Information

Federal IT, A Different World

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It was a great November attending both of the Alfresco Summits. If you didn’t attend either one, you missed a great learning experience that was fun at the same time.

One thing that was missing from the events was representation of our Federal customer base. Given the current challenges facing many Federal agencies here in the United States, it wasn’t surprising. There isn’t a lot of traveling going on right now.

As a result, Alfresco bringing that learning experience directly to Washington, DC on January 29th for Content.gov 2014. That is more than hyperbole as we are bringing in our CEO, Doug Dennerline, our Chief Product Officer, Paul Holmes-Higgins, and many others to DC for the event.

Oh, and I’ll be there as well.

The reason I am taking time out to encourage you to come is that the drivers in the Federal marketplace are different than those in the rest of the world. The focus is not on revenue, but on serving constituents effectively and efficiently. Rules and regulations are more than factors in a risk equation, they are absolutes.

If you are trying to solve the Content problem in the Federal space, please come to Content.gov (it’s free) and talk to others facing the same problems. I, and the leadership of Alfresco, want to hear your perspectives on the unique Content challenges facing the Federal space.

It isn’t even a question of whether or not you use Alfresco. We all need to work together to solve this problem.

Fearing the Final Step

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New PictureI love roller coasters. I’m not obsessed with them, but when presented with an opportunity to ride one, I take it. I particularly like old wooden coasters. They really make you feel like you are on the edge.

And yet…

When I was a child, I had the same fascination but I rode only about half the coasters that I came across. I had a fear of the coasters with loops. I would be excited to ride them, wait in a long line, and then when the time came to finally board, it was a 50-50 shot whether or not I would just walked through to the other side.

The Loch Ness Monster roller coaster was a frequent victim to my whimsical abandonment. I think I was successful only a third of the time prior to the age of 10. This is a little silly because I had ridden it before and enjoyed it immensely. The fear remained. There was no logic behind it. It was an irrational fear.

This has passed and every time I go to Busch Gardens, I make a bee line for Loch Ness. I figured I had conquered the irrationality until…

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ARMA Calls for a Revolution

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I’ve been talking for a while about how we need to mix things up in the space. Records Management as we know it is dead and it has dragged Enterprise Content Management (ECM) down with it. We need to completely change things to get back on track.

While I was attending the ARMA conference, ARMA’s president, Julie Colgan, said that Records Management needed to evolve. I said that it wasn’t enough. Records Managers need to revolt against the system and change things. Julie saw the comment on twitter and promised a response.

Well, today Julie gave a response.

I also believe that RIM needs a revolution, but in order to get there, we first need the professionals in the space to be ready to revolt.

Let’s face it. As much as Records Management, and ECM as a whole, has failed, the needs for proper Information Governance has not changed. Organizations still have the same requirements.

We need to work WITH the Records Management professionals. We need to work together to find a way to meet the requirements of the organization while addressing the central failure point, which is that existing solutions make every employee a Records Manager.

They don’t want to be Records Managers.

I personally welcome ARMA to the battle. The members of ARMA have knowledge that we need. They also have ideas. I saw many speakers at the conference calling for a new approach. We need to learn how to relieve people from the burden of managing records to allow them to focus upon their jobs.

Shall we start a revolution together?

[Note: For a webinar discussion inspired by this post, head over here.]

What Constitutes a Cloud Product?

Yesterday, there was a pretty heated twitter debate between Ron Miller, Irina Guseva, Tony Byrne, and myself over what constitutes a Cloud Product. This was triggered by an article that Irina had published on the Real Story Group blog about what people should take away from the Adobe security breach (besides passwords).

I am not a big fan of how Irina portrayed cloud security as cloud systems are often more secure than many internal systems. Ron had more fundamental issues with the article.

Adobe calls this product Creative Cloud when it’s not a cloud product.

and

This had nothing to do with them being cloud. Adobe ID goes back years.

I tend to ignore most contradictions in a Twitter debate given the limits of the medium. I do want to counter both of Ron’s statements.

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Content Services, Not ECM

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Recently I’ve been trying to walk a narrow path. I have all but pronounced Enterprise Content Management (ECM) dead, and yet I have expressed a belief that Content Services need to be embedded into business applications.

The question is two-fold. How can you serve Content Services without a platform? Isn’t that ECM with a different name?

Yes and no.

Let’s dissect this apparent contradiction.

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Don’t Make Your Digital Assets a Silo

I wrote a piece for CMSWire last month asking if Content Management Systems were Good Enough for Digital Asset Management. I essentially said that if digital assets are the business, then a Digital Asset Management (DAM) system makes sense. If digital assets are part of a broader business need or solution, then perhaps the capabilities of a broader Content Management System (CMS) would suffice.

Ralph Windsor took exception at my conclusion, thinking I was pushing the same old Enterprise Content Management (ECM) story. He couldn’t be further from the truth.

Let me tell you why.

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Forget Users, Think People

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We have a problem in this industry. We live in a world where we constantly think about the “users” of our software. In that identification, we dehumanize the People that are using our system. While this is a small detail, we have to remember one thing…

Words Matter.

Everywhere I look, in proposals, requirements, and manuals, the People that use the system are referred to as Users.

Not Writers.

Not Publishers.

Not Creators.

Not People.

It is pervasive. We hold User Conferences. We write User Manuals. We assign User IDs.

The cruel thing is that we don’t do it to ourselves. There are developer conferences. The creators of the software get to be People, why not those who have to live with the software?

We even try and perfect the User Experience.

Why are we not working on the Human Experience?

Why do we insist on calling the People whom our software helps users? We aren’t pushing a drug. If we were, more People would be willing to use it.

imageDrugs are addictive. Content Management software is not.

One thing that we do have in common, aside from calling People “users”, is that we have to push People to use the software. We have to convince them to take that first step in using the software. People view the software as dangerous, a risk, something to be avoided.

We need to change this approach. As Content Professionals, we need to think of everyone as People. The first step is to change the way we talk.

I am not trying to help users.

I am helping People.

The Next Generation of Content Professionals

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imageLast week I took on the fool’s errand of trying to define Content, in relation to Data and Information. While there are many discussions to be had before any real consensus is reached, assuming that it is even possible, the key point that few people disagreed with was that Context was critical.

Content is Information that requires Context in order to derive its full meaning and value.

I want to extend this discussion into what it takes to be a Content Professional. After all, to work with Content we have to understand it. In order to understand Content, we MUST understand the Context, and world, in which it lives.

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Alfresco Summit: One Down, One to Go…

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SpeakingBarc4I am flying back from my first Alfresco Summit (with my second next week in Boston), and I was impressed. Sure, I have to say something nice about my company’s annual conference, but I could have gone with any number of positive words.

Fun, educational, worthwhile, informative, entertaining….

While they are all true, I’m sticking with impressed. This isn’t my first conference in the industry by a long-shot, so if what happened in Barcelona impressed me, then something interesting had to happen.

I was impressed by the collection of smart people and by the almost universal level of excitement in the future of both Alfresco and the industry. I’ve seen this at a couple of conferences in this space, but it has been a long time since the excitement was this real.

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What is Content?

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A couple months back, Deane Barker wrote an article where he declared himself a Content Management Professional. This is a true statement by every definition of the term I have ever encountered. If that was all there was to it, this would be a boring post.

Deane then made the mistake of defining Content.

I can’t really fault Deane because I am going to make the same mistake in a few paragraphs. Everyone in the Content Profession eventually writes about the very nature of the work we are doing. Some do it to establish a reputation as a leader. Others do it in order to support a point.

I do it out of hope that by coming to some sort of agreement, we can better solve the Content problem.

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