The Enterprise 2.0 conference is winding down in Boston today so it’s a good time to reflect on the “two dot oh” phenomena. As industry watchers and marketers, we’ve come a long way since Tim O’Reilly coined the concept two years ago. With hordes of people crowded into the new Westin Hotel in South Boston and the exhibit hall packed like Grand Central at rush hour (I’ve yet to hear an attendance count) I felt a rush of excitement in the air. There’s a certain sense of headiness when talking with entrepreneurs about their latest products and solutions. I was floored by the breadth of creativity.
But what struck me most is the vision thing – the gulf between the claims about Enterprise 2.0 and the realities of how work gets done. Enterprise 2.0 seems to be about blogging for a living, putting up a wiki, realizing that email is broken, and communicating with customers. Oh yes, then there’s unleashing the power of teams, user generated content, and building communities. The list goes on . . .
Yet two words are missing – management and process. In our always on world, we are inundated with information, and constrained by the limits of the twenty-four hour day. We need to take a hard look at how sharing information online creates new sources of value and better modes of organization. David Weinberger said it best in his opening keynote – everything is now metadata. We need to figure out how to harness this incredible openness at our fingertips. Developing a compelling information architecture is going to be even harder than an effective technical architecture.
What comes next? I’m now planning the collaboration and social computing track for our fall conference. (Stay tuned, we’ll be announcing the program later this summer.) I think we need to take a look at the hard issues of designing collaborative business processes. What do you think? I’m open to suggestions. Let me know, beginning by responding to this post. I look forward to our continuing conversation.
Category: Content management & strategy (Page 179 of 484)
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/
I was only able to make it into the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston yesterday. You can still get a demo pass for today. But I was thrilled to hear analyst, researchers, case study presenters, and yes, even vendors, drill down into one of my favorite phrases: “people, processes, and technology make it possible” and hope the mantra continues today.
Point being, obviously, that 2.0 not just about technology ;-). Its about culture, filling generation gaps, the evolution of *people* networking, and redefining community from the core of where community starts. Humans.
What I didn’t hear, however, is the “L” word — specifically language, and that bothered me. We just can’t be naive enough to think that community, collaboration, and networking on a global scale is solely English-driven. We need to get the “L” word into the conversation.
My globalization practice colleague Kaija Poysti weighs in here.
I was only able to make it into the Enterprise 2.0 conference in Boston yesterday. You can still get a demo pass for today. But I was thrilled to hear analyst, researchers, case study presenters, and yes, even vendors, drill down into one of my favorite phrases: “people, processes, and technology make it possible” and hope the mantra continues today.
Point being, obviously, that 2.0 not just about technology ;-). Its about culture, filling generation gaps, the evolution of *people* networking, and redefining community from the core of where community starts. Humans.
What I didn’t hear, however, is the “L” word — specifically language, and that bothered me. We just can’t be naive enough to think that community, collaboration, and networking on a global scale is solely English-driven. We need to get the “L” word into the conversation.
My globalization practice colleague Kaija Poysti weighs in here.
Mary and Leonor have started a new weekly poll over on the Globalization and Localization blog. The first poll is on Globalization and Brand Management. Check it out!
That’s Content, Globalization, or Brand manager …
As convergence of these three business practices starts to accelerate, it’s increasingly likely that the roles are Content and/or Globalization and/or Brand management. Convergence is a key theme on our globalization log and at our upcoming Gilbane Boston 2007.
If you’re involved in these practices at your company, take the Poll of the Week on Globalization and Brand Management .
If you’re just getting up to speed on their convergence, register for the June 26 webinar on web CMS and eMarketing. Websites are integral to every enterprise’s business. Learn how to transform your content management system into a global lead generation machine.
When we launched this blog in January, we had high hopes for creating an interactive community that encourages participation. We still do. Since interactivity breeds interactivity…
Welcome to our inaugural “Poll of the Week.” This week’s topic? Globalization and brand management.
4 questions,
30 seconds,
Promise.
Business managers serving on WCM product-selection teams or attending technology conferences sometimes ask for definitions of “Web services” and “service-oriented architecture (SOA).” They say they are confused by their IT teams’ usage of the terms as though they were synonymous, and that when the managers themselves use the terms interchangeably, they get corrected. Why does this happen?
Web services, a technology standard, and SOA, an architectural design methodology, are highly complementary. Yet they are distinct. “Web services” refers to technologies that allow enterprise applications of all kinds (WCM, CRM ERP, BI, etc.) to communicate with each other. Common forms of Web services include application programming interfaces (APIs), which are connectors written by software vendors that allow for a standard way of communicating with their applications. Vendors often publish or sell these APIs as a straightforward means of connecting. Another common – and more generic – example of a Web service is any message, often in XML format, exchanged between a client (a Web browser, for example) and a server (your bank’s database) using the SOAP protocol. There are variations on these two themes, but the important concept to remember about Web services is that, simply put, they allow for a standard means of communication between software applications which may or may not rely upon transmission over the Web. Web services very frequently communicate only over corporate networks.
SOA, on the other hand, is not a technology. Rather, it is a way of designing connections between objects (application code components), applications, and other technology infrastructure. Like the frame of a building with respect to its windows and floors, SOA only defines the relationships between technology components, not their composition. SOA’s goals are to achieve self-sufficiency for each component – i.e. that each component will perform one complete task or “service” – and for each component to offer its “service” to all of the others. It stands to reason then, that Web services and SOA often fit together well because SOA provides a framework within which discrete components can interact with each other, and Web services provide a standard way of building the components.
I was talking to someone in the office this morning. I was actually watching tech support change a failed hard drive – that’s how badly I didn’t want to sit down and write a particular document. He told me that I didn’t have to watch him change the hard drive (especially because it wasn’t my laptop). I told him – “I’m procrastinating on writing a client document.” After a few polite questions he asked me what the problem was with the client. I sighed and said the conversational equivalent of: “Senior management is completely disengaged when it comes to setting strategic direction for the web.
So, middle management and the web team are just flailing about in a reactionary way putting up whatever content needs to be had at the moment and fighting with each other about what’s the most important content on the site, and watch technology to use, yadda, yadda, yadda…” He nodded knowingly. Then I realized, this statement could be made for just about all of our clients. Most “web site problems” stem from the rotten root of ambivalent senior management. So in a moment of largesse (and finding a more creative way to procrastinate), I thought I would write this blog entry.
If you’re having Web problems, the first thing to consider (before calling a content management system vendor, a taxonomist, a web design firm, or Web Operations folks like us), is whether or not the CEO, Administrator, President or whoever heads your organization is even thinking about the site – strategically. If they are not, then more than likely any changes that the web team makes to the site will just be “interim” or “quick fixes.” For a lot of organizations, the organization’s public facing web site is the first point of contact for business partners and customers, prospects, and information seekers it deserves serious senior consideration.
I’m not just talking about making sure that the web site looks good either. Good web design – while shockingly rare in some segments of the Web – is not a mystery and good web designers and information architects are easy to locate. I’m talking about establishing performance and quality objectives for web sites – objectives, which support the overall mission, service and/or business objectives of your organization and then holding folks accountable for meeting those objectives – like you don’t get your raise if you don’t get it done. If you establish these basic strategic and governance related principles, you will find that a lot of the other decision related to web design, what types of software needs to be utilized, etc. become a lot easier to answer.
So, get your Web Strategy and Web Governance ducks in a row before you shell out the big bucks for a web site redesign or a new web content management system or fancy pants consultants like us.
But if your still dying to talk to someone anyway or just commiserate with other folks with messed up web sites, we’ll be talking a lot about various strategic and governance issues at the Gilbane conference in Washington DC next week.
Hope to see you there.
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