The Gilbane Advisor

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Why I’m Disgusted with Web Teams

What’s it gonna take to get organizations to take their web sites seriously? By seriously I mean staff them, fund them and manage them? I’m beginning to believe that some newsworthy misinformation-on-the-Web or ecommerce-related revenue losing incident may be the only way that some organizations, both public and private, are going pay attention to the fact that their Web products are an embarrassment and, sometimes, a liability. Is that what it’s going to take? Some unlucky organization’s got to get caught with their Web pants down?

In 1997 I was working on the web team at Cisco Systems. The public web site was serviced by several different groups within the organization and we were constantly battling about who was in charge (sound familiar?). I only mention Cisco by name not to name drop but because it’s significant to my gripe: Cisco Systems, the first big retailers of multiprotocol routers. Cisco gets the internet. Cisco gets the Web. Cisco has a vested business interest in having the Web work for every breathing human on the planet. Cisco would be the first to put the internet on Mars (if it’s not already there). But, Cisco still had a lot problems managing their web site. Why? Because managing a large Web presence is less about understanding the potential and possibility of technology and more about sound operations and management practices– creating an environment where people work together to create a quality product.

Web People (this is a special breed of people who were drawn to work with web technologies during the Web’s commercial proliferation in the 1990s) have many strengths. But establishing sound operating practices and sound management principles don’t seem to be among them. Web people are good at flying by the seat of their pants, doing the impossible overnight for demanding and technologically clueless managers, inventing new products out of new technologies, and complaining about being underappreciated and overworked… but not great about clearly explaining to managers why the organization is at risk because of the low quality of the organization’s web products. In short, Web People are not good managers. It hurts me to say this because I feel like I’m dissing my own people. But, I think it’s for the greater good.

The Web needs to be managed and it needs to be managed by people who understand not just the Web but also business operations and product quality. Unfortunately, this is not a description of many of the plain old vanilla business school manager types we see in organizations. A lot of managers we work with have an aversion to any knowledge that might be construed as specialized. I’m generalizing to make a point. There’s a general view that mangers don’t actually need to *do* anything (particularly anything technical)… that would be for subject experts and individual practitioners—not managers. But not doing something is a lot different than not understanding what you’re managing. Not understanding what you’re managing is bad management. And there is a lot of bad management happening around web sites.

So, on the one hand you have technically-literate but managerially-illiterate individual contributors who know that the organization’s web site is a ticking time bomb. And, on the other hand, you have technically-illiterate but managerially-literate managers who just want to be able to report up that everything is “just fine” with the site. The result is that organizations are stymied by big, unwieldy messed up web sites largely created by a lot of smart, technology-focused Web People who don’t know how to manage their way out of the mess they have unwittingly created. Above them is typically an administrative structure that might know how to manage but won’t take the time to understand the basic technical underpinnings of the Web (“I’m not technical”); so, they can’t manage effectively and make bad, mostly tactical, reactionary choices for their web products based upon the complaint of the moment from the Web People who report them.

These things combined lead to what I consider to be a “deer in the headlights” web syndrome: where lots of smart people in an organization are standing around stunned and up to their waists in bad Web product — and they just stand there knowing that something bad is going to happen but unable to move. It’s a sad sight.

What’s to be done, for all my complaining? Here’s a few suggestions:

  1. Admit Defeat – Admit that you are powerless over your web site and that your web site has become unmanageable.
  2. Figure Out Who is In Charge – Establish some basic organizational norms around the management of your web sites. Make sure the definition of these norms includes Web People and Good Managers.
  3. Make an Operational Plan – Figure out how to get out of the mess that you’re in and how you will work in the future to create a higher quality, strategically-focused web product.
  4. Get a Sponsor – I say this a lot but I also mean it a lot. Find the most senior person that you can in your organization and get them to support you with management mandates and human and financial resources.
  5. Be a Copy Cat – Most organizations have at least one thing that they do really well. Figure out what that is and then figure out why it works. Then apply those principles to your Web Operations plan. While the Web may be new, sound management principles are not.

I’ll talk a lot more about sound Web Operations Management practices and how organizations should approach the staffing of Web teams in 2007 at the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco. Hope to see you either at the Web Operations Management pre-conference tutorial or my talk on Web Team 2.0.

Language Weaver and across Systems Sign Strategic Partnership Agreement

Language Weaver, a software company developing enterprise software for the automated translation of human languages, and across Systems GmbH, a spin-off of Nero AG, Germany, have signed a co-marketing and technology integration agreement. The across Language Server is a collaborative business solution for all language resources and translation processes, including a translation memory and terminology system as well as tools for project and workflow management. Using across Language Server, product managers, translators and proofreaders all work together within one system, either in-house or integrated with translation service providers. across will provide an interface for the Language Weaver integration, allowing its customers to opt for Language Weaver automated translation modules. The alliance expands Language Weaver’s presence in the international enterprise and translation services markets and adds statistical translation capabilities to across Systems functionality. across serves as a central platform for all language resources and translation processes, providing open interfaces to complementary products. The integration covers all of Language Weaver’s translation modules. http://www.languageweaver.com, http://www.across.net

Vasont Releases Vasont 11 Single-source CMS

Vasont Systems announced the release of Vasont 11, the latest version of its single-source content management system that enables organizations to store their multilingual content once for maximum reuse and delivery to multiple channels. Vasont 11 has an improved and simplified user interface (UI). The new UI includes a Windows-like design with buttons and icons so users can easily navigate through the system. Detail panes bring relevant information about the selected content’s properties and relationships, such as its content reuse, versions, and metadata, to the user’s fingertips for greater productivity and less “clicking” to find information. Vasont’s Home page is personalized for each user, displaying his/her favorite collections, queries, and workspaces for quick access to content. Also, up-to-date workflow information provides the user a “to-do list” based on his/her active workflow tasks. Vasont 11 also includes many other productivity enhancements beyond the UI. Vasont’s LDAP (Lightweight Directory Access Protocol) integration allows for enterprise security with a single login for each user for organizations using LDAP. The continuation of their architecture migration includes asynchronous server side processing for loads and clones, allowing client machines to be freed up so users can continue to work on their machines while these processes are running. http://www.vasont.com

Fast to Acquire Convera’s RetrievalWare Business

Fast Search & Transfer announced its agreement to purchase selected assets of Convera Corporation. Under the terms of the signed agreement, FAST will acquire the assets of Convera’s RetrievalWare business which supports a wide range of mission-critical programs at government agencies and commercial enterprises. The acquisition, priced at $23 million, will help FAST expand its presence primarily in the government markets. Convera and FAST have also announced that Convera has licensed FAST Ad Momentum, a private-label contextual advertising and monetization platform developed with the support of online publishers. FAST Ad Momentum will be integrated with Convera’s hosted vertical search solution and its Publisher Control Panel. Expected to close in the second quarter, the acquisition is limited to Convera’s RetrievalWare business. Convera will continue to trade under the NASDAQ symbol CNVR. http://www.fastsearch.com, http://www.convera.com/

Adobe Analyst Meetings

Frank, Mary, Tony, and I attended the Adobe analyst meetings in New York this week. To say that Adobe had a lot to share would be an understatement, but this was my first time attending this kind of event, so I have nothing to compare it to. Having said that, I have to say that I was impressed with the progress Adobe has made in several key areas–bringing Macromedia and its products into the fold; building out a much more compelling offering and clearer message with LiveCycle; and further solidifying its commanding presence in the creative tools space.

Along with the major focus on Creative Suite 3 (which was announced on Monday) and LiveCycle, Adobe executives also spent a fair bit of time on Software as a Service, discussing offerings like Adobe Document Center, which I have been playing around with since yesterday morning, and Acrobat Connect, nee Breeze, their web conferencing software. (And without having evaluated Acrobat Connect in detail, I have to say as someone who is on Webinars all the time that Connect is by far the easiest product I have ever used. It also seems to load like any other URL, but perhaps that is because I already have Acrobat professional on my system–not sure.)

A few other things that caught my eye:

  • Kuler is, well, cool. It is a collaborative online application that allows users to discover and upload color themes that can be used with Creative Suite tools. Ryan Stewart has a nice writeup over at ZDNet.
  • Apollo is impressive. We saw a number of demos, including the eBay one that has been written about (see here, and you can see a video of a demo here. The coolest Apollo demo, by far, is the one you can’t currently see, the Buzzword word processor from Virtual Ubiquity; their Website will tell you they have gone back underground after the alpha release. Again, Ryan Stewart has a nice overview and screen shots over at ZDNet. And there seems to be uptake for Apollo in the broad developer community. According to CTO Kevin Lynch, as of Wednesday the 28th, 30,000 people had downloaded the client since it was posted on March 19.
  • There’s a new Beta of Acrobat 3D available for download. I have looked at the manufacturing space a fair bit over the last couple of years, and few areas seem to have more areas of meaningful technical interchange than do manufacturers, their suppliers, and their customers. PDF files are everywhere in these applications, so a more functional 3D Acrobat makes all the sense in the world.
  • Adobe’s efforts to be more active in the standards world with PDF are clearly paying off. While we were there, they announced a win with the mortgage industry’s MISMO standards.

Lots to digest, but I came away impressed.

More on “engage and collaborate” vs. “command and control”

In response to a semi-rhetorical question I posed in my post on Enterprise 2.0 research last week, Niall Cook comments:

You ask: “…what will be lost or gained in the process of force-fitting the “engage and collaborate” functions and culture into the “command and control” of top-down IT directives?”

Simple. The users.

Well, yes, but it is more complex than that. Just as there are good and not-so-good uses of, e.g., wikis (or any technology of course) in enterprises, there are also good and not-so-good uses of policies, procedures, and organizational structures in enterprises. While I agree that there is usually way too much command and control, there are situations where it is just what you want (nuclear plant safety procedures, etc.). We are in the early days yet of figuring out where and how all these 2.0 technologies can be usefully applied, and what corporate culture changes will result.

Part of the debate is continuing with a bit of back and forth between Andrew McAfee and Tom Davenport.

Google and Microsoft debate Enterprise Search in keynote at Gilbane San Francisco

Join us on April 11, 8:30 am at the Palace Hotel in San Francisco for Gilbane San Francisco 2007

We have expanded our opening keynote to include a special debate between Microsoft and Google on Enterprise Search and Information Access, in addition to our discussion on all content technologies with IBM, Oracle & Adobe.

You still have time to join us for this important and lively debate at the Palace Hotel, April 11. The keynote is open to all attendees, even those only planning to visit the technology showcase. The full keynote runs from 8:30am to 10:15am followed by a coffee break and the opening of the technology showcase, and now includes:

Keynote Panel: Content Technology Industry Update PART 2
Google and Microsoft are competing in many areas on many levels. One area which both are ramping-up quickly is enterprise search. In this part of the opening keynote, we bring the senior product managers face to face to answer our questions about their plans and what this means for enterprise information access and content management strategies.

Moderator: Frank Gilbane, Conference Chair, CEO, Gilbane Group, Inc.
Panelists:
Jared Spataro, Group Product Manager, Enterprise Search, Microsoft
Nitin Mangtani, Lead Product Manager, Google Search Appliance, Google

See the complete keynote description.

Gilbane San Francisco 2007
Content management, enterprise search, localization, collaboration, wikis, publishing …
Complete conference information is at http://gilbanesf.com/07/conference_grid.html

http://gilbanesf.com/07/

Adobe Announces Adobe Creative Suite 3

Adobe Systems Incorporated (Nasdaq:ADBE) announced the Adobe Creative Suite 3 product line. Adobe’s new Creative Suite 3 line-up unites Adobe and Macromedia products to provide designers and developers with options for all facets of print, web, mobile, interactive, film, and video production. There are six all-new configurations of Adobe Creative Suite 3. These include, Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Design Standard editions; Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Web Standard editions; and Creative Suite 3 Production Premium; and, Creative Suite Master Collection which combines 12 of Adobe’s new design and development applications in a single box. The majority of Adobe Creative Suite 3 editions will be available as Universal applications for both PowerPC and Intel-based Macs and support Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista. Customers will experience increased levels of performance and speed running Creative Suite 3 natively on Intel-based Macintosh systems and the latest Windows hardware. Customers can choose from six all-new suites or full version upgrades of 13 stand-alone applications, including Photoshop CS3, Photoshop CS3 Extended, InDesign CS3, Illustrator CS3, Flash CS3 Professional, Dreamweaver CS3, Adobe Premiere Pro CS3, and After Effects CS3. Each edition of Adobe Creative Suite 3 integrates different configurations of Adobe’s creative products: Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Premium delivers an essential toolkit for print, web, interactive and mobile design while Adobe Creative Suite 3 Design Standard focuses on professional print design and production. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Premium combines the web design and development tools and Adobe Creative Suite 3 Web Standard serves the professional web developer. Adobe Creative Suite 3 Production Premium is a post-production solution for video professionals. Lastly, Adobe Creative Suite 3 Master Collection combines 12 new creative applications in one box, enabling customers to design across all media – print, web, interactive, mobile, video and film. Creative Suite 3 Design Premium and Standard, and Creative Suite 3 Web Premium and Standard will begin shipping in April 2007. Creative Suite 3 Production Premium and Creative Suite 3 Master Collection for Mac OS X on Intel-based systems and for Microsoft Windows XP and Windows Vista platforms will begin shipping worldwide in the third quarter of 2007. Estimated street price for the Creative Suite 3 Design Premium is US$1799, US$1599 for Creative Suite 3 Web Premium, US$1699 for Creative Suite 3 Production Premium, and US$2499 for Creative Suite 3 Master Collection. There are upgrade paths available for customers. http://www.adobe.com

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