Curated for content, computing, and digital experience professionals

Category: Content management & strategy (Page 100 of 468)

This category includes editorial and news blog posts related to content management and content strategy. For older, long form reports, papers, and research on these topics see our Resources page.

Content management is a broad topic that refers to the management of unstructured or semi-structured content as a standalone system or a component of another system. Varieties of content management systems (CMS) include: web content management (WCM), enterprise content management (ECM), component content management (CCM), and digital asset management (DAM) systems. Content management systems are also now widely marketed as Digital Experience Management (DEM or DXM, DXP), and Customer Experience Management (CEM or CXM) systems or platforms, and may include additional marketing technology functions.

Content strategy topics include information architecture, content and information models, content globalization, and localization.

For some historical perspective see:

https://gilbane.com/gilbane-report-vol-8-num-8-what-is-content-management/

Thanks all for the Gilbane Conference speaker proposals

Thank you all for the Gilbane Conference speaker proposals. We received a record number this year even with a condensed timeframe for submissions. We also have a larger percentage of high quality proposals, fewer blatant sales pitches, and a greater percentage of proposals from women (Hmmm… correlation or causation?). 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 it will be a couple of more weeks before most of you are notified.

Miss the deadline?

For all of you who missed the deadline for speaking 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.

Don’t miss the Gilbane Conference call for papers deadline

Every year we get a last minute rush of speaking proposals for the Gilbane Conference, and then… we get tons of emails asking when the deadline is, and then we get requests for an extra day or two, and then we get requests to consider proposals weeks after the deadline has passed. We have been extra diligent in getting the word out this year because there are always some late proposals that we wish we had seen sooner.

The deadline this year is June 30th July 7th, so don’t delay.

[button link=”https://gilbane.com/speaking-proposal-form/” variation=”red”]Submit Your Proposal[/button]

Here are the relevant links:

 

Gilbane Conference tracks:

Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience
Designed for marketers, marketing technologists, growth hackers, web and mobile 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 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.

Press Release: Gilbane Conference Announces Dates for the 2013 Event in Boston and Partnership with Information Today, Inc.

Gilbane Conference 2013, Banner, Content and the Digital ExperienceThis premier industry event was created to help enterprises build agile, sustainable digital experiences through the use of compelling content

Boston, Mass. (June 18, 2013 – BUSINESS WIRE – The Gilbane Conference 2013 (http://gilbaneconference.com) is set to take place December 3–5 at the Westin Boston Waterfront.

Now in its 12th year, the Gilbane Conference recently announced a partnership with leading publisher and technology conference organizer, Information Today, Inc. “We were thrilled to be approached by Frank Gilbane about partnering on this event,” said Information Today, Inc. president, Tom Hogan, Sr. “As publishers of a number of magazines covering web content management, content marketing, and customer experience management, we’ve admired the Gilbane Conference for years. We’re very excited to be a part of it this December.”

“We believe the synergies between the Gilbane Conference and Information Today, Inc. will assist us in quickly growing the brand by reaching out to an even larger audience of potential attendees,” added Gilbane Conference founder and chair, Frank Gilbane.

This year’s event will focus on educating enterprises on how to maintain competitiveness, grow market share, and support new models and products through the use of compelling content that enhances customer, employee, and partner digital experiences. “Now more than ever, enterprises need to make the connection between the information they’re providing and the needs of the customer in order to create an ideal customer experience,” Gilbane noted.

To speak at this event, submit your abstract by June 30 at http://gilbaneconference.com.

Gilbane Conference’s Technology Showcase will once again provide attendees with the opportunity to meet face-to-face with industry-leading companies on the show floor. Sponsorship opportunities are now available on the site.

###

About Bluebill Advisors and Gilbane.com
Gilbane.com was launched in 1996 by Frank Gilbane and is a Bluebill Advisors Inc. site and the home for Gilbane conferences, seminars, and related activities. Bluebill Advisors, Inc. is a technology analyst firm focused on disruptive information technologies and their potential for strategic application. The firm has advised hundreds of organizations representing a wide range of industries, including government and other nonprofits, technology, manufacturing, publishing, financial services, investment, software, and pharmaceutical, and has helped executives responsible for a variety of functions including corporate strategy, marketing, investment, product development and support, engineering, and publishing. Bluebill complements services from firms that provide technology acquisition or market research services. Bluebill has created the program and chaired the Gilbane Conferences since their inception in 2002. Bluebill also operated as The Gilbane Group until 2010. https://gilbane.com, http://bluebillinc.com.

About Information Today, Inc.
Information Today, Inc., (www.infotoday.com) is a leading publisher and conference organizer in the field of technology and technology applications in today’s enterprise. In addition to producing the KMWorld, CRM Evolution, and Customer Service Experience conferences, Information Today, Inc. publishes KMWorld magazine, EContent magazine, CRM magazine, and their corresponding websites (www.destinationCRM.com, www.econtentmag.com, and www.kmworld.com). The company also publishes Streaming Media magazine and Speech Technology magazine and organizes several other technology conferences.

Contact:

Information Today
Misty Simms, 859-278-2223
msimms@infotoday.com

Gilbane Conference call for speakers and great presentation advice

Gilbane Conference 2013, Banner, Content and the Digital Experience

 

 

 

 

We have our own set of speaker guidelines that are specific to our event that we ask all speakers to read. But last week there were two Harvard Business Review posts that provide some of the best advice you can find anywhere on giving a great presentation or moderating an engaging panel. These are must reads for anyone who cares about presentation or moderating skills, and strongly recommended for Gilbane Conference speakers. Even if you are already a speaking pro, each post is likely to give you at least one new idea. See:

Call for papers

Please review the conference and track topics below and submit your speaking proposal.

Conference description

Businesses and organizations of all kinds are struggling to keep up with the dramatic changes and challenges caused by current and near-term future potential of digital technologies. These challenges are enterprise-wide because everybody from customers to employees to partners expects an integrated and compelling digital experience that just works.

Accomplishing an engaging digital experience requires creating and managing compelling content, but also includes measuring how effective the content is, building interfaces that are consistent yet appropriate for multiple mobile channels, and integrating with e-commerce and enterprise systems. None of this should be news, but putting all the technologies and practices together is still largely uncharted or experimental territory for enterprises. Well-informed decisions on digital experience strategies require proactive dialog with experienced peers and industry experts.

At Gilbane conferences we bring together industry experts, content managers, marketers, marketing technologists, technology and executive strategists to share experiences and debate what the most effective approaches and technologies are, and how to implement them. Our theme this year is Manage – Measure – Mobilize, and we have tracks focused on the customer digital experience, employee digital experience, future technologies for digital experiences, and a track on digital strategies for publishers and information providers where we expand our theme to include Monetize.

 

Main conference tracks

Track C: Content, Marketing, and the Customer Experience

Designed for marketers, marketing technologists, growth hackers, content managers, strategists and technologists focused on customers and digital marketing.

Topics include:

  • Web content management
  • Customer experience management & engagement
  • Digital and postdigital marketing
  • Inbound & content marketing
  • Marketing automation
  • Measuring and analytics: Web, mobile, social, big data
  • Growth hacking strategies
  • Mobile challenges & channel priorities
  • Marketing technologist best practices
  • Responsive design
  • Localization & multilingual content management
  • Content strategies
  • Cross-channel marketing
  • E-commerce integration
  • Search engine strategies

Track E: 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.

Topics include:

  • 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

Track T: 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.

Topics include:

  • Hybrid cloud content management
  • Natural language technologies
  • Haptic and gesture interfaces
  • Big data platforms and tools
  • Big data analytics
  • Visualization
  • The future of the open web and walled gardens
  • New mobile operating systems
  • Beyond desktops
  • Distributed data, distributed apps – mixing up code and data
  • Internet of things and digital experiences
  • Wearable content

Track P: 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.

Topics include:

  • Designing for digital products
  • Business models and monetization
  • Mixing owned, earned, and bought content
  • Ad technologies and strategies
  • App development strategies
  • HTML5 or no?
  • Multi-channel publishing
  • Ebook readers vs tablets
  • Tablets vs smartphones
  • Mobile publishing workflows
  • Matching content to platforms and devices

Submit your speaking proposal. [red]The deadline is June 30th 2013![/red]

Federal government to spend $1.4 billion on web content management and infrastructure

Before we get to the spending mentioned in the title, there is some important background to cover. In an email to the Presidential Innovation Fellows program mailing list yesterday and a blog post with Small Business Administration Administrator Karen G. Mills last week, White House CTO Todd Park reported on the progress of a pilot program, RFP-EZ, to make federal government RFPs accessible to small businesses.

In addition to making it easier for small businesses to win federal contracts, a key goal is to save the government money since small business bids are typically lower than larger organizations’. Another significant benefit is that it makes it easier for agencies to purchase from innovative small businesses (since more are bidding). In the technology space especially, small businesses provide the lion’s share of innovation.

So how is this program doing so far? From Park and Mills post:

Applying agile development principles, the Fellows team designed RFP-EZ over a six-month period, publishing the platform’s code openly on GitHub. The team then launched the pilot by posting five relatively simple website development and database contract offerings, four of which were also announced via the standard government portal, FedBizOps. On a per-project basis, bids received through RFP-EZ were consistently lower than those received through FedBizOps—19% to 41% lower, and over 30% lower on average. Bids made through RFP-EZ also showed less overall variation. In addition, during the pilot period, RFP-EZ attracted more than 270 businesses that until now had never approached the world of Federal contracting.

Graph of RFP-EZ pilot progress

Ok, now for the spending. First of all, note that the OMB says the total 2014 Federal IT budget is $77 billion. If you haven’t seen it yet the OMB IT Dashboard yet it is worth a look, and you can download a spreadsheet that has details on spending by agency and project. Park and Mills also said in their post that:

According to Office of Management and Budget’s IT Dashboard, the Federal Government will spend more than $1.4 billion on Web Infrastructure and Web Content Management Systems in FY 2014. Based on 2011 and 2012 results, we can expect about half of these projects to be under the $150,000 “Simplified Acquisition Threshold” that would make them eligible for contracting through RFP-EZ.

This may not seem like a lot at first glance, but at $150,000 each it would mean 4,666 web content management systems or web infrastructure projects it would be fairly easy for small vendors and consultants to bid on in 2014.

Presumably the numbers came from the OMB IT spending spreadsheet, but since software category definitions are fluid, to say the least, doing your own analysis would be a good idea. While our community knows that, for example, “web content management” can include or be a component of a collection of digital marketing tools for engagement or experience management, marketing automation, etc. we can’t assume all federal budgeteers do – or did when the budgets were developed.

All of this is excellent news for a substantial number of the vendors, integrators, and consultants who participate in the Gilbane Conference. It is also great news for federal government conference attendees who can more realistically do business with smaller companies who have the latest technology.

To participate in the RFP-EZ program sign-up using the very simple web form.

The Marketing Technology Landscape

It’s no secret that marketing continues to increase spending on technology, which raises the question of which technologies they are spending on. The answer is “lots” – the marketing technology landscape has become much larger, more varied, and more complex. One sign is the evolution of some web content management systems to solutions for web experience management, web engagement management, digital experience management, etc., which involves integrating with marketing automation, predictive analytics, social and many other marketing tools and back end systems.

Not all this is new. In 1999 more advanced businesses were already integrating e-commerce, web analytics, personalization, and marketing automation, but it was much harder then and there were far fewer options. I hesitate to say it is easier now, but it is in many ways – the technology is much better and we have much more experience with it. What is certainly not easier is navigating the technology landscape which is extremely dynamic, and contains categories with too many vendors. Both CMOs and CIOs need a marketing technologist function in some form, and would certainly benefit from input from analysts, and a <plug> vendor and analyst neutral conference </plug>. The illustration below may be scary, but should be very useful. Thanks to Scott Brinker for first pointing this landscape out. Scott also has his own similar graphic.

Marketing Technology Landscape

 

 

The Gilbane Conference is growing!

Gilbane Conference 2013, Banner, Content and the Digital Experience

 

 

 

 

Some of you may have heard there is some exciting news with regard to The Gilbane Conference.

We have entered into a partnership with Information Today, Inc. to organize and manage future conferences in this 12-year-old series. As you may know, Information Today is the publisher of KMWorld and EContent magazines along with a host of other publications and websites. Information Today also organizes the KMWorld and Enterprise Search Summit conferences, so they are on familiar ground with respect to web content management, content marketing, social media, and many other related technologies.

Information Today also publishes CRM magazine and produces the CRM Evolution conference and exhibition, which will enable us to reach out to marketers and other customer-focused professionals.

We believe the synergies between The Gilbane Conference and Information Today will assist us in producing even better and more innovative conferences in the years to come.

The resources of a larger enterprise and the personal care and attention you’ve come to know at The Gilbane Conference are what you can expect this fall.

The next Gilbane Conference will be at the Westin Boston Waterfront, December 3 – 5, 2013. We will be announcing the Boston venue and dates in the next week or two and See the new Gilbane Conference website for more information where we will be posting additional details very soon. If you are not already on our mailing list for advance information you can signup using the quick form below.

Our theme this year is Content and the Digital Experience: Manage, Measure, Mobilize, Monetize, and we’ll be continuing our vendor and analyst neutral coverage of content, marketing, and digital experience technologies for enhancing both customer and employee engagement and collaboration.

We look forward to seeing you in Boston this fall.

We would love to hear more about your interests. You can tell us more by using our more complete form. Or send us a message.

E-discovering Language to Launch Your Taxonomy

New enterprise initiatives, whether for implementing search solutions or beginning a new product development program, demand communication among team leaders and participants. Language matters; defining terminology for common parlance is essential to smooth progress toward initiative objectives.

Glossaries, dictionaries, taxonomies, thesauri and ontologies are all mechanisms we use routinely in education and work to clarify terms we use to engage and communicate understanding of any specialized domain. Electronic social communication added to the traditional mix of shared information (e.g. documents, databases, spreadsheets, drawings, standardized forms) makes business transactional language more complex. Couple this with the use of personal devices for capturing and storing our work content, notes, writings, correspondence, design and diagram materials and we all become content categorizing managers. Some of us are better than others at organizing and curating our piles of information resources.

As recent brain studies reveal, humans, and probably any animal with a brain, have established cognitive areas in our brains with pathways and relationships among categories of grouped concepts. This reinforces our propensity for expending thought and effort to order all aspects of our lives. That we all organize differently across a huge spectrum of concepts and objects makes it wondrous that we can live and work collaboratively at all. Why after 30+ years of marriage do I arrange my kitchen gadget drawer according to use or purpose of devices while my husband attempts to store the same items according to size and shape? Why do icons and graphics placed in strange locations in software applications and web pages rarely impart meaning and use to me, while others “get it” and adapt immediately?

The previous paragraph may seem to be a pointless digression from the subject of the post but there are two points to be made here. First, we all organize both objects and information to facilitate how we navigate life, including work. Without organization that is somehow rationalized, and established accordingly to our own rules for functioning, our lives descend into dysfunctional chaos. People who don’t organize well or struggle with organizing consistently struggle in school, work and life skills. Second, diversity of practice in organizing is a challenge for working and living with others when we need to share the same spaces and work objectives. This brings me to the very challenging task of organizing information for a website, a discrete business project, or an entire enterprise, especially when a diverse group of participants are engaged as a team.

So, let me make a few bold suggestions about where to begin with your team:

  • Establish categories of inquiry based on the existing culture of your organization and vertical industry. Avoid being inventive, clever or idiosyncratic. Find categories labels that everyone understands similarly.
  • Agree on common behaviors and practices for finding by sharing openly the ways in which members of the team need to find, the kinds of information and answers that need discovering, and the conditions under which information is required. These are the basis for findability use cases. Again, begin with the usual situations and save the unusual for later insertion.
  • Start with what you have in the form of finding aids: places, language and content that are already being actively used; examine how they are organized. Solicit and gather experiences about what is good, helpful and “must have” and note interface elements and navigation aids that are not used. Harvest any existing glossaries, dictionaries, taxonomies, organization charts or other definition entities that can provide feeds to terminology lists.
  • Use every discoverable repository as a resource (including email stores, social sites, and presentations) for establishing terminology and eventually writing rules for applying terms. Research repositories that are heavily used by groups of specialists and treat them as crops of terminology to be harvested for language that is meaningful to experts. Seek or develop linguistic parsing and term extraction tools and processes to discover words and phrases that are in common use. Use histograms to determine frequency of use, then alphabetize to find similar terms that are conceptually related, and semantic net tools to group discovered terms according to conceptual relationships. Segregate initialisms, acronyms, and abbreviations for analysis and insertion into final lists, as valid terms or synonyms to valid terms.
  • Talk to the gurus and experts that are the “go-to people” for learning about a topic and use their experience to help determine the most important broad categories for information that needs to be found. Those will become your “top term” groups and facets. Think of top terms as topical in nature (e.g. radar, transportation, weapons systems) and facets as other categories by which people might want to search (e.g. company names, content types, conference titles).
  • Simplify your top terms and facets into the broadest categories for launching your initiative. You can always add more but you won’t really know where to be the most granular until you begin using tags applied to content. Then you will see what topics have the most content and require narrower topical terms to avoid having too much content piling up under a very broad category.
  • Select and authorize one individual to be the ultimate decider. Ambiguity of categorizing principles, purpose and needs is always a given due to variations in cognitive functioning. However, the earlier steps outlined here will have been based on broad agreement. When it comes to the more nuanced areas of terminology and understanding, a subject savvy and organizationally mature person with good communication skills and solid professional respect within the enterprise will be a good authority for making final decisions about language. A trusted professional will also know when a change is needed and will seek guidance when necessary.

Revisit the successes and failures of the applied term store routinely: survey users, review search logs, observe information retrieval bottlenecks and troll for new electronic discourse and content as a source of new terminology. A recent post by taxonomy expert Heather Hedden gives more technical guidance about evaluating and sustaining your taxonomy maintenance.

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