually include blaming inexperienced people trying to automate the processes. I find this hard to believe because I’ve never met anyone that was part of a failed project. (Just kidding)

I know that one overlooked reason is the hardware. It is so hard to review content on the average screen sitting on peoples desk. People just assume that making the content digital will solve the problem without improving the way people consume digital information.

The means that even if you improve the process and implement a dynamic solution, staring at a small screen may hurt the eyes of people doing the work. Investing in some monitors has helped on several projects upon which I worked.

As cool as the Cloud, Mobile, Big Data, and Social are, fixing processes in an organization seems to be the gateway to having time to innovate. People are still trying to get over the hurdle and they are still trying to learn the best way to do it.

Luckily, these new technologies actually help and don’t just clutter the picture.

• Cloud eases deployment and makes broad collaboration easy as the firewall is no longer a productivity wall
• Mobile allows people a new way to review content while they aren’t at their desk and cameras on everyone’s phones can replace many scanners
• Big Data allows for predictive analysis, helping organizations set themselves up to handle changes to their process or volume before it becomes a problem.
• Social improves the ease of working together over the more traditional collaboration tools. Let’s face it, many processes are the same over and over, but there are a lot of exceptions out there that have to be managed.

What can you do to prepare? Well, there are a lot of options that cost nothing.

• Twitter: Go online and follow people. Ask questions. If you aren’t sure where to start, follow the #InfoChat tag. We talk at least once a month and share information regularly with the tag. The next chat is Thursday, April 12, at 11am EDT.
• AIIM Community: AIIM has a lot of bloggers that talk on these topics regularly and are hungry for comments, questions, and discussions. I recently blogged on this very topic there in preparation for the upcoming #InfoChat.
• Process Revolution Webinar: This April 25th webinar is hosted by Atle Skjekkland, AIIM’s COO. He’ll be talking about how the new tech is coming together to solve the Process problem.
• Content Management Boot Camp, The Process Revolution: Hitting six cities in May, this is a whole day focusing on the topic. The presentations have historically been pretty good, but the key benefit is the networking. There will be others there with the same concerns. Trade ideas, tips, war stories, or at the end of the day, have a drink to commiserate over the difficulties. I haven’t willingly missed one of these in years.

If that isn’t enough, Fierce Content Management is doing a webinar on April 11th that I and Rich Medina, the founder of DocuLabs are doing on Breaking the Paper Habit. There will likely be a recorded version of it in case you miss it.

Plus, if you missed some of the best of this year’s AIIM Conference, which people seemed to like quite a bit, then attend the free Virtual Conference June 7. It is a mix of some new content along with the best sessions from this year’s conference.

Finally, start talking below. Look, we are all in this together. I want to retire with this problem beat but I can’t do it alone.

Some simple math: Majority of new devices are ‘post-pc’. Vast majority of enterprise software isn’t. What do you think happens next?

I was sitting in my home office reading this when I realized something…

Mobile devices aren’t winning. Not yet at least.

Oh, they are pervasive and everywhere. They are even reducing the usage of PCs. There is no arguing their impact when you go to any conference today or hang out on public transportation.

Quick Survey

As I sit here at home, I’m using my 4+ year-old-desktop to rip a new CD and play some music. I’m using my laptop to work and write this post. My smart phone is sitting here not being very smart because I just need the mobile phone to be active. My iPad is in my bag and my Galaxy Tab is by my bed. My wife’s smart phone is God only knows where. My kids are currently deprived.

Two PCs (one work issued) and 4 mobile devices. When not being used for phone calls, the PCs get the most use. The wife checks email on her cell phone but she prefers to respond on the home computer.

When I walk around the office, I see people using computers of various ages. Some are new but the average age is well over two years. When I was at my previous company, computers were kept for three years and then replaced, if anyone was keeping track.

Meanwhile, I know people that have bought three iPads, one a year. Phones tend to last two years, but people jump at the chance to upgrade when they can.

A Mobile World with a Strong PC Foundation

I see a world where the average professional will have a PC, a tablet, and a smart phone, each with different purposes. Sure, some executives can survive without a PC, but if they want to create more than basic content, they’ll have a PC somewhere, even if it stays parked in the office.

That is a 2:1 ratio. When you consider that the average PC will be used almost twice as long as the average mobile device, that moves it up to a 4:1 ratio.

Let’s be conservative at 3:1. This is generous because while people say that many computers die early, how many mobile devices get dropped or wet?

You want to make a case for us being in the post-PC world? When you remove PCs out of 50% of the households that have two or more mobile devices, then maybe we’ll be there. If more than 50% global workforce of Information Professionals don’t own or use a PC for work, then we’ll be there.

Until then, we are in the transition between the two. The PC is still the power lifter of office productivity. Mobile insures that productivity doesn’t stop when people leave their desk.

Not telling anyone to ignore Mobile, just that they ignore the PC at their own peril.

Then I read it.

To be fair, it started badly and got better. Here are their two “definitions”.

“Knowledge management” is what company management tells me I need to know, based on what they think is important.

“Social media” is how my peers show me what they think is important, based on their experience and in a way that I can judge for myself.

The basic precept presented in the article was that Knowledge Management is about collecting, classifying, and distributing knowledge while Social Media is chaotic and a source of concern for organizations afraid of losing that control.

I will admit that there are likely organizations that have that fear. I also believe that these same organizations would have that fear even if they didn’t have a Knowledge Management program. Social Business is a different mindset that take time to adopt.

It is the mindset, not the technology, that has to evolve.

Knowledge Management systems are the way they are because when the idea was conceived back in the day, that is the tech that was available. The technology for knowledge to be emergent wasn’t around. Information had to be submitted, categorized, and disseminated in order for it to be readily leveraged in the pre-2.0 applications.

I worked on a few Knowledge Management projects. The challenge was encouraging the submission of good, focused, content and then reliably making it accessible to people. With all the tools in the social media toolkit, this can be automatic.

Sure, curated knowledge is still valuable, but now you can use a wiki for most of the traditional curated knowledge. Ad-hoc information works well in forums, discussions, micro-blogging, and comments. Blogs are great for expanding on items that just don’t fit in 140 characters.

When you throw in social sharing, rating tools, and some basic gamification to encourage participation, one of the largest challenges to traditional Knowledge Management falls by the wayside.

Social Media is the future of Knowledge Management. People need to stop drawing a line between them, implied or otherwise, and work to evolve the older Systems of Records into Systems of Engagement.

The target is Social Business and it is built on the systems of the past.

The amount of data in your organization is big. You just won’t believe how vastly, hugely, mind- bogglingly big it is. I mean you might think that it take a long time to read your inbox but that’s just peanuts to how much your organization touches in a single day.

- Mangling of quote by Douglas Adams in Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy

The amount of data in your organization is massive. Anyone who has been in the Content Management industry for more than a few years can tell you that much. All those content repositories are nothing more than messy, poorly structured, data warehouses.

The part that I didn’t realize until watching Clay Shirky’s keynote at AIIM 2012 was that the amount of data that many organizations is amassing isn’t always enough. Many organizations just are dealing with what I will now shockingly classify as “traditional” Big Data issue. They don’t have the volume, variability, variety, or velocity of data. (Your actual “V”s may vary)

This is actually an even bigger problem. All those organizations are leaving useful insights on the table. How can tell what my customers, employees , or members need without actually tracking what they are doing?

Let’s talk about you, the reader. If you are reading this, you are likely an Information Professional and the kind of person that AIIM wants to help become better at solving all these information challenges.

Maybe you’ve already been to the website. Maybe you found it through a search on how to solve a problem. Maybe you found one resources and left when you couldn’t find another. Maybe you stayed a while and left a series of intelligent comments on blogs and in discussions.

Do I know this? Some of it. I can dig in and surface all sorts of web traffic information. What I can’t do is track your engagement on the site and use it to provide you with more content. I can’t use it to identify good content for others. I can’t use it to surface your contributions based upon the quality of the information.

Why?

Because the data isn’t there. I don’t have a big data problem. It isn’t a matter of coming up with questions, monitoring trends, and uncovering new questions. Without all that data, I can’t even begin to determine what questions I really need to be asking.

Should I “gamify” the website? Hate or love the term, some  people do respond when they are recognized for their contributions. Some people do respond to leaderboards. Some people use those tools to FIND quality, not just measure it.

The problem is, how can I reward for behavior that I don’t measure? How can I determine what behavior should be rewarded?

I have to collect data. I have to start amassing data so I can then find out what I have been missing. I have to do all of this in order to better serve my fellow members of AIIM.

I have to go out and create my own big data problem.

If I don’t, I’m making the answers to the most important question unanswerable.

I don’t even know what that question is.

Every so often, there is a news piece that upsets me. It is usually someone freaking out because someone displayed a religious symbol or attempted to practice their religion on government property. One recent example involved the denial of a student credit for service hours, as required by her honor society because the service was performed as part of her religious organization.

In some cases, there are legitimate concerns that are being addressed. The government must not favor any religion, or any organization that doesn’t pose a threat to society, over another.

The real issue is that people over-react. In the above situation, there is now a subsequent lawsuit, which is likely an overreaction. This applies to both sides of the argument. The government should not be a Christian institution. It also shouldn’t be based upon Hindu, Muslim, Jewish, or Atheist beliefs.

The US Constitution

The Constitution focuses on one thing, setting the foundation to prevent a state sponsored church. Many original colonists fled religious persecution to settle North America. By the time of the signing of the Constitution, there were many well established religions in the United States, including a healthy number of atheists.[Edit: Correction, no documented atheists. Several founders were deists, but that isn’t the same thing. Not key to debate anyway.] The Constitution set out to prevent that same persecution from happening in this country

Let’s read the two phrases quickly.

Article VI of the Constitution

The Senators and Representatives before mentioned, and the Members of the several State Legislatures, and all executive and judicial Officers, both of the United States and of the several States, shall be bound by Oath or Affirmation, to support this Constitution; but no religious Test shall ever be required as a Qualification to any Office or public Trust under the United States.

The First Amendment

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

That’s it. Thomas Jefferson wrote the Danbury letter back in 1802 defined what he called the separation of church and state, but it didn’t really impact the meaning.

The thing is, they are just meant to be separate. The government can acknowledge religions, religious groups, and the work that they do for society. If a charity is religious based, as long as the money is going to help the charity and not primarily to preach, they can be given money.

Falling Down in Practice

The issue comes with religious references on government buildings. They are permitted, but can’t be restricted to any one religion. The “safe” thing most do is to have no religious references, thus alienating everyone.

Of course, this all goes wrong at Christmas. You can’t display a manger scene without allowing other symbols of religious holidays to be displayed as well. This all rational until someone decides to put a skeleton version of Santa Claus “nailed” to a cross up as well. That actually only has one purpose, to offend. Manger scenes and menorahs are not designed to offend, they commemorate.

If you are offended by religious symbols, then you probably have some serious issues.

Moments of silence in school, don’t advocate anyone one religion. It is a moment for people to pray or reflect upon the day if desired. It does not force anyone to practice any one religion. Heck, I usually spent it finishing my math homework.

Problems come about when people are upset that their kids are exposed to religious concepts at schools. So now people have been conditioned to keep their religious beliefs to themselves.

That is actually a violation of many religious beliefs. Many religions state that you should share your faith, share your beliefs, and educate those willing to learn. Hiding your faith is something done during times of persecution as a survival strategy.

So, I’m not hiding anymore. I’m a Christian, Methodist to be precise. I’m not going to tell you that I am right or that what you may believe is wrong. I’m not going to try and change your beliefs. I’m just not going to hide who I am. I’m not going to raise my kids to hide what they believe.

More importantly, I’m not going to be bothered when others with faiths (atheism is a requires faith) [Edit: Clarified atheism. Isn’t a faith, requires faith. See several comments] other than my own display their beliefs in front of my kids. I want my kids to have the same beliefs that I have, but more importantly, I want their faith be an informed choice. I want my kids to look at those other faiths, see the good in them, and still choose to be Christian.

I don’t want them to be afraid of different faiths. I want them to celebrate the diversity and live in a world where nobody has to hide.

That is all. I will now return you to the regularly schedule Information programming.

Many/Most CMS projects fail, but few/any CMS professionals have ever worked on a failed project

While this quote was likely referencing more Web Content Management (WCM) efforts than the broader world of Content Management, I have noticed this as well. In fact, this is something that seems to be true among all branches of Content Management.

Aside from people hiding their failures, I think there is an additional factor.

Failure begets Transition.

Before I dive into that, I will now confess to my least successful projects. I am only listing projects where I had a significant role and am aware of the final outcome for the project.

Roll Call

I am going to go in chronological order. I am hiding client names and I am sure that some of this is colored by my ego and the passing of time.

• In the interest of full disclosure, one of my first assignments when I was a hired-gun for PC DOCS didn’t go well at all. I was performing my first installation at a new client and it failed. There was an error code that I was unfamiliar with combined with a message that didn’t clear things up. We called support, but the client was unhappy that a “hired-gun” had to call support. Being inexperienced at dealing with clients, I probably didn’t manage things ideally. I was pulled-out after half-a-day. I assume that they installed it finally and they likely had a successful project.
• My company was brought in to help with a Documentum project for a government client. The prime contractor had agreed to an aggressive deadline before completing the acquisition of the software or possessing any domain expertise on which to base any estimates. We came in and hit the first phase date with a lot of hard work. It wasn’t well received as we never had direct access to the end-users who were not impressed. We proceeded to improve things and strive for the next set of promised functionality. Halfway through that we had to receive an extension. The prime requested to not extend me because I kept pushing for more access to users and proper requirements gathering to get things done correctly. I was also becoming friendly with the client which can be dangerous as a sub-contractor. My team stayed behind and eventually the system failed, costing the prime their larger contract. To be fair, I’m not sure I could have saved everything had I stayed on the project. This was the project that validated the importance of all the best practices I had heard of over the years.
• I was brought into an enterprise-wide Content Management and Records Management (RM) project based upon Documentum right at the beginning. Things were going well until politics and poor planning crept into the project. It was a Documentum project for a company with two cultural groups created during a merger several years previously. The client decided to let one side of the company run the technology and the other side run the business requirements. Did I mention that the two groups happened to be separated by an ocean? Meanwhile, the RM consultants spent a lot of money to create an unwieldy records plan that was apparently based upon the concept that the users love to classify their documents. (For the record, they don’t.) Shortly afterwards I got a new job in a move unrelated to the project. The company records manager then “moved-on”. Shortly thereafter, the client switched to SharePoint solution for its “ease-of-use” and deployment. The project seemed to become a success, but it was a much longer road than anyone believed. The company I was with did see it through to the end even with the architect leaving during the development phase.

There are likely some others, but those are the major ones. Still a pretty good record.

The Transition Factor

A large number of people on Content Management System (CMS) projects are participating on their first project. If it fails, it is usually their last project. The project leaves a bad taste in their mouth and they move on to non-CMS projects. They never become a “CMS professional”.

Frequently I hear about projects that failed because there were no CMS professionals to help steer the project. I, and many acquaintances, have been brought in to “fix” or “restart” initiatives that are failing or have failed in the past.

Implementing a CMS isn’t easy. Oh, installing it can be a snap, but using it correctly, assuming you selected the one that best meets your requirements, is a challenge. Even now that I am out of consulting, I still heartily recommend leveraging a few CMS professionals the first time out of the gate. This includes selection, not just implementation.

Once you’ve had that help to jump-start you and your teams capabilities, you’ll find that success becomes the rule. When you learn these simple rules, success actually becomes routine:

1. Manage the project. This isn’t just the project team, it is the key stakeholders. It isn’t just the schedule, but everyone’s desire to see the project successfully hit those milestones. It isn’t just the deliverables, but everyone’s commitment to making sure that they are done correctly. One team, one goal.
2. Pick the right CMS. If the solution is dictated by the Content Management System and not the other way around, success becomes challenging. Business requirements should drive the technology.
3. Have experienced resources. The lead architect/designer needs to have experience with the project. Training only goes so far. If necessary, hire someone to fill that role for the first project. Experience project management is also a must. They don’t need to have direct experience with CMS projects if they are good and have resources that are experienced to lean against.
4. Change management matters. People are resistant to change. You have to work make people open to working with the new system. If not, the CMS can be perfect and still fail. How to do this varies by organization, so chat with experts and others in your industry to determine how they achieved success.

Will all my future CMS projects succeed? Maybe. Part of that will be because now that I am out of consulting the number of projects that I have a hand in will be less. Of course, I could be consulting again in a few years. You never know.

Success is not Perfection

I want to add one more thing. I don’t think I ever had a “perfect” project. I’ve has some that went extremely well and survived multiple attempts to be replaced by newer solutions. There were always things that could have gone better.

People say that failure is important because it teaches you. I think that you can learn more from success. You learn what works as opposed to what doesn’t work. As no success is perfect, you still learn from the effort and improve from there.

That ability to learn is how you become a successful CMS professional.

As a result, we have the following on the stage:

• Cloud-Based: Whitney Tidmarsh Bouck, General Manager of Box Enterprise at Box
• Traditional: Lubor Ptacek, Vice President of Strategic Marketing at OpenText
• Open Source: Roland Benedetti, Vice President of Products at Nuxeo

Pretty exciting group there. I have laid out some rules that we’ll be enforcing in the debate.

1. No Selling: This is vendor solution approach versus vendor solution approach. Each speaker represents their entire Content Management vendor area, not just their own companies.
2. Speak Ill of No Vendor: To be honest, if they want to say something negative about themselves, they can. If they want to say something bad about one of the other vendor groupings, that works as long as it is generic.
3. No Speeches: Hoping for a discussion, not a few rehearsed viewpoints.
4. No Selling: Or did I mention that already?

To warm things up, I asked them some questions to set the stage for next week. In addition, if you have any questions you’d like to submit to be put to the panel, add them to the comments below. I will be writing a follow-up afterwards to capture the debate.

Content Management in the Next 3-5 Years

I asked them three questions, two of which I am sharing the answers in this post. The two questions are:

1. Where do you see Content Management evolving in the next 3-5 years?
2. How are broader Information trends, like Big Data, driving the future of Content Management?

I received written responses from all three, though some were considerably more verbose in their response than others. I’ll share them starting with the shortest and moving to the longest. I made no edits to the entries.

Lubor:

Over the next 3-5 years, the amount of content in any organization will continue to grow at a rapid pace and so will the importance of managing the content properly. In this time frame, we will see multiple trends continue converging, most notably the coming together of the systems of record with the systems of engagement. We will also see increased adoption of mobile devices which organizations will need to support with all the challenges related to a heterogeneous mobile environment. The devices will be increasingly employee-owned which will put a new level of burden on organizations seeking security and control over their content assets. Within the 3-5 years time frame, mobile devices will become the primary devices for corporate users (often the only devices) and content applications will be designed for mobile experience first/only. That will significantly change the way users interact with content applications – from capture and creation, to task execution and process interaction, to content consumption.

The massive volume of content will need to increasingly rely on auto-classification which will become more scalable, reliable, and more consistent than human-based classification today. Organizations will increasingly find ways to use automation to augment the human needs for unbridled creativity. For example, analytics will be used to grow productivity by automatically prioritizing tasks, to speed up information sharing and communication, or to optimize business processes in real-time.

Roland:

In my opinion, the main axis of evolution will be User Experience. User expectations have totally changed over the last 10 years. New usability standards have developed, inherited from the public/consumer Web, but also new uses and devices like real smartphones, tablets (the iPhone was not around 5 years ago, but can we even imagine a world without it now?). This will develop and grow. Enterprise software will no longer have a choice whether or not it adopts the new standards coming from the consumer sphere. To be honest, Content Management is still far behind, busy as it is dealing with the complexities of business processes, technical requirements and/or constraints. How can we have Information Workers laboring over user-interfaces from the last century, when we know the progress we have made in that area? The big change coming in 3 to 5 years is on the user side!

One ramification is that Content Management will have to stop behaving like it is a island, sufficient unto itself.

The reality is that content management doesn’t exist without authoring software, editing software, word processors, mobile environments, email clients, media readers, and integration to other bricks. No content management can seriously claim to provide everything. And while content management has limits, user expectations are limitless, and won’t stop at the confines of a Content Management System. Most of the time, end-users don’t even know what content management is! This means content management will have to be able to more smoothly integrate with all the other pieces of the puzzle, including new online services and tools like Box, Dropbox or more obviously Google Docs, all of which can not be avoided. Content Management will have to be as transparent as possible to end-users, a goal which still largely eludes us.

One way this might happen is with providers emphasizing an agile development platform approach, rather than a monolithic enterprise software design. A “Development platform” means having flexible APIs, which are simple to implement. They allow users to quickly mashup content, be iterative, change applications, and integrate them with others… It also means the tools are simple and efficient enough to do it without requiring core developers working round the clock to pull it off. Content Management Technology is still very static today!  Content Management technology in 5 years will have to be dynamic to be successful.

I don’t really see Big Data as a major change or driver for Content Management. It is certainly something you can’t ignore on the technical side, and which opens interesting and new opportunities. However it isn’t pure innovation of how we manage content. It has more to do with the plumbing than the kitchen.

I see more coming from the work being done around semantic technologies and natural language processing for instance. It’s still early days at this point, but it can obviously give birth to very significant progress in the way we can implement content management processes, endowing the technology with more intelligence, and potentially automating it even more.

Whitney:

Content is the lifeblood of so many kinds of interactions in today’s workplace. Some forms of interaction need the legacy infrastructure of more traditional ECM solutions because they have a heavy workflow and compliance component, or they need records management and archiving. However, there are new emerging ways of working, which are much more social, ad hoc, collaborative in nature and often involve people outside the firewall. Content is very much at the root of these interactions and demands a different kind of experience. And there’s a new crop of enterprise software solutions like Box, that are leveraging the scalability and real-time capabilities of the cloud to tackle this new way of working, giving enterprises a holistic view of content and conversations within their business and leveraging content as a way to fuel conversations, decision making and enhance team productivity.

This trend of working in different ways and interacting with content differently is going to continue to evolve, and the traditional ways of approaching content management is no longer going to work as a standalone method. Companies that are agile, scalable and most able to adapt to the new ways to work with new technologies, like cloud and mobile, are really the ones that are going to win.

We’ve learned from the social web how much more powerful we are when we’re more connected. Yet most enterprise technologies have done little to encourage this same benefit in corporations. In the next several years, content management will become much more social and personalized and will enable more people-centric organizations and workflows, letting individuals share their most timely and relevant information, connect with their communities, and always have access to the best intelligence and information about their projects, competitors, and customers. Ultimately, this will allow people to make decisions faster, have access to the right content, understand correlations more effortlessly, and work more effectively with everyone.

In general, Big data will play a large role in organizing the world’s information. Right now, organizations are not prepared to manage the massive amounts of data it has, let alone generate anything meaningful or useful from it. The legacy software within most of today’s enterprises is stale, static and non-contextual. Applications don’t adapt to behavior, or tell us anything new about content and projects. However, the cloud, social capabilities, and integrated applications are on the cusp of creating a far more personalized technology experience, where an increase in data, and mining behaviors, actually generates an increase in value and knowledge for organizations.

For example, what if you hovered over a piece of content that you had assigned as a task to someone three times that week, and by hovering, you receive a proactive message asking if you want to assign a task to the that same person. Or you update a project status and all the relevant participants are passively notified of the change or delay. As our social stream algorithms improve, user behavior will drive for better ranking of the information you and others should be looking at. And with federation and syndication of this data and events, our applications will all work smarter together.

Another trend impacting content management is the rise of mobile device use for business. We see more than half the traffic to the Box website come from mobile devices and the typical Box user accesses Box from three different devices in six different locations. This is clear evidence that mobile is the preferred way of working, therefore access to content on mobile devices is imperative. Enterprises much select a content management technology that not only gives workers the ability to access information from anywhere on any device, but it must equip them with the appropriate mobile security to protect the business data being accessed.

Overall some interesting thoughts and I’m looking forward to listening to these three talk about where we are going over the next 3-5 years. As I said before, if you have any questions you would like asked, please share them below.

Overall, I heard good things. Jeroen van Rotterdam was there to actually speak on the Next Generation Information Server (NGIS). Lee Dallas and Mike Mohen was also in attendance. For those that don’t know Mike, he is the host of the always popular DFS Real World Examples and Best Practices sessions at EMC World. In fact, the quality of the speakers was pretty good and the only negative thing I heard was that there was only one day of individual sessions.

When people want more of everything, that is a pretty good thing. The EMC people were sitting around at the end of the day thinking about what to do for the next one. That is a very good indicator for the Documentum developers that make the systems work.

Did Someone Ask for Notes?

While I was only there for the social at the end of the day, a couple former colleagues of mine from Washington Consulting, Inc. were in attendance. One, Anand Alagappa, took some notes that I convinced him to share. When reading his notes, keep in mind that as he took them that he hadn’t planned on anyone reading them besides himself. I also seem to recall him running out of battery power at some point as well.

If you have any questions , please comment and we’ll see what we can do to clarify things.

One more note, I heard that xCP 2.0 is slated for the fall of 2012. I think applies to D7 as well, but that wasn’t explicitly stated.

Note, these are notes and may have errors. Any release dates may change at any time.

Lee Dallas spoke about partner certification program, EMC xCP certification paths. (Welcome and Partner Program)

Jeroen VanRotterdam, Chief Architect EMC Information Intelligence Group

Mentioned about his blog www.emccrazycontent.com

Journey to Cloud

• On demand

Pervasive Governance

• Unified and simple ediscovery
• Trust in the cloud

Business transformation

• Captiva
• xPression

Now Available:

• D2 interface v3.1
• Mobile iPad interface v1.1

2H 2012

• D2 v4.0
• Mobile v1.2
• xPression v4.5
• Captiva v7.0

D2 new Documentum client

• Shorten implementation cycles
• Easily configured to respond to the needs of the user

Documentum mobile client

• Available on apple app store
• Collaborate with co-workers while on the road
• Secure access to enterprise info

D2. Configuration matrix

• D2 is basically a targeted rules engine
• Customizations are expensive
• Better UI experience

D2 3.1 available now

D2 4.0 ui changing

D2 – COTS client – configured ECM

• Sop management
• Agency collaboration
• Contract management

xCP – Custom applications

• Loan origination
• Hr on boarding
• New account opening

D2 is the unified client for static applications Rich media and collaboration

• CenterStage & eRoom entitled to D2 v4.1 (2013)

Webtop upgrade path to xCP application (from coded to composed) Or from customized to configured ( D2 bundle / D2 premium / D2 standard)

[Editor: Deleted block of notes that didn’t make much sense]

Journey to the cloud

• EMC on demand architecture
• Vcube manager
• Vcube – managed by EMC experts

Kazeon – file intelligence and eDiscovery v4.6 Universal connectivity Handle social media Unified discovery of content in disparate repos

Xplore enterprise search

• Full text
• Meta data – XML based
• Security xacml
• Facet computation – modified lucene
• Predictive Analytics – hidden

Advanced search core components

Ui server cloud services

Client components – JSON and REST

• Rest is like build a new API
• Formalizing data model of Documentum
• Building XML schemas for data model
• xMS (xCelerated MAnagement System) radical change in deployment

Next presentation by Chief architect IIG pro services (don’t know his name) [Editor: It is Mike Mohen]

DFS – extjs, flex , adobe pro, filenet, sharepoint

IIG integration trends

WSDL on decline, REST is more in demand Custom portals More demand for XA, JTA More security options

• SAML and kerberos
• Open social is a standard

JPA/ hibernate interfaces with contents services

DFS JMeter testing harness

At this point, my battery was dying and I just listened to the presentations:

There was a presentation on D2 by a EMC senior systems engineer

• Showed a D2 demo
• Showed how The client application created from the spreadsheet-style configuration services

xCp 2.0 Presentation by ….[Editor: Dan Ciruli]

• There will be only one tool (probably will be name xCp Designer) to build process, forms (extjs)
• Everything will be build offline and deployed to the application server and docbase (a single war file, which will have dar)
• the generated files on app server is based on spring framework
• No Structured data types while building process
• Package attributes are available and so no process mapping (Not sure how the reporting works without SDTs ….)
• Talked about creating relationships between object types (one to one, one to many, many to one) as opposed to one to one relationship between object types in xcp 1.5
• No new development on Process Analyser and it is given to a EMC partner (forgot name) for development
• Process simulator…end of life

After this – there was a presentation on Records Manager

• What is a record, formal records
• How records are created, retention policys applied, file plans created (brief overview)

Well, I saw a tweet from Ann Lombardi today and it made me want to speak out.

Bears repeating: #USA has west. world’s largest % of lost use/lose #vacation time. Break that workoholism cycle. #travel

The implication is that this is a bad thing. I think the stat is a good thing. Here’s why…

Most companies have a limit to the amount of vacation an employee can carry over from year to year. This is setup so employees cannot carry large amount of vacation around for years, leading to a massive cash expenditure when the employee leaves. Another side effect of unlimited carry-over is that nobody is forced to take a vacation. If you don’t take a vacation it doesn’t matter. You will still get the benefit in cash when you leave the company.

Most companies that decide to not let employees carry large volumes of vacation from year to year and allow employees to cash out excess vacation at the end of the year. This is worse. Now employees can earn a bonus simply by not taking vacation. The message is “Work hard and earn an extra year-end bonus”.

Finally, there are the companies that have a use or lose policy. Employees are permitted to carry over a certain amount of hours each year but any hours in excess of that are lost. No money. Nothing.

My last company had this policy. You could carry over two weeks of vacation from one year to the next. Anything left over you lost.

Contrary to what you might think, this was great. People could save some vacation for big trips but employees essentially had to take their full allotment of vacation or it was gone.

The result? People took vacations. They did their best to make sure that the benefit wasn’t left on the table. There were always people scrambling at the end of the year when they realized they hadn’t planned adequately, but that rarely occurred twice.

In fact, this policy forced some of the more workaholic people to take time away. That was critical in reducing burnout.

Use or lose vacation is great. It drives the desired behavior, which is time away from the office to recharge. While many U.S. companies may not give out nearly as much vacation as the European countries, the use or lose concept works.