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Call for Papers for Gilbane Boston 2012 now open

March 7, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 1 Comment

Proposal deadline is May 14th!

This year’s conference takes place November 27-29, 2012, at The InterContinental Boston Waterfront in Fort Point Channel & Boston’s Innovation and Seaport District.

The Gilbane conference is all about helping organizations apply content, web, and mobile technologies to increase communication and engagement with their ecosystem of customers, employees, suppliers, and partners in the most effective and efficient way possible.

This means understanding what technologies can and can’t do, what practices in applying them succeed or fail, how to effectively analyze data and apply results, and how to plan for rapid changes in market and technology evolution. Companies need to be agile and able to incorporate multiple mobile platforms with different form factors and capabilities, and also need to combine engaging content and interfaces with small devices and big data. Our program will be designed to help.

To submit a proposal for a presentation or panel please see the topics below listed for the four tracks, then read the guidelines and submit your proposal using our proposal submission form. Please feel free to suggest additional topics on the proposal form.

You can also learn more by visiting the conference website at http://gilbaneboston.comwhere you can see information from our 2011 conference.

Customers & Engagement track

Designed for anyone responsible for content, marketing, business, or technical aspects of public facing websites, including, sales & marketing, digital marketing, brand managers, business units with P&L, Web strategists, IT, Web managers, business managers, digital media, e-commerce managers, content managers & strategists. Topics:

Web content management
Digital marketing
Web and mobile analytics
User experience
Responsive design
Localization
Social marketing
Content strategies
Cross-channel marketing
e-commerce integration
Search engine strategies

Colleagues & Collaboration track

Designed for anyone responsible for internal websites, portals, collaboration & knowledge sharing, including, knowledge managers, product managers, project managers, IT, departments (R&D, support, mfg, financial, legal, authoring, etc.). Topics:

Collaboration tools
Social software platforms
Adoption strategies
Social media metrics
Knowledge sharing
Federated search

Content Technologies track

Designed for those who are either responsible for technology decisions, or those who need to keep up-to-speed with the latest technology for enterprise content applications of all types, including, central IT, departmental IT, strategists, and managers who need to know what’s possible and what’s coming. Topics:

Multilingual technologies
Big data
Big analytics
HTML5
Search
Semantic technologies
Visualization
Touch interfaces
Content migration
Digital asset management
Choosing the right technologies
Choosing a system integrator

Web & Mobile Publishing track

Designed for those responsible for content creation, management, and multi-channel/multi-lingual publishing, product managers, IT and others that need to learn about new mobile and multi-channel demands, including corporate or commercial publishers, content managers, developement managers. Topics:

Mobile development frameworks
App development strategies
HTML5
Multi-channel publishing
Ebook readers vs tablets
Tablets vs smartphones
Mobile publishing workflows
Matching content to platform

Speaker guidelines • Speaker submission form • Questions? speaking@gilbane.com

Researching Enterprise Search System Integrators

March 1, 2012 / Lynda Moulton / 0 Comments

When looking at job postings on the Enterprise Search Engine Professionals Group on LinkedIn shows positions calling for developers with specific programming skills or knowledge of specific products. It may be a faulty assumption, but it appears that enterprises on the path to a new or upgraded search application implementation are paying less attention to the other professional skills needed on a successful team.

Knowing how to implement, tune, administer and enhance search outcomes has more to do with understanding business needs and content management than writing code. You need the expertise of content management professionals who understand the importance of (and how to leverage) metadata. You definitely need people who know how to build and maintain the controlled vocabularies that make metadata valid and valuable within the context of your organization. These professionals are not traditionally found in IT groups; they are more likely to come from a business function, or information science background, preferably with a deep knowledge of the enterprise and how it works.

Integrating content management systems (CMS), digital asset management (DAM), taxonomy, thesaurus or ontology management with enterprise search applications means understanding much more than coding. However, having a tight relationship with IT is imperative for good integration of components. In small and medium organizations it is rare to find experts across all areas and that is where a new breed of system integrators are bringing the most value as noted in the post in December, 2011.

As promised, here are some tips for finding and qualifying the right integrator for your organization. The first step is to identify service providers to consider. Use three principle discovery techniques:

Simple searches for “system integration providers”, “search integration”, “software” or “software integration” are all explicit phrases to use in web search engines
Vendor listings and directories such as those published by Information Today, and AIIM or “buyers’ guides” associated with specific product groups.
Conference exhibitors and conference attendees (consultants and vendors) who may attend or present but not exhibit at conference where the focus is a content management topic.

Next, qualify those you have discovered:

Scour their web sites by digging into links to Case Studies, Customers, Partners, and Press Releases. Each of these may lead to information about who the vendor has done business with and for, and the nature of their engagements.
Test-drive any public sites they have implemented and take a look at how their own web site has been implemented – How easy is it to find information on their own site?
Talk to people at professional meetings or in academic institutions who might have knowledge of system integrators and learn about their relationships, success and failures they have experienced. Talk to those vendors you trust and value that are suppliers of non-software products and find out companies they may have observed or encountered at their other clients. They can be a great source of “intelligence.”
Talk to people at their named client sites (non-referred if possible)

Five keys to purposeful and successful selection are carefully evaluating:

Fit for your industry and organization: cost, vertical experience, gap completion (providing competencies you lack).
Fit with your permanent staff: common communication behaviors, collaborative aptitude, willingness to teach, and share.
People who have done something as close to what you need for another organization, and will let you talk to their client before the project begins.
A service provider that understands the project, staging, and need for a clear exit goal (being able to clearly define what success will look like at the end of the project before they leave the scene).
What we commented on in the first paragraph on jobs for search engine professionals; scout potential service providers’ professional skill set to be sure they have people on their staffs who know more than just writing code.

Armed with these few guidelines as a checklist, you are ready to begin your search for a system integrator and solutions provider that suits your organization.

Mark your calendar for Gilbane Boston 2012!

February 11, 2012 / Clea Durrell / 2 Comments

It is time to mark your calendar for Gilbane Boston 2012. We will be back on Boston’s waterfront adjacent to the new “innovation district“, at the Intercontinental Boston Waterfront. The dates are November 27-29, 2012.

Recent reports by Frank on mobile development and big data

February 7, 2012 / Frank Gilbane / 0 Comments

While I was still at Outsell Inc, I started writing some reports on information technologies for our publishing and information provider CEO clients. I will most likely be writing a few more similar reports for Outsell this year. While special attention is paid to the interests of publishing and information industry CEOs, the topics are all (so far) about technologies that are important to all industries. These reports are available from Outsell:

Five Technologies to Watch 2012-2013, January 25, 2012

Mobile Development Strategies: What Information Industry Executives Need to Know, November 29, 2011

Big-Data: Big Deal or Just Big Buzz?, August 2, 2011.

Helping Enterprise Searchers Succeed

January 31, 2012 / Lynda Moulton / 0 Comments

I begin 2012 with a new perspective on enterprise search, one gained as purely an observer. The venues have all been medical establishments with multiple levels of complexity and healthcare workers. As the primary caregiver for a patient, and with some medical training, I take my role as observer and patient advocate quite seriously.

As soon as the patient was on the way to the emergency room, all of his medical records, insurance cards, medications, and contact information were assembled and brought to the hospital. With numerous critical care professionals intervening, and the patient being taken for various tests over several hours, I verbally imparted information I thought was important that might not yet show up in the system. Toward the end of the emergency phase, after being told several times that they had all his records available and “in the system” I relaxed to focus on the “next steps.”

Numerous specialists were involved in the medical conditions and the first three days passed without “a crisis” but little did we know that medication choices were beginning to cause some major problems. Apparently, some parts of the patient’s medical history were not fully considered, and once the medications caused adverse outcomes, all kinds of other problem arose.

Fortunately, I was there to verbally share knowledge that was in the patient’s medical records and get choices of medicine reversed. On several occasions, doctor’s care orders had been “overlooked” and complicating interventions were executed because the healthcare person “in the moment” took an action without “seeing” those orders. I personally watched the extensive recording of doctor’s decisions and confirmed with them changes that were being made to the patient’s care, but repeatedly had to ask why a change was not being implemented.

Observing for six to eight hours on several care floors, I can only say that time is the enemy for medical staff. When questions were raised, the answers were in the system; in other words, “search worked.” What was not available to staff was time to study the whole patient record and understand overlapping and sometimes conflicting orders about care.

It is shortsighted for any institution to believe that it can squeeze professionals to “think-fast,” “on-their-feet” for hours on end with no time to consider the massive amounts of searchable results they are able to assemble. Human beings should not be expected to sacrifice their professional integrity and work standards because their employers have put them in a constant time bind.

My family member had me, but what of patients with no one, or no one versed in medical conditions and processes to intervene. This extends to every line of business where risk is involved from the practice of law to engineering, manufacturing, design, research and development, testing, technical documentation writing, etc.

I don’t minimize how hard it is for businesses and professional services to stay profitable and competitive when they are being pressed to leverage technology for information resource management. However, one measure that every enterprise must embrace is educating its workforce about the use of information technologies it employs. It is not enough to simply make a search engine interface accessible on the workstation. Every worker must be shown how to search for accurate information, authoritative information, and complete information, and be made aware of the ways to ingest and evaluate what they are finding. Finally, they must be given an alternative to getting a more complete chronicle when the results don’t match the need, even if that alternative is to seek another human being instead of a technology.

Search experts are a professionally trained class of workers who can fill the role of trainers, particularly if they have subject matter expertise in the field where search is being deployed. The risks to any enterprise of short-changing workers by not allowing them to fully exploit and understand results produced from search are long-term, but serious.

It is important to leave this entry with recognition that, due to wonderful healthcare professionals and support staff, the outcomes for the patient have been positive. People listened when I had information to share and respected my role in the process. That in no way absolves institutions and enterprises from giving their employees the autonomy and time to pay attention to all the information flooding their sphere of operation. In every field of endeavor, human beings need the time and environment to mindfully absorb, analyze and evaluate all the content available. Technology can aid but cannot carry out thoughtful professional practice.

Making Search Play Well with Content Solutions

December 14, 2011 / Lynda Moulton / 0 Comments

In keynote sessions at the recent Gilbane Boston Conference, three speakers in a row made points about content management solutions that are also significant to selection and implementation of enterprise search. Here is a list of paraphrased comments.

From Forrester analyst, Stephen Powers were these observations: 1. The promise has been there for years for an E (enterprise)CM suite to do everything but the reality is that no one vendor, even when they have all the pieces, integrates them well. 2. Be cautious about promises from vendors who claim to do it all; instead, focus on those who know how to do integration.
Tony Byrne of the Real Story Group observed about Google in the enterprise that they frequently fail because Google doesn’t really understand “how work gets done in the enterprise.”
Finally, Scott Liewehr of the Gilbane Group stated that a services firm selection is more important than the content management system application selection.

Taken together these statements may not substantiate the current state of the content management industry but they do point to a trend. Evidence is accruing that products and product suppliers must focus on playing nice together and work for the enterprise. Most tend not to do well, out-of-the-box, without the help of expertise and experts.

Nominally, vendors themselves have a service division to perform this function but the burden falls on the buyer to make the “big” decisions about integration and deployment. The real solution is waiting in the wings and I am increasingly talking to these experts, system integrators. They come in all sizes and configurations; perhaps they don’t even self-identify as system integrators, but what they offer is deep expertise in a number of content software applications, including search.

Generally, the larger the operation the more substantial the number and types of products with which they have experience. They may have expertise in a number of web content management products or e-commerce offerings. A couple of large operations that I have encountered in Gilbane engagements are Avalon Consulting, and Search Technologies, which have divisions each specializing in a facet of content management including search. You need to explore whether their strengths and expertise are a good fit with your needs.

The smaller companies specialize, such as working with several search engines plus tools to improve metadata and vocabulary management so content is more findable. Specialists in enterprise search must still have an understanding of content management systems because those are usually the source of metadata that feed high quality search. I’ve recently spoken with several small service providers whose commentaries and case work illustrate a solid and practical approach. Those you might want to look into are: Applied Relevance, Contegra Systems, Findwise, KAPS Group, Lucid Imagination, New Idea Engineering, and TNR Global.

Each of these companies has a specialty and niche, and I am not making explicit recommendations. The simple reason is that what you need and what you are already working on is unique to your enterprise. Without knowledge of your resources, special needs and goals my recommendations would be guesses. What I am sharing is the idea that you need experts who can give value when they are the right experts for your requirements.

The guidance here is to choose a search services firm that will move you efficiently and effectively along the path of systems integration. Expertise is available and you do not need to struggle alone knitting together best-of-breed components. Do your research and understand the differentiators among the companies. High touch, high integrity and commitment for the long haul should be high on your list of requirements – and of course, look for experience and expertise in deploying the technology solutions you want to use and integrate.

Next month I’ll share some tips on evaluating possible service organizations starting with techniques for doing research on the Web.

Up-to-Speed Reading for Gilbane Boston: Recent Publications

November 21, 2011 / Mary Laplante / 0 Comments

Looking to make the most of your experience at Gilbane Boston 2011? Want to be current on the latest content trends and technologies? Download our recent papers, some of which you may have missed.

Smart Approaches to Managing Mobile Learning Content. Just published! Why a content strategy rather than a project mentality is the only way to take full advantage of the business performance benefits and productivity gains that are possible with mobile learning. Listen to the webinar.

Magazines at a Digital Crossroads: eCommerce and New Models for the Future. Makes the case for a growing need for contemporary eCommerce platforms to support publishers as they experiment, win, iterate, and drive their businesses into the future. Listen to the webinar.

Content, Audience, and Targeted Messaging: The Virtuous Circle of Customer Engagement. Presenting marketing messages and advertisements that are relevant at the right moment to create the tipping point from engagement to conversion.

A Fresh Look at Web Content Management: Mastering the Core Capabilities of Contemporary Platforms. The core aspects of today’s WCM systems for anyone evaluating, or reevaluating, the WCM needs of their organizations. Listen to the webinar.

Addressing Digital Product Development Risks: Best Practics for Creating Strategic Outsourcing Relationships. Digital products fail for all kinds of reasons. Poor development does not have to be one of them.

Understanding Best Practices for Profiling, Personalizing, and Targeting Next-Generation Engagment. Develop a new appreciation for the power and value of contemporary personalization, and gain an understanding of how to realize its benefits within your organization.

Global Digital Engagement: Leveragng Opportunities to Increase Impact and Reduce Complexity. How to remove the mystery and anxiety of delivering high-value interactions that lead to engagement by improving the dynamics of each.

Collaboration to Business Transformation: Expanding the role of Enterprise Social Networks

November 14, 2011 / Clea Durrell / 0 Comments

Of course we think all of our conference sessions are not to be missed, but for those specially interested in enterprise social networks, and process transformation we’ve paired up AIIM President John Mancini, to share some of the research his organization is completing on this topic, and Mike Gotta, Senior Technical Manager for Social Software at Cisco, and ex Gartner VP & Research Director. Be sure to check this one out the latest trends in this area

C4. From Collaboration to Business Transformation: Expanding the role of Enterprise Social Networks

Gilbane Boston, The Boston Westin Waterfront
Thursday, December 1, 8:30 – 9:30

Effective collaboration initiatives often focus on process, information and technology. However the advent of enterprise social networking has expanded the scope of what’s possible, and it goes far beyond mere collaboration. This session will examine architectural building blocks that enable social networking, common practices to help overcome adoption hurdles, and governance and change management approaches. It will also contain a presentation of the work of an AIIM task force that has been building use cases and best practices relative to social transformation for 3 key value chains in any organization:

sales and marketing;
product design and innovation; and
knowledge worker creativity and productivity.

This session will demonstrate why the time has come to move discussions of social business from the abstract benefits of “collaboration” to a richer focus on process and value chain transformation.

Moderator: Marc Strohlein, Principal, Agile Business Logic

John Mancini, President, AIIM

Social in the Flow – Moving Social from “Nice to Have” to Process Transformation
Mike Gotta, Senior Technology Manager, Cisco

Enterprise Social Networking: Identity, Graphs & Social Objects

The Gilbane Advisor