Author: Frank Gilbane (Page 39 of 73)

We have our own set of speaker guidelines that are specific to our event that we ask all speakers to read. But last week there were two Harvard Business Review posts that provide some of the best advice you can find anywhere on giving a great presentation or moderating an engaging panel. These are must reads for anyone who cares about presentation or moderating skills, and strongly recommended for Gilbane Conference speakers. Even if you are already a speaking pro, each post is likely to give you at least one new idea. See:

• TED Curator Chris Anderson on How to Give a Killer Presentation
• Scott Kirsner, Innovation Economy Columnist for the Boston Globe on How To Moderate a Panel Like a Pro.

Call for papers

Please review the conference and track topics below and submit your speaking proposal.

Conference description

Businesses and organizations of all kinds are struggling to keep up with the dramatic changes and challenges caused by current and near-term future potential of digital technologies. These challenges are enterprise-wide because everybody from customers to employees to partners expects an integrated and compelling digital experience that just works.

Accomplishing an engaging digital experience requires creating and managing compelling content, but also includes measuring how effective the content is, building interfaces that are consistent yet appropriate for multiple mobile channels, and integrating with e-commerce and enterprise systems. None of this should be news, but putting all the technologies and practices together is still largely uncharted or experimental territory for enterprises. Well-informed decisions on digital experience strategies require proactive dialog with experienced peers and industry experts.

At Gilbane conferences we bring together industry experts, content managers, marketers, marketing technologists, technology and executive strategists to share experiences and debate what the most effective approaches and technologies are, and how to implement them. Our theme this year is Manage – Measure – Mobilize, and we have tracks focused on the customer digital experience, employee digital experience, future technologies for digital experiences, and a track on digital strategies for publishers and information providers where we expand our theme to include Monetize.

Main conference tracks

Track C: Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience

Designed for marketers, marketing technologists, growth hackers, content managers, strategists and technologists focused on customers and digital marketing.

Topics include:

• Web content management
• Customer experience management & engagement
• Digital and postdigital marketing
• Inbound & content marketing
• Marketing automation
• Measuring and analytics: Web, mobile, social, big data
• Growth hacking strategies
• Mobile challenges & channel priorities
• Marketing technologist best practices
• Responsive design
• Localization & multilingual content management
• Content strategies
• Cross-channel marketing
• E-commerce integration
• Search engine strategies

Track E: Content, Collaboration, and Employee Engagement

Designed for content, information, technical, and business managers focused on enterprise social, collaboration, intranet, portal, knowledge, and backend content applications.

Topics include:

• Collaboration and the social enterprise
• Collaboration tools & social platforms
• Enterprise social metrics
• Community building & knowledge sharing
• Content management & intranet strategies
• Enterprise mobile strategies
• Content and information integration
• Enterprise search and information access
• Semantic technologies
• Taxonomies, metadata, tagging

Track T: Re-imagining the Future: Technology and the Postdigital Experience

Designed for technology strategists, IT, and executives focused on the future of content and either internal or external digital experiences.

Topics include:

• Hybrid cloud content management
• Natural language technologies
• Haptic and gesture interfaces
• Big data platforms and tools
• Big data analytics
• Visualization
• The future of the open web and walled gardens
• New mobile operating systems
• Beyond desktops
• Distributed data, distributed apps – mixing up code and data
• Internet of things and digital experiences
• Wearable content

Track P: Digital Strategies for Publishing and Media

Designed for publishing and information product managers, marketers, technologists, and business or channel managers focused on the transition to digital products.

Topics include:

• Designing for digital products
• Business models and monetization
• Mixing owned, earned, and bought content
• Ad technologies and strategies
• App development strategies
• HTML5 or no?
• Multi-channel publishing
• Ebook readers vs tablets
• Tablets vs smartphones
• Mobile publishing workflows
• Matching content to platforms and devices

Submit your speaking proposal. [red]The deadline is June 30th 2013![/red]

Before we get to the spending mentioned in the title, there is some important background to cover. In an email to the Presidential Innovation Fellows program mailing list yesterday and a blog post with Small Business Administration Administrator Karen G. Mills last week, White House CTO Todd Park reported on the progress of a pilot program, RFP-EZ, to make federal government RFPs accessible to small businesses.

In addition to making it easier for small businesses to win federal contracts, a key goal is to save the government money since small business bids are typically lower than larger organizations’. Another significant benefit is that it makes it easier for agencies to purchase from innovative small businesses (since more are bidding). In the technology space especially, small businesses provide the lion’s share of innovation.

So how is this program doing so far? From Park and Mills post:

Applying agile development principles, the Fellows team designed RFP-EZ over a six-month period, publishing the platform’s code openly on GitHub. The team then launched the pilot by posting five relatively simple website development and database contract offerings, four of which were also announced via the standard government portal, FedBizOps. On a per-project basis, bids received through RFP-EZ were consistently lower than those received through FedBizOps—19% to 41% lower, and over 30% lower on average. Bids made through RFP-EZ also showed less overall variation. In addition, during the pilot period, RFP-EZ attracted more than 270 businesses that until now had never approached the world of Federal contracting.

Ok, now for the spending. First of all, note that the OMB says the total 2014 Federal IT budget is $77 billion. If you haven’t seen it yet the OMB IT Dashboard yet it is worth a look, and you can download a spreadsheet that has details on spending by agency and project. Park and Mills also said in their post that:

According to Office of Management and Budget’s IT Dashboard, the Federal Government will spend more than $1.4 billion on Web Infrastructure and Web Content Management Systems in FY 2014. Based on 2011 and 2012 results, we can expect about half of these projects to be under the $150,000 “Simplified Acquisition Threshold” that would make them eligible for contracting through RFP-EZ.

This may not seem like a lot at first glance, but at $150,000 each it would mean 4,666 web content management systems or web infrastructure projects it would be fairly easy for small vendors and consultants to bid on in 2014.

Presumably the numbers came from the OMB IT spending spreadsheet, but since software category definitions are fluid, to say the least, doing your own analysis would be a good idea. While our community knows that, for example, “web content management” can include or be a component of a collection of digital marketing tools for engagement or experience management, marketing automation, etc. we can’t assume all federal budgeteers do – or did when the budgets were developed.

All of this is excellent news for a substantial number of the vendors, integrators, and consultants who participate in the Gilbane Conference. It is also great news for federal government conference attendees who can more realistically do business with smaller companies who have the latest technology.

To participate in the RFP-EZ program sign-up using the very simple web form.