One of the things I REALLY like about my job is the chance to talk to clients, prospects, and people throughout the industry. Nothing helps you learn a technology or vertical like a project, but nothing helps you keep a broader perspective than talking to a wide array of people.
Last month I visited two such companies that were taking different approaches to the same situation. While both approaches have benefits, I began to ask myself…
Which is the best approach?
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.
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.
Last 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.
I 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.
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.
The other week, AIIM hosted one of their InfoChats on twitter. The topic was the Value of Information. We skirted the actual answer and failed to deliver on the actual topic. We spent a lot of time talking about cost and not value. Chris Walker wrote an excellent piece on the challenge we faced during the chat over on his AIIM blog.
Why did we have so much trouble? I posit because Cost is easy to quantify, Value is not.
Value varies based not only upon the actual Information, but on the Consumer and the Context of the Information.
Before I get to the meat of this post, I want to start with a confession. I have been a slacker. If you look at my word cloud to the right, you’ll see CMIS as a big piece of the proverbial Pie. Even before it was a public term, I railed for the need for a standard in the Content Management space.
Now that the first update to the Content Management Interoperability Standard (CMIS) has been out for nearly three months, why am I just now blogging about it? Now that browser binding, retention, holds, and type mutability have been added to CMIS, why am I not proclaiming the wonders of CMIS 1.1 from every rooftop.
I…uh…got busy.
What I want to do today is talk about why this update means everyone should be looking deeper into CMIS and reconsider it for every Content application created. In fact, as much as the need for standards in Content Management existed when I started writing about them, it is even more urgent today.
We were joking the other day that given the abuse and challenges that we, as Content Management Professionals, suffer every day, that working in the Content Management industry must be an addiction. How else do you explain the long hours and the gradual degradation of our basic humanity?
Hi, my name is Pie, and I keep trying to solve the Content Management/Collaboration problem.
Let’s face it. The average Content Management Professional is not entirely sane. As I discussed in the Jack Sanity Scale of Content Management, the longer we work in the industry, the less sane we become. Sometimes I think the only thing that helps us hold it together is therapy at local establishments.
But there is hope. We can find a cure and at least stop the slide into becoming Peter Monks. To do this, I have outlined a 12 step plan to help anyone who is ready to get out. It is a lot of work, but the road to recovery is not an easy one.
I want to start off by apologizing to Ron Miller. Ron is a smart guy and I count him among my friends. Ron also wrote something the other day where he was wrong.
Not a little wrong, a LOT wrong.
Ron wrote an article titled Box has always been about looking forward, not back. It is a good article and it covers Box’s three biggest announcements from BoxWorks quite well, but he misses the point. He missed what Box is really doing.
They aren’t just checking Boxes or throwing people a bone. They are preparing to take over everything.
Word of Pie 