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You may have heard that I'm the new guy in town, and I'm happy to say this is my first blog post as a member of the Gilbane Group.  I am thrilled to be a part such a well-respected organization, and I'm ready to roll up my sleeves and get to work on all things WCM! 

A little about me: I've been a practitioner and a consultant in the WCM space for over ten years, but I've worked for an analyst firm for all of two days.  The good news? I know, first hand, the pains users experience when it comes to web content management.  I empathize with the marketer who knows there must be a way to put all this content to work in her next pull-through campaign, and I sympathize with the Intranet Manager who has been directed to deploy more Web 2.0 tools into the enterprise, even in the absence of a business case. [I'm not a Web 2.0-basher, by the way.] I consider myself a passionate user advocate, and if I'm true to myself (and to you) I'll continue to bring that perspective to all of my work here at Gilbane.

To continue my let-me-tell-you-about-me schtick, here are a few random thoughts that come to mind which will hopefully provide further insight into my philosophy as it relates to WCM:

• Usability has become a commodity; It's time for vendors to stop bragging about it and for users to stop accepting anything less.
• Technology for the sake of technology leads to dissatisfaction every time.
• "What problem am I trying to solve?" -- If you can't answer this, stop what you're doing.
• Technology won't change human nature...but it will amplify it!
• You don't have to do what everyone else is doing...there's a good chance they'll fail anyway.
• "Grassroots" applications require more planning, not less.
• User research is never a bad idea... but don't just ask them, watch them.

And finally,

• If we spent as much time crafting strategies as writing RFPs and selecting tools, we'd achieve a much higher ROI. 

So that's it for now. I look forward to writing more on these pages and hope you'll chime in with your thoughts and reactions.

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A team of researchers from International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) released a very interesting piece of academic research this week, which presents some findings from a study of "the largest organizational social network ever collected."  The researchers collected and mined data related to c. 400,000 IBM employees.  The researchers further focused on a subset of that dataset -- 2,600 consultants -- to draw insights on how connectedness impacts the productivity of employees who generate revenues by logging billable hours.

What makes the study so interesting -- in addition to the extraordinarily huge dataset used -- is that it is one of the first attempts I've seen to assign a currency-based value to social network connections.  In this case, the social network is based in email; it lives in IBM's internal deployment of Lotus Notes.

The study associates incremental revenue earned by a consultant with both individual and project-level email activity.  For example, the study finds that if an IBM consultant uses email to reach out to a manager that is not his direct supervisor, he produces, on average, an additional $588/month in revenue as compared to a consultant that only interfaces with her direct manager.

This is fascinating stuff, and my head is spinning with the possibilities of how this might be applied to inter-enterprise interactions conducted via emergent social software, rather than through well-institutionalized email.  I just came across this study today and haven't had time to properly digest it yet, but will do so and comment further.  In the meanwhile, I invite you to read it for yourself and leave observations and  comments here.

I am happy to announce that long time SGML/XML expert consultant Barry Schaeffer has joined us officially as a Senior Analyst, XML Strategies & Content Management. Barry joins our XML Practice, and has already posted the XML blog.

Barry sold his company, X.Systems Inc., to XyEnterprise last year, and has had extensive experience with large and complex SGML/XML projects, including a number for federal, and state governments over the years. I don't remember exactly when I met Barry but it was in the early 80s and he was already involved with SGML projects. Mary, Bill, and Dale have also known Barry for some time. Our XML practice has some serious critical mass, and Barry's experience with government, NGO, and enterprise consulting add considerable depth to the team. Barry's bio has been posted.

Barry's email is: barry@gilbane.com and his phone extension is 213.

Welcome Barry!

I am happy to announce that long time colleague Dale Waldt has joined us officially as a Senior Consultant. Dale has worked with us on a few projects over the years, and I have known him since the early days of SGML when he was at the IRS (who were early supporters of SGML). Dale also spent many years as VP Product Technology at RIA, the tax publishing business unit of the Thomson Corporation designing SGML and XML applications, and has spent the last few years helping organizations understand the business benefits of, and implement, XML strategies. We'll post Dale's bio shortly, but Dale will be at Gilbane Boston next week, along with most of us, where someone at out booth can help you track him down to meet him.

Dale is obviously steeped in XML expertise, and he is also a great communicator. Dale will be joining our XML practice, but will also be helping out in other areas where he has expertise including content management, digital asset management, and social media.

Dale's email address is: dale@gilbane.com and his phone extension is 155.

Welcome Dale!

We're growing. Like many of our colleagues in the industry we have found that problems in the housing and financial markets have had no noticeable effect on demand for our services. Of course things could change, but enterprise content technologies are so core to businesses of all kinds that, while watchful, we are not concerned.

Our main concern, as always, is to keep the conversation and flow of trusted content moving between all the stakeholders (investors, vendors, practitioners, IT, consultants, etc.) in the content technology market. If you are involved in content technology or applications in any of these capacities and have expertise or experience you would like to share with our large, growing community, let us know. We have potential opportunities for bloggers, consultants, analysts, educators, or someone who has a particular expertise and simply wants to express an occasional opinion. If you are interest or have questions let Sarah know at sarah@gilbane.com.

Today we announced our new "XML Technologies & Content Strategies" consulting service. The service will be led by Lead Analyst Bill Trippe, who is joined by Mary Laplante and Leonor Ciarlone. See the press release, and Bill's introductory post on the practices new blog at http://gilbane.com/xml. Bill, Mary, and Leonor all have long and deep experience in this area and make an exceptionally strong team. You can reach them at: xml@gilbane.com.

You'll note the "New/Old" in this post's title. Many readers will know that this is because we have always been involved in XML consulting, and before it existed were involved in SGML consulting, which of course is where XML came from. In fact, though we have changed the name of the company a couple of times, our original company was formed in 1986 to advice to organizations like the DoD, Department of Commerce, Lockheed, Fidelity, American Airlines, and many more, on the use of descriptive markup languages and meta-languages like SGML. In fact I first met Bill in 1987 when he was at Mitre investigating SGML. You can still read a lot of our monthly reports from the 90's that cover markup technologies, although Tim Bray, who edited the Gilbane Report in the late 90s and is one of the authors of the XML standard didn't write much about it then since XML was still in "stealth" mode. It was also important then to stay neutral about standards, which obviously would have been tough for Tim at the time.

So if we've been doing this all along, what's new? In short, critical mass, information infrastructure, and demand. The sheer volume of XML being created is reaching a level that demands enterprise strategic attention. XML is already part of many organizations information infrastructure whether they know it or not. And while many of our consulting clients are focused on specific applications, there are also many who are looking at the big picture and really want to understand what information encoded in XML can do strategically for their business. More from today's press release:

Gilbane’s XML Technologies and Content Strategies Practice is designed for IT and business managers who need to gain control of critical content, increase collaboration across enterprise applications, improve efficiencies through faster and more flexible information distribution between business partners and customers, and implement new business models that can keep pace with today's internet-speed competitive requirements. The amount of XML content being generated today is staggering, as large infrastructure providers like Microsoft, IBM, Google, Oracle, and others offer tools and technologies that generate and manage XML information, While many organizations are taking advantage of XML within departmental applications, most companies are not even close to taking advantage of the XML information being created and utilized by popular applications including office software and database repositories. Significantly, many executives are unaware of the XML content and data that are untapped assets within their organizations.

I was talking to someone in the office this morning. I was actually watching tech support change a failed hard drive - that's how badly I didn't want to sit down and write a particular document. He told me that I didn't have to watch him change the hard drive (especially because it wasn't my laptop). I told him - "I'm procrastinating on writing a client document." After a few polite questions he asked me what the problem was with the client. I sighed and said the conversational equivalent of: "Senior management is completely disengaged when it comes to setting strategic direction for the web. So, middle management and the web team are just flailing about in a reactionary way putting up whatever content needs to be had at the moment and fighting with each other about what's the most important content on the site, and watch technology to use, yadda, yadda, yadda..." He nodded knowingly. Then I realized, this statement could be made for just about all of our clients. Most "web site problems" stem from the rotten root of ambivalent senior management. So in a moment of largesse (and finding a more creative way to procrastinate), I thought I would write this blog entry.

If you're having Web problems, the first thing to consider (before calling a content management system vendor, a taxonomist, a web design firm, or Web Operations folks like us), is whether or not the CEO, Administrator, President or whoever heads your organization is even thinking about the site - strategically. If they are not, then more than likely any changes that the web team makes to the site will just be "interim" or "quick fixes." For a lot of organizations, the organization's public facing web site is the first point of contact for business partners and customers, prospects, and information seekers it deserves serious senior consideration.

I'm not just talking about making sure that the web site looks good either. Good web design - while shockingly rare in some segments of the Web - is not a mystery and good web designers and information architects are easy to locate. I'm talking about establishing performance and quality objectives for web sites - objectives, which support the overall mission, service and/or business objectives of your organization and then holding folks accountable for meeting those objectives - like you don't get your raise if you don't get it done. If you establish these basic strategic and governance related principles, you will find that a lot of the other decision related to web design, what types of software needs to be utilized, etc. become a lot easier to answer.

So, get your Web Strategy and Web Governance ducks in a row before you shell out the big bucks for a web site redesign or a new web content management system or fancy pants consultants like us.

But if your still dying to talk to someone anyway or just commiserate with other folks with messed up web sites, we'll be talking a lot about various strategic and governance issues at the Gilbane conference in Washington DC next week.

Hope to see you there.

We launched a new consulting practice and blog yesterday to focus on Enterprise Search. I am thrilled to have Lynda Moulton join us to be the Lead Analyst of the practice. Lynda has a long and deep experience as an expert on research technologies as a software developer, entrepreneur, and consultant. We've been getting more calls for help about enterprise search over the past year, as well as increased interest in our Enterprise Search track at our conferences - the topic cried out for a dedicated focus. Visit our new Enterprise Search blog at http://gilbane.com/search_blog/, and let Lynda know what questions you have about search technology and its enterprise application.

I’m a firm believer in the value of user groups. I think that they are most valuable when the user community has enough energy to manage them independently from the software publisher. This is rare and getting rarer in the composition software industry.

In the absence of an independent user group, and not to be confused with same, many vendors sponsor User Conferences, which are great opportunities to mingle with other users and see presentations on “real life product implementations” albeit under the watchful eye of the vendor.

A number of vendors have their 2006 user conferences coming up in the Autumn:

Your definition of "document composition" will largely depend on your perspective.

A graphic designer might immediately think of Quark Express or Adobe InDesign. A desktop publisher could probably name various plug-ins to those environments or perhaps list database-publishing tools like Corel Ventura or Adobe PageMaker. If you are approaching this question from an operations, IT or print production perspective you have a much longer and more granular continuum of needs which can only be met with high volume composition software. In my work, I deal with both ends of the continuum from the graphic designer to the high-volume output specialist (see www.ArtPlusTechnology.com)