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The theme for the opening keynote panel: Content Technologies - What's Current & What's Coming? at our Boston conference this week is: change - and what it means for content and information management strategies. Of course there is constant and rapid change in technology, but we are now entering an era of multiple tectonic shifts that will challenge IT and business strategists more than ever. And the changes are not all technological, even if largely caused or influenced by technology. For example, the computer-literate generation entering the workplace, consumer technology changing expectations in the workplace, and a sometimes desperate need to adjust or completely change business models.

Other fundamental changes affecting enterprise information management strategies include the speeding freight trains of mobile computing, cloud computing, enterprise software consolidation, and global e-commerce markets.

We'll also take a look at some specific technologies and ideas that are often over-hyped or not well-understood. Many of these have an important role to play in enterprise information strategies, and the panel's goal will be to help you think through what your expectations of them should be. Examples include technologies that go 'beyond search', social software networks, user-generated content, tagging, enterprise blogs and wikis, and e-books.

This is a lot to cover in an interactive 90 minutes, but our panel will certainly get you thinking, and provide some perspective for your discussions with other attendees, speakers, and exhibitors.

Joining me on the panel are:
Andrew P. McAfee, Associate Professor of Business Administration, Harvard Business School
David Mendels, Senior Vice President, Enterprise & Developer Solutions Business Unit, Adobe
Andy MacMillan, Vice President, ECM Product Management, Oracle
David Boloker, CTO Emerging Internet Technology, Distinguished Engineer, IBM Software Group

Thank you Andrew. Andrew McAfee has a thoughtful post ("It's Not Not About the Technology") on a topic I've often bitten my tongue about, i.e., the (often smugly delivered) phrase "It's not about the technology". And of course the context is a discussion about applying technology to a business application, which should by definition, imply that both technology capabilities and business requirements need to be part of the "about". It is common for one or the other to be overly emphasized to ill effect. Perhaps because of my technical background, I am more sensitive to the use of this phrase in situations where the utterer is covering up for a lack of knowledge or fear of technology or change. You simply can't make good business decisions that involve technology without understanding what the technology can and can't effectively do - business requirements need to be expanded or contracted based on what is possible and feasible if you want your IT investments to be successful and competitive. Often the largest benefit of a piece of software is a little known (even to the vendor) feature that happens to allow for, e.g., a process improvement that would be a requirement if you knew it was possible. See what Andrew has to say.