Carnegie Mellon University, one of the top-ranked institutions producing technology talent, recently announced that it will offer a new Masters of Science program in software management at its Carnegie Mellon West campus in Mountain View, CA. The driving force is our increasingly global economy.
The school recognizes that going forward, developing good, useful software won’t be sufficient for managers who want to excel. The curriculum combines software engineering, one of CMU’s sweet spots, with business and organizational coursework. The goal is to prepare graduates for the reality of the software business in the 21st century. James Morris, dean of Carnegie Mellon West, says that the program’s “… cross-training gives our students the perspective and contextual understanding they need to see and seize opportunities in the global market.”
The deadline for applications is June 1. See the program description in the Carnegie Mellon West brochure for details.
Author: Mary Laplante (Page 11 of 13)
Congratulations to Linda Burman, Emma Hamer, Joan Lasselle, and Travis Wissink, newly elected by their peers to serve on the board of directors of Content Management Professionals. They will step in for retiring directors Seth Gottlieb, Erik Hartman, Samantha Starmer, and Scott Abel, who resigned his seat on the board to fill the role of CM Pros executive director. Continuity on the board is provided by current director Mary Laplante, now serving the second year of a two-year term.
CM Pros members will have an opportunity to meet with the directors at the upcoming spring Summit, April 13, in San Francisco following the Gilbane conference on content technologies.
Last week’s FASTforward 07 event, sponsored by FAST Search, was a great opportunity to immerse ourselves in search and the state of our collective efforts to solve the knotty problems associated with finding information. (The escape to San Diego during an East Coast winter freeze was an added bonus.)
Much of the official program covered topics “2.0” — Web 2.0, Enterprise 2.0, Search 2.0, Transformation 2.0, Back Office 2.0. Regular readers know that the Gilbane team generally approaches most things “2.0” with skepticism. In the case of its use as a qualifier for the Web, it’s not that we question the potential value of bringing greater participation to Web-based interactions. Rather, it’s that use of the term causes the needle on our hype-o-meter to zip into the red alert zone. This reaction is further aggravated by the trend towards appending “2.0” to other words, sometimes just to make what’s old seem new again. We note, without comment, that O’Reilly Media’s conference in May has been dubbed Where 2.0.
We listened carefully to the 2.0’s being tossed out like Mardi Gras coins at FASTforward last week. One voice that stood out as a great reality check is that of Andrew McAfee, associate professor at Harvard Business School. In his keynote talk, “Enterprise 2.0: The Next Disrupter,” he presented a definition of Enterprise 2.0:
Enterprise 2.0 is the use of emergent social software platforms within companies, or between companies and their partners or customers.
The important word in McAfee’s definition is emergent, which is not the same as emerging. McAfee also outlined the ground rules for an enterprise that can legitimately lay claim to the use of the 2.0 qualifier. Read the FASTforward entries on his blog for his own eloquent summary.
In addition to his talk on Enterprise 2.0, McAfee also participated in a lunch presentation on research conducted by Economist Intelligence Unit on executive awareness of Web 2.0 and in a limited-seating roundtable on 2.0 topics. Both are briefly described on his blog.
In short, McAfee’s work is recommended reading for anyone interested in separating 2.0 market hype from potential business value.
Another highlight of FASTforward for us was keynoter Chris Anderson on “The Long Tail” and the application of Long Tail theories to search and content life cycles. By pure happenstance, the Gilbane team shared a limo to the airport with Anderson. In his day job as editor-in-chief of Wired magazine, he and his staff are experiencing significant levels of frustration with the publishing process — specifically, getting content out of a leading professional publishing tool and into the web content management system. While we found his Long Tail talk interesting, the conversation in the limo reminded us that solving some basic business communication problems is still a challenge. It was a thought-provoking way to end the week.
For more on FASTforward ’07, check out our enterprise search blog.
February 1, 2007, 1:00 pm ET
Take Your Customer Experience to the Next Level, Part 2: Small Changes for Big Impact
Sponsored by FatWire
Topics to be covered include highlights of a web-based survey on current state of practice, the growing importance of relevancy as a business asset, obstacles to building expertise in relevancy, and recommendations for moving toward better online experiences today.
Speakers are Jeff Ernst, VP Marketing, FatWire, and Pradeep Aradyha, VP/Architect, Digitas, a leader in designing, building, and running large-scale marketing engines for worldwide businesses. I do the honors as moderator.
Register for the webinar.
FatWire hosts the second in a series of webinars on overcoming obstacles to delivering relevant customer experiences online.
February 1, 2007, 1:00 pm ET
Take Your Customer Experience to the Next Level, Part 2: Small Content Changes, Big Impact
Gilbane Group’s Mary Laplante and FatWire’s Jeff Ernst use results from a survey on customer experience management to drive a how-to discussion on testing your own site’s relevancy quotient.
Register for the webinar.
Participate in the survey.
Frank Gilbane participates in AIIM NE’s annual panel of experts discussing ECM success strategies, key technologies, and state of practice.
Tuesday, February 13, 2007, 8:30 am – 1:30 pm
Newton Marriott, 2345 Commonwealth Avenue, Newton/Auburndale, MA
Details and registration
On February 1, FatWire hosts the second in a series of web seminars on enhancing online experiences with relevant content. Gilbane Group will once again participate in a lively discussion of a topic that will be top-of-mind for many organizations in 2007.
At the upcoming webinar, attendees will learn a few simple techniques for quick, easy experiments that illustrate the value of delivering content that’s relevant to specific audiences.
The idea for the February topic came from one of the polling questions that we asked during the first seminar in October:
What is your biggest obstacle to delivering a more relevant online experience?
The number one response (41% of attendees) was
We don’t have enough information about the needs and behaviors of our customers.
The next webinar in the series is designed to address this issue.
The webinar will also report the results of an online survey on the current state of customer experience practice, business goals and metrics, and factors influencing satisfaction with web interactions. Interested parties can take the survey here. FatWire is offering incentives for participating.
Details about registration for the February 1 webinar will be posted soon.
View the October 12 webinar on content relevancy and online channels in the FatWire archive.
Nominations for candidates for several seats on the Board of Directors of Content Management Professionals are now open. CM Pros members in good standing can nominate themselves or other members to run for election as directors of the organization. The nominations period closes on January 19. Voting begins on January 24 and ends on February 5. Directors elected by their peers will serve two-year terms from February 2007 through January 2009.
Please see the elections pages on the CM Pros website for details and instructions on nominating candidates.
