The Gilbane Advisor

Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Year: 2016 (Page 3 of 3)

Gilbane Digital Content Conference Call for Speakers Deadline is May 6

April 20, 2016 /

Gilbane Digital Content Conference

Main conference: November 29 – 30
Workshops: December 1
Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, MA

 

 

 

Share your expertise and network with peers and digital content leaders…

Submit your proposal today

Tracks include:

Content, Marketing, and Customer Experience

Designed for marketers, marketing technologists, social marketers, content strategists, web content managers, content marketers, content creators and designers, business and technology strategists focused on customer experience and digital marketing.

Focused on how to overcome challenges and implement successful strategies and practices to reach, engage, and retain customers with superior content and digital experiences.

Content, Collaboration, and Digital Workplace Experience

Designed for content, information, technical, and business managers focused on intranets, enterprise search, social, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and internal, field, and backend content applications.

Focused on tools and practices for building agile, information rich, collaborative, and distributed digital workplaces to meet the demands of modern organizations and the changing workforce.

Technologies for Content, Marketing, and Digital Experience

Designed for technology strategists and executives focused on near-term and future software for creating, managing, and delivering compelling digital experiences across platforms, channels, and form factors.

Focused on what you need to know about evolving, and potentially disrupting, content and digital experience technologies for marketing and the workplace.

Re-imagining Digital Strategies for Publishing and Media

Designed for publishing and information product managers, marketers, technologists, strategists, and executives focused on digital transformation, new channels and business models, and managing digital assets.

Focused on the business and technical challenges facing information, publishing, and media organizations creating, managing, and delivering content across the growing number of competing platforms and channels.

About

The Gilbane Conference on Content Management, Marketing, and Digital Experience helps marketers, IT, and business managers integrate content strategies and computing technologies to produce superior digital experiences for all stakeholders.

Submit your proposal today

Gilbane Advisor 3-30-16 — Hierarchy of Engagement, Medium, Open Web, Blendle..

March 30, 2016 /

The Hierarchy of Engagement

Greylock’s Sarah Tavel has a framework for evaluating customer engagement potential in non-transactional consumer companies that is must read for startups, but equally valuable for all marketers. “What matters most is not growth of users. It’s growth of users completing the core action.” Read More

Talking about Medium and the Open Web with Evan Williams

MIT’s Joi Ito in a friendly interrogation draws out Williams’ thoughts on the open web. Also see MIT’s PubPub which Ito references for additional context.

We’ve been talking a lot about the importance of the Open Web and where Medium fits into the ecosystem of walled gardens and this Open Web. Evan Williams, founder and CEO of Medium, was nice enough to chat on Skype and allow me to post it. … while Medium has and is focused on creating a great authoring platform, it sounds like Ev is much more open to supporting the Open Web than some might have feared. Look forward to seeing support for more interoperability and working with them on it. Read More

Journalism needs a Spotify, a Netflix, an iTunes — whatever you want to call it…

One website that houses the best newspapers and magazines in the country, that allows people to browse through everything and only pay for the stories they like, where you can see what your friends recommended. And where it’s really easy to just get the 8 or 10 best stories published every day, and discover those really great pieces. … Nobody built it, so we did it ourselves

Dutch company Blendle seems to be doing well with a micropayment model in Holland, and is now in beta in the U.S. with major publisher support. This post by Co-founder Alexander Klöpping explains what and why. Why might this work now? Not to take anything away from Blendle’s technology or user experience, but the publishing industry had to be willing and ready. Fingers crossed. Read More

Social’s Fight Over Brand Dollars

The Information’s Tom Dolan compares the competing approaches of Snapchat vs Facebook. Aside from the details this is also reminder to look closely for subtle but important differences between all the platforms.

Facebook and Snapchat have roughly competitive full screen ad products. While both are designed to entice brands to move more TV budgets to mobile, some marketers say Snapchat’s is better for immediate reactions while Facebook is better for brand awareness. Read More

Format Free Content and Format Agility

A good read from Michael Andrews for thinking content strategists. (I made the quote meet my formatting needs by deleting the extra sentence spacing.)

I want to bring the user perspective into the discussion of formats. Rather than only think about the desirability of format neutrality, I believe we should broaden the objective to consider the concept of format readiness. Instead of just trying to transcend formats, content engineers should also consider how to enable customized formats to support different scenarios of use. Users need content to have format flexibility, a quality that doesn’t happen automatically. Not all content is equally ready for different format needs. Read More

Slack, I’m Breaking Up with You

Samuel Hulick’s love / hate relationship is one example of a bit of a Slack backlash going on. Hard to know how widespread it is, but it is easy to see how Slack would encourage what Linda Stone calls “continuous partial attention”. Slack is a tool and may just need to be used judicially as some of the comments suggest. The post and associated debate around Slack and productivity are helpful to anyone considering using it.

You’re turning my workdays into one long Franken-meeting … those with the least on their plates can maintain the most Slack presence, which leads to the most gregariously unengaged representing the majority of the discussion base while penalizing those who are fully engaged in their “real” work. Read More

Gilbane Digital Content Conference

Call for speakers is now open!

Main conference: November 29 – 30 2016 ● Workshops: December 1
Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, MA

Short takes

Scary but useful!… Scott Brinker’s latest Marketing Technology Landscape Supergraphic (2016) via chiefmartec.com

It’s not just Slack… Is group chat making you sweat? Group chat is like being in an all-day meeting with random participants and no agenda. via Signal v. Noise – Medium   

On chat as interface …WTF does that mean? via Medium

No change at the top… The RedMonk Programming Language Rankings: January 2016. via RedMonk

High praise with why… The New York Times reinvents Page One — and it’s better than print ever was via NiemanLab

All help is sure to be appreciated… Marketing technology is a mess, so MyStacks launches to make sense of it via VentureBeat

Gorilla guerrilla tactics – Apple vs. Google… The War for Mobile Search via The Startup – Medium

Sounds right… Rise of The Docker Pattern via RedMonk

Demandbase, Integrate… Marketing Automation Round-up, March 2016 via Digital Clarity Group

What Would It Take to Disrupt a Platform Like Facebook? …Wouldn’t you like to know. via HBR

CMS, etc., corner

A few tips on how to negotiate the right price for CEM technology via Digital Clarity Group

2016 Web Content and Experience Management Logo Landscape via Real Story Group

About

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for our conference community of content, computing, and digital experience professionals throughout the year. Subscribe to our email newsletter, or our feed.

The Gilbane Conference on Content Management, Marketing, and Digital Experience helps marketers, IT, and business managers integrate content strategies and computing technologies to produce superior digital experiences for all stakeholders.

Gilbane Digital Content Conference call for speakers is now open

March 23, 2016 /

Call for Speakers

Call for Speakers is Open!

Well-designed content is the core ingredient of competitive digital experiences. And the accelerating pace of technology allows us to dramatically improve content creation, content management, content delivery, and ultimately the customer experience. But this is far from easy, and depending on your goals can require pulling together many components, including web content management / web experience management, new development frameworks, analytics, tag management, social media, and advertising tools, as well as ecommerce, CRM, and other system integrations. The Gilbane Digital Content Conference brings together content strategists and managers, marketers, technologists, IT and business executives, as well as external service providers to learn and share how to put the pieces of the puzzle together.

The Gilbane Digital Content Conference helps marketers, IT, and business managers integrate content strategies and computing technologies to produce superior customer experiences for all stakeholders. Please review the conference and track topics below and submit your speaking proposal. Additionally, answers to the most common questions about speaking at the Gilbane Digital Content Conference can be found in the Speaker Guidelines.

Main Conference Tracks

The conference tracks are organized primarily by role/function as described below. The lists under each track are topic suggestions, and we encourage proposals on relevant topics not listed.

Track C: Content, Marketing, and Customer Experience
Focused on how to overcome challenges and implement successful strategies and practices to reach, engage, and retain customers with superior content and digital experiences.

Designed for marketers, marketing technologists, social marketers, content strategists, web content managers, content marketers, content creators and designers, business and technology strategists focused on customer experience and digital marketing.

  • Customer experience management and engagement
  • Content and the customer lifecycle
  • Multichannel content management and marketing
  • Content strategies
  • Responsive design
  • Adaptive and agnostic content
  • Site optimization
  • Matching content to channels
  • Content marketing
  • Marketing technology landscape, architectures, and platforms
  • WCM and customer experience
  • Marketing technologist roles and practices
  • E-commerce and WCM / mobile app integration
  • Measuring and analytics: Web, mobile, social, big data
  • Social marketing
  • Personalization – what works, what doesn’t
  • Growth hacking strategies
  • Localization & multilingual content management an practices
  • What function / system owns customer profiles?
  • Marketing transformation
  • Omnichannel strategies
  • Working with agencies
  • Working with IT
  • Third party data and service integration

Track E: Content, Collaboration, and Digital Workplace Experience
Focused on tools and practices for building agile, information rich, collaborative, and distributed digital workplaces to meet the demands of modern organizations and the changing workforce.

Designed for content, information, technical, and business managers focused on intranets, enterprise search, social, collaboration, knowledge sharing, and internal, field, and backend content applications.

  • Collaboration tools & social platforms
  • Practices for successful collaboration
  • Enterprise social metrics
  • Employee experience management
  • Community building & knowledge sharing
  • Role of content management, intranets, portals, mobile apps
  • Employees are customers
  • Employees are part of the customer experience
  • Content and information integration
  • Enterprise search and information access
  • Taxonomies, metadata, tagging

Track T: Technologies for Content, Marketing, and Digital Experience
Focused on what you need to know about evolving, and potentially disrupting, content and digital experience technologies for marketing and the workplace.

Designed for technology strategists and executives focused on near-term and future software for creating, managing, and delivering compelling digital experiences across platforms, channels, and form factors.

  • APIs and customer experience stacks
  • Mobile development frameworks and strategies
  • Streaming apps and content
  • HTML5
  • Wearable computing and the web
  • Hybrid cloud content management
  • Natural language technologies
  • Haptic and gesture interfaces
  • Data platforms, tools, analytics
  • Real time customer experiences & reality
  • Visualization
  • Open web vs. walled gardens
  • Deep linking and no linking
  • Future of mobile operating systems and platforms
  • Distributed data, distributed apps – mixing up code and data
  • Internet of things and customer experiences

Track P: Re-imagining Digital Strategies for Publishing and Media
Focused on the business and technical challenges facing information, publishing, and media organizations creating, managing, and delivering content across the growing number of competing platforms and channels.

Designed for publishing and information product managers, marketers, technologists, strategists, and executives focused on digital transformation, new channels and business models, and managing digital assets.

  • Digital transformation
  • Designing for digital products
  • Business models and monetization
  • Platforms, publishers, and distribution strategies
  • Content marketing risks and benefits
  • Mixing owned, earned, and sponsored content
  • Ad technologies and strategies
  • App development strategies
  • Multichannel publishing
  • Web pages vs cards
  • Mobile publishing workflows
  • Matching content to channels and devices

Submit your speaking proposal

Gilbane Advisor 2-29-16 — Google, Facebook, and the open web

February 29, 2016 /

The platform competition for last mile content delivery continues to ramp up. Google’s AMP has launched and is available to everyone; Facebook’s Instant Articles becomes available to all on April 12th; and both have gained some open web credibility in the last week. Platform publishing is no longer only for major publishers. Anybody with a blog or website needs to pay serious attention to how platform publishing will affect their reach. Content strategists and marketers need to dial in.

The good news is that in many cases it is possible to feed the beasts automatically with no more effort than publishing a post on a blog, and keep control of your content and web presence. CMS vendors should be ahead of this curve. Our own blog, thanks to WordPress and a few plugins, is already setup to publish to Medium (it works), Google AMP (it works but the rendering is a little funky), and Instant Articles (as soon as Facebook turns the switch in April). We’ll also be testing Apple News.

Google Is Going to Speed Up the Web. Is This Good?

Good for us as web consumers that is. Dan Gillmor provides a non-technical and cautiously optimistic review of Google AMP (Accelerated Mobile Pages).

I still have a million questions about this, and some are the ones I began with: What if Google changes its strategy, by making it more proprietary and centralized? What if news sites had just done the right thing in the first place? Or, since they didn’t, what if they just resolved to build faster pages — using standard HTML markup and loading components in a non-annoying way — now? Wouldn’t that have gone a long way toward solving the problem? Do they, and we, really need all this? … For now, at any rate, the answer seems to be yes. Read More

How Instant Articles helps the open web

This is a remarkable post. RSS dad Dave Winer says that Instant Articles is built on RSS, that he has been in the loop for two years, and can now vouch that it works. This is a very welcome development.

Facebook is using open web technology to power Instant Articles. I’m not sharing anything that isn’t already publicly documented on the Facebook developer site. People have trouble understanding this, I assume, because it seems so out of character for a big web destination like Facebook to care about the open web. It’s kind of a miracle. But there it is. The open web is about to get a real shot in the arm from a most unexpected place. Read More

Aligning Business Goals with User Goals in Content

Is content marketing ‘heading toward a “trough of disillusionment” following a period of “inflated expectations.”’? It already has for some. This thoughtful post by Michael Andrews digs into how unrealistic expectations happen and how to avoid them.

… One erroneous assumption is to believe that  a group who shares a common personal goal are equally likely to buy something.  Conversely, just because a group of people all want to buy a certain type of product or service, that doesn’t mean they share the same purchase motivations or care about the exact same features or benefits. Read More

Branding in the Age of Social Media

Douglas Holt argues for an alternative to branded content.

It turns out that consumers have little interest in the content that brands churn out. … Most view it as clutter—as brand spam. When Facebook realized this, it began charging companies to get “sponsored” content into the feeds of people who were supposed to be their fans. …celebrities are all garnering the superengaged community that pundits have long promised social media would deliver. … That shouldn’t be surprising… What works for Shakira backfires for Crest and Clorox. The idea that consumers could possibly want to talk about Corona or Coors in the same way that they debate the talents of Ronaldo and Messi is silly. Read More

What’s Next in Computing?

Chris Dixon does a really nice job with this. Accessible, to the point, and I agree the next era will be multimodal. A good historical perspective post to share with c-suite colleagues.

I tend to think we are on the cusp of not one but multiple new eras. The “peace dividend of the smartphone war” created a Cambrian explosion of new devices, and developments in software, especially AI, will make those devices smart and useful. Many of the futuristic technologies discussed above exist today, and will be broadly accessible in the near future. Read More

A good companion piece…

On Bots, Conversational Apps and Fin

Sam Lessin with a developer and investor perspective on what’s next…

2016 is being declared the year of bots. And it feels like there is a broad shift in the developer ecosystem away from traditional point-and-click apps, towards chat-based user interfaces. … It’s happening because there is broad consumer and developer fatigue with apps. Consumers don’t want to install or use new traditional apps. … The bet I am making, both as an investor and operator, is that the 2016 bot paradigm shift is going to be far more disruptive and interesting than the last decade’s move from Web to mobile apps… If the app shift moved developers away from server side development and towards clients, the most important part of the current shift is a move back towards the server and away from client software in the form of bots. Read More

The End of Streams

Jessica Lessin has some interesting thoughts on what I think is more like the comeback of channels.

There has been a quiet shift in product design away from streams and towards channels, and the shift is likely to accelerate with messaging platforms. Read More

Is Holistic Customer Experience Management even Possible?

Scott Liewehr is talking about SAP in this post, but raises the general question, and pointing out that products aren’t enough if your partners are not in sync – and why should they be?

I’ve thought for years that when SAP decided to jump into the Customer Experience race, it would be game-over for many other vendors. Now that they have, I’m not so sure. I see that their customer experience strategy has a greater dependence on service provider partners than they’ve ever had, and it’s not obvious to me as to which partners are going to be interested in helping them succeed in this realm. Read More

Mark your Calendar!

Gilbane Digital Content Conference 2016
Content Management, Marketing, and the Digital Experience

Main conference: November 29 – 30 ● Workshops: December 1
Fairmont Copley Plaza, Boston, MA

Short takes

Too much “thought leadership” and personalization… Avoid These Common B2B Content Marketing Mistakes via hbr.org 

Is digital advertising is becoming a rather simple proposition: Facebook, Google, or don’t bother?… The Reality of Missing Out via stratechery

Bill Thompson channels Karl Popper, but don’t be scared… The Open Web and Its Enemies via Medium

Internet of Things security is so bad, there’s a search engine for sleeping kids and it (Shodan) has been around for years. via ars technica

News Publishers Need To Jump Into Bots Will this provide the added value they need? via Monday Note

For some of you, but streaming is mainstreaming… Open Source Streaming Analytics at the Edge for Internet of Things Devices via prnewswire

CMS, etc., corner

DAM Market growth, Adam… Digital Asset Management Round-Up, February 2016 via Digital Clarity Group

More on DAM… Updated DAM research: ADAM, Nuxeo, Bynder, Canto, WebDAM, NetX, WAVE, and MerlinOne via Real Story Group

Amazon and Colis Privé, Gilt Group, Hudson’s Bay, Groupon… E-Commerce Round-Up: January 2016 via Digital Clarity Group

About

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for our conference community of content, computing, and digital experience professionals throughout the year. You can also subscribe via our feed.

The Gilbane Conference on Content, Technology, and Customer Experience helps marketers, IT, and business managers integrate content strategies and computing technologies to produce superior digital experiences for all stakeholders.

Gilbane Advisor 1-7-16 — 16 Mobile Theses

January 7, 2016 /

Happy New Year!
We’ve been busy with December’s Gilbane Conference and the holidays, so to get caught up and keep this issue a reasonable size we have collected conference content in a separate blog post, and included a larger Short Takes section below.

16 Mobile Theses

Benedict Evans summarizes his view of fundamental issues at the intersection of mobile and computing. There are links to more detailed analysis which should be read to fully understand his position.

We’re now coming up to 9 years since the launch of the iPhone kicked off the smartphone revolution, and some of the first phases are over – Apple and Google both won the platform war, mostly, Facebook made the transition, mostly, and it’s now perfectly clear that mobile is the future of technology and of the internet. But within that, there’s a huge range of different themes and issues, many of which are still pretty unsettled. Read More

and see…

Contextual Runtimes

Fred Wilson on Evans’ 16 mobile theses…

… my favorite part is titled “Post Netscape, post PageRank, looking for the next run-time.” In this part Ben describes what used to be the dominant environment and the search for what is next. At the end he states: “Really, we’re looking for a new run-time – a new way, after the web and native apps, to build services. That might be Siri or Now or messaging or maps or notifications or something else again.” … I agree with Ben but I think there won’t be one runtime in the mobile era. I think what is emerging is multiple runtimes depending on the context – “contextual runtimes.”

Fred is right, and further, some runtimes will be open and some closed. This tension between “open” and “closed” has been a constant of computing systems and standards for decades and has fed creative development of both. Context determines the leverage of “open” or “closed” and is fluid. Read More

and see…

Mobile Counter-theses

Tim Bray on Evans’ 16 theses…

I think the the­ses are about half wrong. … I’ll run through his the­ses one-by-one. But first, I think our dif­fer­ences cen­ter on two things; one that’s pre­dictable giv­en who I am, name­ly the cloud. The sec­ond is per­haps sur­pris­ing: Whether key­boards mat­ter.

After trying to come up with my own tally of who was more correct, I would go further than Tim and say that their backgrounds account for a lot of the apparent difference. At the risk of over-simplifying, Benedict is an analyst from the telecom market which now includes client computing products, and Tim is a developer with deep involvement in web, mobile and enterprise systems. In any case, you’ll want to read what both have to say. Read More

Rating the Crowd-Sourced Marketing Software Review Sites

What began as a whimsical “landscape of landscapes” led me to realize crowd-sourced review sites are the most common type of vendor directory, accounting for 15 of the 23 sources listed in my original graphic. This begged for a deeper look at the review sites to understand how they differ which, if any, could replace the work of professional reviewers (like me)…

Marketing technology consultant and analyst David Rabb helpfully checks out his crowd-sorting competition and happily finds a role for experts like himself and crowd-sourced reviews. Read More

Is Facebook Driving Less Traffic to Publishers’ Sites?

Recent data from content measurement firm SimpleReach… said Facebook referral traffic to a group of 30 publishers’ sites dropped 32% between January and October… The 30 sites analyzed were those in SimpleReach’s network deemed most reliant on Facebook for their traffic… But online analytics firm Chartbeat… aggregated information from 100 “major news and media” sites … found Facebook referral traffic remained relatively consistent between January and October.

A third firm saw a slight increase in Facebook referral traffic in the same time frame.It seems it depends who you ask. We’ll be learning more in 2016. Read More

“Why not be all the way in?” How publishers are using Facebook Instant Articles

The quote above is from the enthusiastic Washington Post, who doesn’t seem to need any help with the speed of its site these days. Read More

You can also see what some other publishers, including the New York Times and Harvard Business Review think about Instant Articles in the video of the recent Gilbane conference session on New Frontiers in Digital Content Distribution.

Why Facebook Still Worries About Android

Yes, even Facebook has platform fear. The Information’s Amir Efrati reports…

This summer, conversations between Google and Facebook sparked concern at the social media company. The issue: whether Google would eventually ask Facebook to pay for various app requests made by Facebook users on Android smartphones. … These app requests included Google Maps information viewed within the Facebook app and app-related push notifications to be delivered to the phone. Google’s servers handle such app requests before they are passed on to the network provider and end up on an Android phone. … Google doesn’t charge mobile app developers for such standard services. But on Android, Facebook is the top user of such API calls, … And handling those calls costs Google money. Read More

What is Facebook doing about it? Lots… 

Facebook’s Android Contingency Planning

Facebook has been secretly preparing contingency measures to allow its apps to operate on Android phones without going through Google’s app store, … Facebook’s goal is to be ready in case it has an intractable conflict with Google … over future rules governing how apps can function on Android. Read More

Short takes

Summary with handy links… Gartner, IDC and Forrester on the Future of Digital Transformation via What’s The Big Data?

Insight on AMP in interview with Richard Gingras… Inside Google’s plan to speed up the mobile Web via Poynter

2016 predictions for mobile marketing, by a newly discovered business-savvy developer via Mobile Dev Memo

The management tool everyone has been waiting for?… Introducing Guesstimate, a Spreadsheet for Things That Aren’t Certain via Medium

You need to read to understand why a post with such a title actually delivers. How to get rich in tech, guaranteed. via Startups and Shit 

Biting, funny, and true… How to Swallow $200 Million Accidentally via Medium

Slippery slope… 350 Words — Ad — 150 Words via Medium

Why is social media failing? Because The Consumer isn’t a Moron, at least in general. via Medium

Bet you didn’t know that Email Is the Best Way to Reach Millennials via HBR

Handy for getting started with some IoT market research… Internet of Things (IoT) Market Ecosystem Map via Medium

Hiring help… Identifying the essential skills for data scientists. Beyond the Venn diagram via oreilly.com

Digital Asset Management Round-Up, December 2015… SAP hybris / CELUM, Canto / inMotionNow, and some predictions for 2016 via Digital Clarity Group

Updating Our Search Quality Rating Guidelines includes a link to a major revision of Google’s rater guidelines. via Google Webmaster Central Blog

E-Commerce Round-Up: November 2015… Multichannel challenges at Macy’s, Nordstrom, Target, service provider ambitions at Zalando and Farfetch, and Mercadolibre growth. via Digital Clarity Group

CMS, etc. corner

WCM market share estimates… Web Content and Experience Management – Industry Maps via Real Story Group

What’s New for You This December in Open Source CMS… Liferay, Hippo, Typo3, Telerik, Enonic, dotCMS, eZ Systems, Jahia, Magnolia, Umbraco, Xoops… via CMSWire

What’s New This January in Open Source CMS… Composite C1, Enonic, Joomla, Hippo. via CMSWire

WordPress or No? WCMS – the WordPress problem as we have experienced it via diginomica

About

The Gilbane Advisor curates content for our conference community of content, computing, and digital experience professionals throughout the year. You can also subscribe via our feed.

The Gilbane Conference on Content, Technology, and Customer Experience helps marketers, IT, and business managers integrate content strategies and computing technologies to produce superior customer experiences for all stakeholders.

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