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Intent, hidden within a search click, lies at the intersection of Search and Business, as in "let's do some business". That search click has extra-ordinary value because of the intent to buy -- that's why we're searching, right?

Perhaps, or maybe we're just browsing, or surfing, and we're not in the mood for advertisements. It could be more militant than that; perhaps we're still trying to research our choices and would see a sales pitch as tainting the honesty of the information. At least that's what the founders of Google originally believed.

Although the model of the web was a set of stateless pages, and a Google search box certainly fits that appearance, people's intent is not stateless. It ebbs and flows, from entertaining looking around, to researching choices and comparing possibilities, through sourcing a chosen product (now we're talking about a qualified buyer), to selecting fulfillment options, and possibly all the way to figuring out how to return a product that we're dissatisfied with. That last one is probably not the best time to present an ad claiming how wonderful that product is.

This is a "long running transaction," a series of steps that fit together and flow towards (and past) a purchasing decision, but with back-currents and eddies. And it really is a transaction in the database sense where a failure during one step can cause the entire sequence to be discarded as if it never happened. Though if you believe Sergey and Larry, it will be worse than never happening, you may lose trust in your guide through that transaction.

Has the intent changed? Depends on what that means. On one hand, what has changed across those steps is the mode of the intent. If the intent was to purchase a product, then the research, comparison, purchase, and fulfillment were clearly pieces of that intent, though they call for different approaches: organic search for the research, product focused responses for the purchase, perhaps service-oriented for the fulfillment, and some combination for the comparison.

But what about that "I need to return this product because I hate it" step? The intent has clearly changed, but it is more necessary than ever to connect this new intent to the previous steps. If not, perhaps the search engine will continue to suggest that product to a disgruntled customer with very counter-productive results.

So, what is the unifying concept? Is it intent, organized by modes? Not if what is being unified is a complete user's story about their purchasing experience.

The deadline for proposals for panel participation or presentations for:
Gilbane San Francisco 2008 at the Westin Market Hotel, San Francisco, June 17 - 19, 2008 is January 15.

Visit http://gilbanesf.com/ to see the topic areas we are focusing and then see how to submit a proposal.

If you've never been to one of our events and want see what we have been covering in our conference programs you can view the programs from Gilbane Boston 2007 and Gilbane San Francisco 2007.

If you have additional questions about speaking, send them to speaking@gilbane.com.

The recent Web 2.0 conference predictably accelerated some prognostication on Web 3.0. I don't think these labels are very interesting in themselves, but I do admit that the conversations about what they might be, if they had a meaningful existence, expose some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, they (both the labels and the conversations) also tend to generate a lot of over-excitement and unrealistic expectations, both in terms of financial investment and doomed IT strategies. Dan Farber does his usual great job of collecting some of the thoughts on the recent discussion in "Web 2.0 isn’t dead, but Web 3.0 is bubbling up".

One of the articles Dan links to is a New York Times article by John Markoff, where John basically equates Web 3.0 with the Semantic Web. Maybe that's his way of saying very subtly that there will never be a Web 3.0? No, he is more optimistic. Dan also links to Nick Carr's post welcoming Web 3.0, but even Carr is gentler that he should be.

But here's the basic problem with the Semantic Web - it involves semantics. Semantics are not static, language is not static, science is not static. Even more, rules are not static either, but at least in some cases, syntax, and logical systems have longer shelf lives.

Now, you can force a set of semantics to be static and enforce their use - you can invent little worlds and knowledge domains where you control everything, but there will always be competition. That's how humans work, and that is how science works as far as we can tell. Humans will break both rules and meanings. And although the Semantic Web is about computers as much (or more) than about humans, the more human-like we make computers, the more they will break rules and change meanings and invent their own little worlds.

This is not to say that the goal of a Semantic Web hasn't and won't generate some good ideas and useful applications and technologies - RDF itself is pretty neat. Vision is a good thing, but vision and near-term reality require different behavior and belief systems.

Onfolio, a company and tool I have used and liked, is being acquired by Microsoft. Onfolio is led by J. J. Allaire, one of the incredibly bright and hands-on entrepeneurial Allaire brothers who developed Cold Fusion. According to the Boston Globe, the entire six-person Onfolio team is moving from Massachusetts to Redmond. This is much like the case of Ray Ozzie's Groove, where Microsoft is acquiring Allaire as much as they are acquiring Onfolio.

Also according to the Boston Globe, the Onfolio tool, which came in three retail versions ranging in price from $30 to $149, will be available for free, starting today, as part of the Windows Live Toolbar. However, I checked the Windows Live Ideas site quickly and couldn't find it.

UPDATE: The Toolbar Beta is there now.

Our conference in Boston served up evidence that companies are beginning to get serious about leveraging their content, moving beyond managing, storing, and retaining it. "Content in context" was a theme in the analyst panel and in the sessions on adoption of DITA and sustainable content strategies. Frank and Hummingbird CMO Andrew Pery discussed the issues in "Intellectual Capital@Work: Finding the Added Value in Your Enterprise Content" during a web seminar on December 6. Listen in here:

Recording URL: https://www.livemeeting.com/cc/hummingbird1/view
Recording ID: C377S436

Look for "Tune Into Gilbane, Part 2" for information on our first venture into conference podcasting.

The Gilbane Conference in Boston is well underway and already a raging success in my mind. Besides facilitating the "Enterprise Content Management: Myth or Reality" roundtable at the CMPros Summit, I have also moderated a session in the CM track titled "Avoiding the Big Mistakes in a CMS Project." Both experiences were exactly the kind I hoped for -- interactive, participant-driven, and enlightening. Summarizing my thoughts will likely take several blog entries -- this one focuses on "the glue people" as related to the concept and in turn, the organizational reality of an enterprise content management strategy. Not software, not tools, not "which capabilities are applicable," -- just the strategy.

The glue people may very well be the answer to whether ECM strategy makes it to reality in an organization. What and who are they? The folks who manage to bridge the gap between the isolated goals and pressures of IT, business units with key content owners, and the C-level tier. As a former Business Analyst in the IT organization of a global insurance company, I know the pain of the glue people. Part psychotherapist, part geek, and part business person, glue people are often a rare breed. They must educate, facilitate, coordinate, smooth egos, see the bigger picture -- the greater good, and make it home by 7PM if at all possible. They are often un-named, under-appreciated, and caught in the gaps themselves -- resulting in the need to find their own psychotherapist.

BUT -- the glue people can make an incredible amount of progress toward the organizational design, implementation, and evolution of an enterprise content management strategy. And -- for those caught in the chaos of outsourcing, downsizing, re-organization, and downright unemployment -- there's likely never been a better time to become a glue person. (Read: technical writer, taxonomist, business analyst, etc.) If you peruse the professional services and consulting market for ECM and all its acronym children, what will you find? A lot of glue people.

Are you a glue person? What's your title? What have your experiences been? How have you been able to gill the gaps with glue? Please step up and respond with comments! The opportunity to turn glue people into a formal, empowered, and acknowledged profession is now.

In our informal survey of enterprise use of blogs and wikis, the most popular application that organizations are using blogs and wikis for was "knowledge management". While our survey is a far cry from what a rigorous market research effort would be, the results are in sync with what we and others are hearing from companies. I recently heard from Rod Boothby, who is leading an effort with Ernst & Young to build an internal enterprise blogging system to support knowledge sharing, and has written an essay based on his findings while building the business case for the project. I have just read the 37 page essay, Turning Knowledge Workers into Innovation Creators, and it is a great tool for describing the benefits of enterprise blogging to senior management. Rod is publishing sections of the essay on his blog at www.innovationcreators.com.

The question is from Charlie Wood's entry where he references a couple of reports by James Governor on Traction beating Lotus out at a European pharmaceutical organization, and Movable Type beating Lotus out at Alcatel. There is a free case study written by Suw Charman for the former on her blog.
Socialtext also has some increasingly interesting enterprise apps at e.g., Dresdner Kleinwort Wasserstein and Nokia, and has recent investment and a new board member from SAP.

We'll be looking at some more detail on exactly what organizations like these are doing with blog and wiki tools in a follow-on report to Lauren's earlier article, so let us know of any interesting case studies.

In answer to Charlie's question, I would say 'yes' to collaboration and 'partially' to content management.

Reminder: The deadline for submitting speaking proposals for our Boston conference on November 29 - December 1, is May 15. In fact, it helps to send proposals even sooner since we are already outlining the program. We'll be covering our usual range of content management technologies, but will have a special focus on new technologies, and which ones are ready for prime time and what business applications they are appropriate for. Enterprise blog, wiki and RSS technologies will certainly be one major focus. There is some early guidance on this year's topics here. If you are new to our events, you can see our typical content coverage and conference structure at last year's Boston program, or this month's San Francisco program.

See the instructions on how to submit proposals.

The non-profit Content Management Professionals organization, an international community of practice, is holding their Spring Summit in San Francisco on April 11. The Summit is being held at the Palace Hotel in downtown San Francisco in conjunction with our Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies.

Activities at the Summit include small-group, roundtable discussions focusing on the strategy and practice of content management and the role of those who are engaged in this discipline. CM Pros members leading roundtables include:

- Erik Hartman (Netherlands) on the enterprise content management poster and CMSML (CMS markup language)
- Hilary Marsh (Chicago) on the content in content management
- Ann Rockley (Toronto) on making the content management business case
- Mira Wooten (Mountain View, CA) on content management networking
- Rahel Bailie (Vancouver) on the human factor in content management
- Seth Earley (Boston) on doing successful taxonomy projects
- Shuli Goodman (San Francisco) on effective governance models to support enterprise content strategies
- David Warwick (Australia) on organizational compliance and the role of CM systems.

Update: Full Summit Program and schedule.

Register for the Summit or find out more about it.
(Discloure: I'm on the board.)