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Gilbane Conference speaker proposals – update

May 21, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Thank you all for the Gilbane Conference speaker proposals. We received a record number again this year. We are now busy evaluating, organizing, and mapping proposals to the topic areas our audience needs to hear the most about.

If you have submitted a proposal you can expect to hear from us over the next 6-7 weeks. With over 300 submissions we’ll have to make some difficult choices and we will be contacting many of you for further discussion.

Miss the deadline?

For all of you who missed the deadline to submit proposals for this year’s conference, our policy is that we always accept proposals – in fact we accept them all year long if you use our submission form – however, proposals received after the deadline for each conference miss the first review by the program committee and some of the early decisions. If we have two good proposals on the same topic the on-time proposal gets preference. Also, decisions are largely made on a rolling basis once the deadline passes, so if you have missed the deadline it is still a good idea to submit as soon as possible.

If there is a particular topic we need more proposals for we will post about it on this blog, so stay tuned.

The future of tablets

May 6, 2014 / Frank Gilbane

The future of tablets isn’t what analysts thought a year ago, or even last fall.

The market for PCs continues to decline (but at a slowing rate: IDC, Gartner), yet tablet growth is also slowing forcing many analysts to scale back their forecasts. Smartphone growth is slowing as well.

There is a lot of discussion, mainly from an investor point of view about why: saturation, price points, supplier market share, etc., that are relevant for both business and consumer markets. Recently the focus has been on iPads because of Apple’s earnings call but the trend is not limited to Apple.

Why aren’t tablets taking more share away from PCs?

Given the phenomenal growth of tablets the last few years, their computing power, and the large overlap of general use cases shared with PCs (email, browsing) it did seem that tablets were on track replace PCs in large numbers. But the use case overlap was not large enough to support the forecasts. Tablets are tweeners, fighting for space between the superior communications of smartphones and greater productivity of PCs. Being in the middle is not normally a desirable spot for a product, but tablets excel at information and entertainment consumption and this middle is a pretty big and happy place to be.

What do we use PCs for? For years we have been using PCs for some combination of productivity, information / entertainment consumption, and communication. PCs were largely designed and most useful for productivity, whether business or personal, and that’s why we bought them. As PCs evolved and became capable and appealing for information/entertainment consumption and communication we bought more of them. And at some point whatever motivated us to buy a PC, our actual use of them flipped – we now spend a higher percentage of time using our PCs for information / entertainment consumption and communication than we do for productivity. And of course this is the domain of tablets and why they have taken as much of the PC market as they have.

But tablets are simply not as good as PCs for a large number of productivity applications. Until they are this will act as a governor on tablet growth and allow for a shrinking but still large market for PCs.

In The iPad Is a Tease Jean-Louis Gassée points out that:

So far, Apple’s bet has been to keep the iPad simple, rigidly so perhaps, rather than creating a neither-nor product: No longer charmingly simple, but not powerful enough for real productivity tasks. But if the iPad wants to cannibalize more of the PC market, it will have to remove a few walls.

I would say Gassée’s post is from the point of view of a user who would like to replace his PC with an iPad but can’t, that this is a larger cohort than enterprise users or even power users, and that this is the best way to think about the productivity penalty portion of slowing iPad sales.

What would make a significant dent in the iPad’s productivity penalty? Microsoft Office support alone is necessary but not sufficient. A better solution for text entry than accessory keyboards, smooth and rapid app switching, and easy file access would each make a big difference. See below for links to other thoughts.

There is also a maddening and ironic side effect of using iPads for industry applications where they are productivity enhancers. For example, I used to be able to choose between an iPad (mostly research and entertainment) and a laptop (mostly work) for most trips, but a couple of my current projects include working with apps that only run on the iPad. I can’t be productive without having both an iPad and a laptop. Even in the office I often need both within reach. Unfortunately this situation is likely to get worse as more iOS, (and Android!) productivity apps appear.

Watch out for smartphones

Benedict Evans suggested another avenue for inquiry in a tweet:

.@asymco @gassee posit: slow iPad sales are worse news for the PC market: implies phones can take the greater share of PC use cases

— Benedict Evans (@BenedictEvans) April 21, 2014

I don’t know Benedict, but I picture him smiling devilishly as he composed that tweet. As well he should have.

The more types of computing devices there are the more complicated figuring out use case fit is going to be.

The future of tablets

The future of tablets seems promising in the near term since neither PCs nor smartphones can match their information and entertainment consumption experience and tablets will get better at aiding productivity. The better they get the more market share they’ll take. And of course we haven’t seen all the new industry apps where the tablet form factor and interface is a net productivity advantage.

On the other hand, the right kind of user interface – perhaps a high resolution holographic interface not dependent on form factors for projection – would free us from our quaint categories of PCs, tablets, smartphones, smartwatches, glasses, and be truly disruptive. Once computing power and user interfaces become independent of physical size all bets are off.

Further reading on iPad growth:

The iPad’s Curse — Ben Bajarin

iPads and Tablet Growth – Benedict Evans

Don’t Give up on the iPad – Ben Thompson

How Apple Could Continue to Own the Enterprise Tablet Market — Tim Bajarin

The Astonishing, Disappointing iPad – MG Siegler

Enterprise Search and Findability Survey 2014

May 6, 2014 / Lynda Moulton

For the third year, Findwise, an enterprise search system integrator and consulting firm based in Sweden, is doing a global survey of user experiences with content findability tools. Many of us in the field of search technology want to see how enterprises are progressing with their search initiatives. Having a baseline from 2012 is a beginning to see what the continuum looks like but we need more numbers from the user community. That means participation from institutional implementers, funding managers, administrators and end-users with a stake in the outcomes they receive when they use any search technology.

Please do not let this opportunity pass, and sign on to the survey and sign up to get the resulting report later in the year. I especially hope that Findwise gets a good uptick in responses to report at the December Gilbane conference. We need to hear more voices so pass this link along to colleagues in other organizations.

Here is the link: Enterprise Search and Findability Survey 2014

Deadline Reminder – Gilbane Conference call for papers

May 1, 2014 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Don’t miss The Gilbane Conference Call for Papers

Proposal deadline is May 9!

The Gilbane Conference on Content and the Digital Experience is designed for marketers, content managers, technologists, and executives responsible for building strategies and implementations for compelling multichannel digital experiences for customers, employees, and partners. Topics are organized into four main tracks:

Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience – Designed for marketers, marketing technologists, growth hackers, content managers, strategists and technologists focused on customers and digital marketing.

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.

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.

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.

If you have not spoken at our conference before please read the Speaker Guidelines.

Content Accessibility in the Enterprise is Really Search

April 29, 2014 / Lynda Moulton

The Gilbane Conference call for speakers is out and submissions are due in three days, May 2. As one who has been writing about enterprise search topics for over ten years, and engaged in search technology development since 1974, I know it is still a relevant topic.

If you are engaged in any role, in any type of content repository development or use, you know that excellent accessibility is fundamental to making content valuable and useable. You are also probably involved in influencing or trying to influence decisions that will make certain that technology implementations have adequate staffing for content metadata and controlled vocabulary development.

Please take a look at this conference track outline and consider where your involvement can be inserted. Then submit a speaking proposal to share your direct experiences with search or a related topic. Our conference participants love to hear real stories of enterprise initiatives that illustrate: innovative approaches, practical solutions, workarounds to technical and business problems, and just plain scrappy projects that bring value to a group or to the whole enterprise. In other words, how do you get the job done within the constraints you have faced?

Track E: Content, Collaboration and Employee Engagement

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

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

Please consider participating in the conference and especially if content findability and accessibility are high on your list of “must have” content solutions. Submit your proposal here. The need for good findability of content has never been higher and your experiences must be heard by vendors, IT managers and content experts together in this forum.

Audio and Video: Metadata, Meta-tags, Meta-Understanding

March 27, 2014 / Lynda Moulton

2014 opened with a post about findability; that theme continues with some thoughts on what it means to build an enterprise digital asset management (DAM) repository and have it actually deliver findability for audio and video content.

Working on a project for an institution, which has experience using a DAM for image assets, I have become keenly aware of the heavy lift required for a similar system for audio and video files. Heavy lift means human resources with the knowledge to metatag assets manually. This metadata activity is necessary to establish text that describes the “aboutness” of an audio or video file. Search queries in a DAM are done using text and without text, finding an asset will be impossible.

Stephen Arnold raises many critical issues in the article Video Metadata: ripe for innovation in KMWorld, March, 2014. It articulates very well the challenge of indexing a video asset because, if any metadata exists, much of it will be transactional in nature, not descriptive of the content.

In any institution with limited content editorial or curatorial resources to catalog internally produced audio and video files, it will fall to the creator to describe with metadata what the essential elements are. Those elements might include, who is in the video, who is performing in an audio file, where did a performance take place, what are the major themes, what instruments were being featured, and so on. Software applications exist that can extract words from spoken or sung language, or from text images that are visible in a video. But when it comes to the “aboutness” or major themes being demonstrated, only the creator or creator’s surrogate will have the required meta-understanding.

Enterprises with a public face or commercial aspect will employ a metadata creation staff for images or files that go into their public web sites. However, justifying staffing to make audio and video a valuable asset for internal sharing and consumption is a tough sell. Commitment to building up an internal DAM that will be used and useful because its assets are easily found takes faith and almost religious fervor on the part of participating contributors. Technology can only go so far in making those assets findable. Attribute possibilities are voluminous and not easily codified.

On the arts frontier of searchability, one only has to look at the gold standard for controlled vocabulary, the Getty Museum, to see the breadth and depth of categories of their thesauri covering paintings, sculpture, drawing, crafts, woodworking, etc. In non-classical musicology no such universal standard of terminologies exists for public consumption. In the musical arts getting musicians to agree on how to label innovative and evolving genres will be a herculean human effort.

Building a DAM for internal audio and videos files is not to be undertaken without answering these questions:

How will findability be defined?
What is the audience?
Who is going to create the metadata for uploaded assets, particularly “locally created” content?
What are the technology tools that can index and search the assets?
What are the resources for establishing, modifying, and perpetually expanding taxonomies/controlled terminology?
When assets are found, how will they be displayed or played?
What is the on-going process for sustaining the repository, curating and expanding its scope?

This is a new frontier in content management. With so much investment in audio and video engineering, and the entertainment industry, it is time to innovate on the “findability” front, as well. In the meantime, a wise process for adoption is to start small and simple with the metadata development effort. Then hope that technology innovation will emerge to help your process before you retire.

A New Brand of Marketing – a must read for executives

March 11, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

Those of you who appreciated Scott Brinker’s Gilbane Conference keynote What is a Marketing Technologist?, and even more importantly those who missed it, should check out Scott’s short new book, A New Brand of Marketing – The 7 Meta-Trends of Modern Marketing as a Technology-Powered Discipline. The book is free to download and share and doesn’t require registration.

A New Brand of Marketing “… frames the epic collaboration underway between marketers and technologists…” – note the use of ‘collaboration’ rather than ‘battle’. Scott is not only a supreme example of a marketing technologist who knows the details, but may be the most facile communicator (and diplomat, in the most positive sense) of the marketing technology big picture.

A New Brand of Marketing is a must read for CMOs and CIOs, but all senior executives should read it to understand the dramatic changes underway in marketing or to get some pointers on how to communicate the changes to colleagues.

Just a few of my favorite quotes from the book:

Fact: everything digital is powered by software.

Companies don’t just compete for who can provide the most helpful content. They compete for who can provide the most helpful services.

When you’re skydiving, you should know how to pull your parachute.

Multichannel content management

February 18, 2014 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

In Marketing technology landscape explosion and CMS evolution we looked at two of the major themes of December’s Gilbane Conference. The third major theme that we asked speakers to respond to in our spotlight series was the challenge of multichannel delivery:

What is the best overall strategy for delivering content to web, multiple mobile, and upcoming digital channels? What is the biggest challenge? Development and maintenance cost? Content control? Brand management? Technology expertise?

The best overall strategy and the biggest challenge are the same: creating and managing content that can be optimized for each channel and device including those not anticipated. In short, true Multichannel Content Management, or MCM if we can deal with yet another acronym (Yaa!). Of course the “multichannel” is only necessary for emphasis because “web” content management has been dominant for a few years, and “enterprise” content management was hijacked by the document management interests early on. Perhaps soon, “multichannel” will be redundant and just plain old “content management” will suffice.

Multichannel content management is really hard. Organizations have been implementing such “single source publishing” or “create once, publish everywhere” systems for many years, but the difficulty and cost prevented most from taking it on and forced others to give up even knowing it was the right thing to do.

Multichannel content management is still hard, but it was one thing to hesitate when there was only one extra channel – now there are n+1 channels, the cost equation has changed, and you can’t build a sustainable digital experience without solving this problem.

Organizations who successfully built multichannel content management systems in the past were largely those with direct access to technologists, for example technical documentation, product support, engineering, and R&D. Marketing organizations, aside from a few with large global presences and big brand asset management problems, mostly stayed away – technology and cost were fearsome, and organizational structures and agency dependencies also created barriers. Staying away is no longer an option. Reaching today’s consumers requires an n+1 distribution strategy.

In her keynote presentation, Marriott’s Meg Walsh inspired the audience with her discussion of their distribution and scale challenges and the necessity for a strategy based on adaptive content that is device agnostic – in other words, a multichannel content management capability. She shared a wonderful quote from Jonathan Perelman, VP, Agency Strategy @Buzzfeed, “Content is King, but Distribution is Queen, and She wears the pants.”

Note that Meg’s role is very much that of a marketing technologist. She ran the content management practice in Marriott’s sales and marketing group before moving to Marriott’s IT organization to take responsibility for technology platforms to support the sales and marketing activity.

We’ll be covering much more of what one attendee called “Real Multichannel Content Management and publishing” at this year’s conference, and would love to hear from more marketing organizations that are making the Distribution Queen happy.

The Gilbane Advisor