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It’s 2012 and We Are Still Working on Process

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There are two great frustrations in my overall career. The first is that there is more unmanaged content now than there was when I started. The growth of Content Management just isn’t keeping pace with the growth of Content.

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?

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Mobile Devices Sell Faster and Die Sooner

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There has been a lot of hype and real data about mobile devices(smart phones and tablets) outselling PCs of late. Like everyone else, I was impressed. Then I saw another quote on the topic from Box’s Aaron Levie,

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.

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Social Media, a Knowledge Management Tool

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I was reading an article on the Harvard Business Review Blog Network on Social Media versus Knowledge Management. Written by Anthony J. Bradley and Mark P. McDonald of Gartner, I was interested because I’ve discussed the topic of Social Media and Knowledge Management a few times in the past and I was pleased that the topic was still getting attention.

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.

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Getting to the Big Data Problem

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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)

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The Content Management Expert Paradox

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Several weeks ago, Alan Pelz-Sharpe tweeted an observation that I have observed many times that is paradoxical in nature.

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.

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Debating the Future of Content Management at AIIM 2012

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imageBack before either Cheryl McKinnon or I were considering bringing our skills to AIIM, we submitted a proposal to this year’s AIIM Conference to moderate a panel on the Future of Content Management. For this discussion, we decided to bring representatives from the traditional, open source, and cloud-based Content Management worlds onto the same stage.

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

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.

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EMC’s 2012 Documentum Developer Conference

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As I mentioned last month, EMC finally decided to hold a developer conference again. It is currently taking place in the form of focused tech training, but yesterday was the overview day. I was there for the evening events to get a feel for how things had gone.

imageOverall, 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.

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Tablet Wars, Looking at the Galaxy Tab, iPad, and BlackBerry PlayBook

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This may be a year late for many people, but I am finally at the point that I can clearly review the tablets. Why so long? To put it simply, I needed real experience with the devices. The logic used here should carry to other tablets.

This isn’t about Apple versus Android versus BlackBerry. That isn’t what I found to be the big differences. It was all about the form factor and how the device can be incorporated into your life.

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Dreaming of the Documentum Community and Conferences

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I had a dream that I was at the upcoming  Documentum Developer Conference and TechSet next month here in the DC area. (Seriously, I did. Was a little strange, even for me.) I was wandering around, saying hi to people I knew, sharing a quick drink. Soon enough, the next set of sessions started and everyone went to go learn while I went off to….no idea actually as I then woke up.

I decided to take the dream as a sign that I needed to write about the event. Why? Because this reflects a return to something that was a regular occurrence back before EMC took over the conferences. It deserves recognition.

Oh, and I plan on swinging by to say hello and want to see you there.

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Failure, Mistakes, and Actual Success

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shanghai_building_cs_20090629035740.jpgA month ago, as I was waiting to start my first day with AIIM, I can across several tweets that I felt over-stated the benefits of failure. I decided to write a quick little post on how Failure is Not a Positive on my tablet over my morning coffee.

There were some great comments, but I had little time to respond. I am taking some time now to respond because this is an important topic. First, let me start with my baseline statement:

Failure is bad.

I still stand by that 100%. It should be noted that once you are no longer in grade school, you realize that good and bad are on a sliding scale and are rarely absolutes. Something can be bad and not be the “worst”. Bad in this context refers to the simple fact that if you draw a line in the middle, failure is something to be avoided.

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