Information

This is the work part. Posts here relate to the craft of my career and profession.

Content Management Step 3, Control that Information

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Auburn's Eagle FlyigAt this point, I’ve covered the first two Content Management steps towards achieving the proper Information Governance, knowing. The remaining steps are ones that the industry executes fairly well today, at least from a technical perspective. It just feels like a failure because we historically fail to Capture and Organize content properly.

The third step is Control. Control is something that most organizations have mastered, perhaps a little too well. If a piece of content gets into the system, locking it down is easy. The challenge here is not the technology, but the basic approach to controlling content.

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Moving from Expert to Evangelist and Back

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Clarence the AngelIt has been an interesting few years. As I approach the 7th anniversary of this blog, I was prodded to look at my journey by Gina Minks. She wrote a post about how to take advantage of experts and evangelists without them turning into obnoxious tools. (Her words were not as kind) She was asking as much as sharing.

This is a tough one. As you become recognized as an expert, it is a little intoxicating. You want to keep the recognition while still maintaining the credibility that got you there. Opportunities come along and you have to decide which ones will let you keep your soul and which ones will require you to cross that line that Gina was warning about.

Let’s start with my journey as a point of reference.

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Heartbleed is NOT an Open Source Issue

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I was going to write a nice, calm post today when I came across Ralph Losey’s piece on the Heartbleed bug. It is a long piece and you can tell it was written by a lawyer. I have nothing against lawyers as two of my oldest and closest friends are lawyers. I’ve met and talked to Ralph before. He is a smart guy and general understands how technology can change the world. Ralph simply misses the point on Open Source.

Completely misses it.

This was a bug that was not caught before release, the same as happens in proprietary software. I know as I’ve released a few bugs in my day.

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Using Empathy as a Framework for Success

My dog, MarcoOver in the web world, the fun comprised of Information Architecture, User Experience, Content Strategy, and a few other titles, there has been an increasing focus on empathy. There is even the Dare conference dedicated to the people skills, aka feelings, that is needed by all of us techies.

There have been discussions about empathy being the missing ingredient for successful projects. Others have pointed out that while empathy is important, more education and leadership needs to be added to the mix as well. I even talked about it when I encouraged Content Professionals to Be the Business and spend more time understanding what people actually do during the day.

Of course, like everything in the world, proper balance is the key to success. Empathy is the framework in which we need to deliver our advice, solutions, and products. It isn’t the deliverable, but it adds depth to how we present the deliverable.

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Content Management Step 2, Organize that Information

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Donuts in a Krispy Kreme storeI talked last week how the first, and more critical, step of any Content Management System (CMS) is to actually capture information in the system. After it has been captured, information needs to be organized and categorized, which leads to the proper application of Information Governance principles.

The question is, How do we organize and categorize information today?

The simple answer is, Poorly.

This isn’t an indictment against the newer cloud vendors like Box and Google that don’t have a way for people to categorize information outside of tags and a folder hierarchy. The problem goes deeper. This is a problem born from complex metadata schemes and the desire to categorize something into a system that can appear as complex as the Dewey Decimal system.

This is as much about process as technology.

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2001: An Enterprise Odyssey

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The Discovery from 2001When I was at the AIIM Conference this year, Thornton May, gave a frenetic keynote address. While I am never quite sure what the key point Thornton is trying to make during his talks, he always makes everyone in the audience think, which is a very good thing.

During his keynote this year, Thornton used the following exercise to get the audience thinking about the future.

Choose movie, show, or work of literature which comes closest to capturing the essence of the external environment facing your enterprise today.

There were a lot of answers, some good, some mired in the past, but it was a very thought provoking discussion. My choice, if you haven’t figured it out by now, was 2001: A Space Odyssey.

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A Release Note For Legacy Systems

I’ve often said that older systems haven’t innovated as much as they should have the past decade. Sure, the systems change and evolve, but have they really improved? Here is a quick look at what just about every release made in the last 10 years could have looked like.

imageAnnouncing SuperOld CMS 8.5!

We are proud to announce our newest version of SuperOld CMS. Right off, you will be impressed with the bigger version number which means more goodness for you.

For this release we listened to you and heard your concerns. In version 7.5 we placed our new critical features in a menu that our customers said was too hard to find. Now that you have had three years to learn exactly how to use those features, we have moved them to a more intuitive location. You won’t believe how easy it is to use now once you break three years of ingrained behavior!

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Content Management Step One, Capture that Information

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A Cinnabon treatThere were a lot of disagreements on my view that Box or Dropbox will be a leader in Content Management in five years. Some were willing to concede that in the Small and Medium Business (SMB) market it might be the case but not in larger Enterprises. To anyone relying on that argument, I suggest refreshing yourself on how disruptive technologies attack a market.

I want to take a moment to explain why one of them WILL be a player in the market. It all comes down to one simple point, they capture content.

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Box v Dropbox v Everyone

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While I was at Alfresco, I made a point of ignoring the competition. I always believe that if you can’t win without saying something negative, don’t bother. On the flip side, I didn’t want to draw extra attention to the competition.

Don’t have any of those issues now.

Even though I was quiet, new things still happened. Recently both Box and Dropbox have been making some announcements. While I am not going to go into the details, plenty of people have done that already, I’m going to talk about why any of it matters.

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Saying Goodbye to Alfresco

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Red Swingline StaplerAt this point, you don’t really need to read much more, but since you are likely the type to want to know more, I shall share. Alfresco and I have parted ways. I greatly enjoyed my time at Alfresco, I learned quite a bit, and I met some amazing people. Alfresco was my first return to a major vendor since the 90s and I enjoyed it. They have a solid vision, good people, and amazing technology. I will be watching their growth with interest.

As for me, I am free to fully explore my options, but first…a vacation.

Still working on the details of what that entails, but I am sure that one or two oceans will be involved. I haven’t had a real vacation in years as I’ve shifted from one job to another with no break twice now.

This time, I’m going to take some time to relax.

Of course, I cannot vacation forever. Even during my vacation, I will likely be sending posts up into the void and answering email. The joy will be doing it on my schedule.

As for afterwards? Some people have already asked me and I thought I would share where my brain is leading…

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