In tough economic times it is tempting to over-emphasize cost savings. A better approach is to consider cost savings if necessary, but to develop a strategy to grow your revenues first if you can. This may mean some re-deploying rather than cutting. One important path to growth is to ensure your products are available and appealing to a broader, international market. Below is a sample of what we are covering in our track on managing global content next week at Gilbane Boston to help you learn how, or how to do it better.

GCM-1: Optimizing the Global Content Value Chain: Focus on Product Content
Wednesday, December 3rd, 2:00pm, Westin Copley, Boston

Product content includes technical documentation as well as the content that lives with a product or service in many formats and contexts, including pre-sales, post-sales, aftermarket, training, and service. The global economy adds languages as yet another output to the traditional multichannel formula, increasing content volume due to the nuances of dialect and culture. This session discusses how to design GCVCs that integrate content and localization/translation technologies to support single-sourcing, simultaneous product shipment programs, and alignment with product lifecycle management or product data management systems. Speakers share current best practices and provide insight into what’s coming in the next wave of people, processes and technologies for multilingual product content.

Moderator: Leonor Ciarlone, Lead Analyst, Gilbane Group
Speakers:

• Fred Hollowood, Director Language R&D, Shared Engineering Services, Symantec Corporation
• Natasja H.M. Paulsen, Partner, Ordina Consulting
• Sophie Hurst, Senior Product Marketing Manager, SDL

We have always had some kind of an executive panel where senior managers from content managementvendors are questioned on their views of what is happening technology and trend-wise. This is not so much a “face-off” as it is an interactive discussion aimed at providing the audience a chance to hear the different world views of competing suppliers. Understanding the visions behind the marketing, product development, and partnership activity of vendors is at least as important as comparing a feature list and watching demos. Of course, you’ll want to see the demos of these and all the other vendors at Gilbane Boston as well.

WCM-3: Web Content “Management State of the Industry”
Thursday December 4th 11:00am, Westin Copley, Boston
This distinguished panel of technology and market experts will discuss their perspectives on the three or four most important concerns of business managers and IT professionals in planning for and executing WCM initiatives over the next year. The panelists are chosen based on their depth of knowledge within WCM and their ability to identify, analyze, and articulate what the current key concerns are for WCM customers. This interactive discussion will help attendees to identify and address potential liabilities in their own WCM strategies as well as to understand what leading practitioners and technology suppliers envision in their own project/product roadmaps.

Moderator: Tony White, Lead Analyst, WCM, Gilbane Group
Speakers:
* Erik Aeyelts Averink, President, SDL Tridion
* John Girard, CEO, Clickability
* Ben Kiker, SVP and Chief Marketing Officer, Interwoven
* John Newton, CTO & Chairman, Alfresco
* Dmitri Tcherevik, CTO, Fatwire