As part of the Gilbane Group’s continuous market research efforts, we are conducting a survey to learn which tools are being used most predominantly for structured authoring. The survey should only take 5 minutes of your time, and will help us to continue provide you with insight on how content technology is being used.
To participate in the study, please follow this link:
In exchange for your completed survey, you will be entered into a drawing for a free conference pass to a Gilbane conference.
We look forward to seeing you at the Gilbane Boston 2008 conference, December 2 – 4! As always, the program includes results from research studies from Gilbane as well as other analysts.
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We were recently introduced to the Executive Certification in Web Globalization Management by our friends Nitish Singh and Ulrich Henes during October’s Localization World conference. We’re thrilled to have both Singh and Henes as participants in the Globalization track at Gilbane Boston 2008, December 2-4.
A new venture within the executive education arm of John Cook School of Business at St. Louis University, it is quite an impressive program! And beyond compliments such as well-designed and timely, the program’s message of “why invest now?” — or more pointedly as the program describes, “why supercharge?” — is a mini-lesson in and of itself.
Consider the megatrends that answer these questions: (full text available here)
- Megatrend-1: Web will be critical to achieving global expansion.
- Megatrend-2: Innovation in the new economy will be driven by blurring of disciplinary boundaries.
- Megatrend-3: Hyperconnectivity will redefine how people and organizations communicate.
- Megatrend-4: Value systems will compete globally.
- Megatrend-5: Smart organizations will harness the power of “Collective Intelligence.”
- Megatrend-6: Economies of China, India and Brazil will be future engines of growth.
Powerful food for thought and incentive to check it out — and register for Spring 2009. No travel required!
I don’t remember when I joined LinkedIn, but I still have items in my inbox from 2004 so it has been awhile. Up until last year sometime I never actually used it except to accept invitations from people I knew (and a handful I didn’t because it was easier than thinking about it). At some point last year I thought to use LinkedIn to find a colleague’s updated contact information, and for the first time thought of LinkedIn as really useful. Recently I’ve reached a new level of appreciation for its use when I saw that the LinkedIn CM Pros group had over 7000 members, and that application support was added, for example Blog Link.
While there is no doubt that social networking technologies will be widely deployed specifically for enterprise use. It is too early to know what the tool landscape will look like. The basic technology is clever but not rocket science, and is available from many sources. It is also too early to know how, or if, internally and externally-focused tools will be integrated into a cohesive user experience. In any case, LinkedIn is not to be ignored.
But I digress. The real reason for this post was to point to some interesting market research by Anderson Analytics (who I had not heard of before), where they use text mining of LinkedIn to come up with four user profiles. This is interesting as market research, for market research, and in its use of text mining. From their announcement:
- “Savvy Networkers” (9 million) are likely to have started using social networking earlier than others, are more tech savvy, and more likely to be active on other SNS sites like Facebook. Savvy Networkers have the most connections (61 on average) and are more likely to use LinkedIn for almost every purpose other than job searching. Savvy Networkers have the second highest personal income ($93,500) and usually have “Consultant” in their job description.
- “Senior Executives” (8.4 million) are somewhat less tech savvy and are using LinkedIn to connect to their existing corporate networks. They have power jobs which they are quite content with, and are likely to have been invited by a colleague, then realized how many key contacts were on the site and started building connections (32 on average). Senior Executives have the highest average personal income ($104,000) and have titles such as Owner, Partner, Executive or Associate.
- “Late Adopters” (6.6 million) are likely to have received numerous requests from friends and co-workers before deciding to join. They are somewhat less tech savvy and are careful in how they use LinkedIn, tending to connect only to close friends and colleagues and have the fewest number of connections (23 on average). Late Adopters have the lowest average personal income ($88,000) and have titles such as Teacher, Medical Professional, Lawyer, or the word “Account” or “Assistant” in their job description.
- “Exploring Options” (6.1 million) may be working, but are open and looking for other job options often on Careerbuilder.com, perhaps in part because they have the lowest personal income ($87,500). They are fairly tech savvy, and use SNS for both corporate and personal interests.
… To find out which type you are most like, you may use the predictive tool available at Anderson Analytics: http://www.andersonanalytics.com/litype
I have to say the tool didn’t get my profile right!
This title by Mike Altendorf, in CIO Magazine, October 31, 2008, mystifies me, Search Will Outshine KM. I did a little poking around to discover who he is and found a similar statement by him back in September, Search is being implemented in enterprises as the new knowledge management and what’s coming down the line is the ability to mine the huge amount of untapped structured and unstructured data in the organisation.
Because I follow enterprise search for the Gilbane Group while maintaining a separate consulting practice in knowledge management, I am struggling with his conflation of the two terms or even the migration of one to the other. The search we talk about is a set of software technologies that retrieve content. I’m tired of the debate about the terminology “enterprise search” vs. “behind the firewall search.” I tell vendors and buyers that my focus is on software products supporting search executed within (or from outside looking in) the enterprise on content that originates from within the enterprise or that is collected by the enterprise. I don’t judge whether the product is for an exclusive domain, content type or audience, or whether it is deployed with the “intent” of finding and retrieving every last scrap of content lying around the enterprise. It never does nor will do the latter but if that is what an enterprise aspires to, theirs is a judgment call I might help them re-evaluate in consultation.
It is pretty clear that Mr. Altendorf is impressed with the potential for Fast and Microsoft so he knows they are firmly entrenched in the software business. But knowledge management (KM) is not now, nor has it ever been, a software product or even a suite of products. I will acknowledge that KM is a messy thing to talk about and the label means many things even to those of us who focus on it as a practice area. It clearly got derailed as a useful “discipline” of focus in the 90s when tool vendors decided to place their products into a new category called “knowledge management.”
It sounded so promising and useful, this idea of KM software that could just suck the brains out of experts and the business know-how of enterprises out of hidden and lurking content. We know better, we who try to refine the art of leveraging knowledge by assisting our clients with blending people and technology to establish workable business practices around knowledge assets. We bring together IT, business managers, librarians, content managers, taxonomists, archivists, and records managers to facilitate good communication among many types of stakeholders. We work to define how to apply behavioral business practices and tools to business problems. Understanding how a software product is helpful in processes, its potential applications, or to encourage usability standards are part of the knowledge manager’s toolkit. It is quite an art, the KM process of bringing tools together with knowledge assets (people and content) into a productive balance.
Search is one of the tools that can facilitate leveraging knowledge assets and help us find the experts who might share some “how-to” knowledge, but it is not, nor will it ever be a substitute for KM. You can check out these links to see how others line up on the definitions of KM: CIO introduction to KM and Wikipedia. Let’s not have the “KM is dead” discussion again!
Component content management (CCM) has been a focal point for events, presentations, and user engagements in which Gilbane has been involved this fall. Can an enterprise maxmize its investment in XML without implementing component content management? What’s the “over and above” effort required to adopt XML and implement CCM at the same time? Where does CCM make sense — for which applications does CCM deliver the most value to your organization?
We’ll be addressing these questions in a new white paper to be published within the next couple of weeks. You can get sneak peak in a webinar that we’re doing today with XyEnterprise and Research In Motion.
Component content management has become a permanent part of the broader enterprise content management landscape in a relatively short period of time. The need for CCM has naturally emerged after almost two decades of work with structured content. From SGML to HTML now XML, companies have realized that their investments in structured content could reach higher levels of benefit and payback if there were specialized systems designed to support content applications where XML shines – for reuse across content products, for repurposing across media types, for enabling high-quality multilingual communications. Hence a new category of content management systems has made its way to market over the past few years.
At the same time, a number of external market forces have combined to create unprecedented demand for agile content – for content that can be used outside a single context – a single document, a single format, a single language. These forces include a need to capture more revenues across geographic regions, shorter lifecycles of manufactured products, demand for more product customization, and a stronger emphasis on delivering sustainable positive customer experience.
As a result, CCM can deliver value not only for canonical applications such as technical documentation, but also across other applications for technical content, such as customer support and product engineering, and across other enterprise functions, such as contracts management and financial reporting.
The new Gilbane white paper looks at why and how CCM is helping companies extend their investments in XML and XML-based standards such as DITA and S1000D. It’s all just tagged content without ways to put it to work to solve real business problems. The companion webinar features a conversation with Kevin Duffy, president and CEO of XyEnterprise, and Karen Moser and Mark Tiegs from Research In Motion. It takes place Monday, November 3, 1:00 pm. Register here. Send us an email if you’d like a personal notification when the white paper is available.
We have always had pretty good international participation at our conferences, and with a month until Gilbane Boston, it is clear this year will be no different. so far we have attendees from 20 countries outside the U.S., which is pretty typical for us. But what is striking is the 15 17 18 international exhibitors that will be at the show, which is about 50% more than usual. Some of it is due to the growth of our coverage of multilingual content applications, but that only accounts for part of the increase. You can see most of the exhibitors at http://gilbaneboston.com/exhibitors_sponsors.html.
BTW, the “early-bird” discount is available through November 4th 7th at:
http://gilbaneboston.com/registration_information.html.
CM Pros (the Content Management Professionals Association) has replaced their listserv with a new forum and even non-members will be able to view much of the content – members can contribute.
They also announced that the early registration discounts for the Summit ends November 4th, as it does for our conference.
They also announced nominations for CM Pros Board of Directors:
CM Pros seeks enthusiastic candidates to run for three open seats on the Board of Directors. To qualify as a candidate, you must be a CM Pros member in good standing. Nominations open soon and voting is scheduled for December. Consider nominating yourself or someone else you believe would make a great candidate. If you are passionate about content management this is your opportunity to contribute to and gain from the continued growth of the profession and the organization.
MadCap Software announced its roadmap for supporting the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) standard. With MadCap, authors will have a complete authoring and publishing suite of tools for creating, managing, translating and publishing DITA content. The products will use MadCap’s XML editor, which provides an graphical user interface for creating featured documentation that hides the XML being generated below. In the first phase of its DITA initiative, MadCap Software will add DITA support to four products: MadCap Flare, MadCap Blaze, MadCap Analyzer for reporting, MadCap Lingo. With MadCap Flare and Blaze, authors will be able to import DITA projects and topics as raw XML content, and using the XML editor, change the style sheets to get the desired look and structure. Authors will then have the option to publish the output as DITA content; print formats, such as Microsoft Word, DOCX and XPS or Adobe FrameMaker, PDF and AIR; and a range of HTML and XHTML online formats MadCap Analyzer will work directly with DITA topics and projects to allow authors to analyze and report on the content. Similarly, MadCap Lingo will import data directly from DITA topics and projects, so that it can be translated. The translated material can be published as DITA content or exported to a Flare or Blaze project. In the second phase, MadCap will enable authors to natively create and edit DITA topics in Flare and Blaze, as well as MadCap X-Edit, MadCap’s software family for creating short documents, contributing content to other documents, and reviewing content. Like Flare and Blaze, X-Edit will also support the ability to import and publish DITA information. In the third phase, MadCap will add DITA support to its forthcoming MadCap Team Server. This will make it possible to manage and share DITA content across teams and projects, as well as schedule DITA publishing. http://www.madcapsoftware.com
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