Category: Gilbane Advisor (Page 18 of 28)

In this issue we take you on a trip through enterprise knowledge graph lands, look at how blockchain is helping companies smooth collaboration, consider disruptive ecosystems forming around CDWs, and introduce you to a new effort to improve the management and utility of business documents.

Our content technology news weekly will be out tomorrow as usual.

---

From Flatland to HOG Heaven

Large-scale enterprise knowledge graphs (EKGs) are still a rare beast in enterprises in spite of their promise which is ably demonstrated by implementations at the largest tech companies. Mainstream scarcity of EKGs is understandable given the amount of change involved – both in how we think about information management problems, and of course in how we marshal the troops to plan and deploy. 

Dan McCreary takes you on an amusing journey through four lands with distinct characteristics and cognitive styles, to help you envision the who and what you need to reach HOG (Hardware Optimized Graph) Heaven. 

---

How blockchain can simplify improve collaboration and simplify partnerships

There are many potential applications for blockchains and enterprises in multiple industries have built private blockchain applications. Information sharing and collaboration are areas where most organizations could benefit from blockchains. This non-technical Harvard Business Review article takes you through some of the ways blockchain is being used to significantly improve collaboration, and what to watch out for in practice.

---

Will Snowflake be the next great platform?

Gabriel de Vinzelles suggests it will, and as an investor is looking at the evolving ecosystem around cloud data warehouses (CDWs), and the startups who are looking to “rebuild many product categories such as Data Ingestion, Data Transformation, Data Governance, Data Quality, etc.”. There is certainly a lot of opportunity here, especially for unstructured data based on inquiries we see.

Of course Snowflake is not the only CDW and Vinzelles isn’t only talking about them. The ecosystems around other CDWs will also be disrupted by the same, or similar companies he is tracking.

---

Docugami

Documents have always been the problem child of information management because of the infinite varieties of content, structure, format, and the relationships between them. Even with the advances in machine learning, natural language processing, and graph databases we struggle with the complexity and and cost of managing documents and their content. But the combination of these technologies can help, and that is startup Docugami’s goal. Their product is in semi-stealth mode, but this TechCrunch interview with Docugami Co-founder Jean Paoli will give you an idea of what they are up to, and why we refer to “docs vs cats” in this issues’ subject line.

---

Also worthy

• Why are Warby Parker clones imploding?, VCs, second acts… via Marker
  
• Taxonomies: connecting users to content, what it means… via Boxes and Arrows
  
• Nielsen Norman’s annual 10 best intranets of 2021: what makes them great, via Nielsen Norman Group
  
• Leveraging Outlook… Escalating the desktop war, Microsoft embraces the Web, via Mac O’Clock 

---

The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. We also publish curated content technology news weekly We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | Feed | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy

Content technology news | Contact

In this issue we have recommended reading on creating a modern data workspace, enterprise search & AI, enterprise AI trends, no-code / low-code companies, Medium’s latest pivot, Facebook’s new publishing platform plan, and Wikipedia getting the big guys to pay.

Our content technology news weekly will be out Wednesday as usual.

---

Decoding the no-code / low-code startup universe and its players

No-code and low-code companies are sprouting up everywhere and whatever your initial impression has been, it’s time to consider their increasing utility and role in even complex application development environments. No-code / low-code can democratize and speed development by bringing business analysts and software developers closer together. Pietro Invernizzi and Ben Tossell have put together a very helpful resource looking at 145 companies with lots of detail and access to an Airtable spreadsheet. (Click the image for a version you can read)

---

We failed to set up a data catalog 3x. Here’s why

Prukalpa Sankar generously and delightfully describes what she and her team learned from multiple attempts at creating a “modern data workspace”. Some of you will be familiar with the problems and lessons, but the approaches, tools used, and specific examples, will still be instructive.

---

When explainable AI meets enterprise search

Lack of transparency in AI is in general an unsolved problem even though there is obviously huge value in its application across domains. Martin White has some thoughts and advice on what this means for enterprise search.

Enterprise search presents a special challenge when it comes to AI transparency. Most other enterprise processes are close to linear in execution, so the impact of AI on performance can be relatively easily assessed and monitored. In the case of search, every query is a new workflow as it is dependent on the knowledge of the individual and the intent behind their search.

---

The mess at Medium

Lots of activity in the independent writing/publishing platform space recently: the Substack Pro controversy, Twitter’s acquisition of Revue, Facebook’s announcement of a new platform for independent writers, and Medium’s latest pivot. None of these companies has figured out a sustainable business model, and none provide writers a safe long-term way to control their brand and content. They can in some cases be supplemental marketing and delivery channels if you own and control your content and publishing capability however. 🙂

Casey Newton reports on the changes at Medium…

Medium’s original journalism was meant to give shape and prestige to an essentially random collection of writing, gated behind a soft paywall that costs readers $5 a month or $50 a year. Eleven owned publications covered food, design, business, politics, and other subjects… But in the end, frustrated that Medium staff journalists’ stories weren’t converting more free readers to paid ones, Williams moved to wind down the experiment…

---

Also worthy

• Facebook’s new platform… Supporting independent voices, via Facebook
  
• Great free teaser content as usual… Enterprise AI trends to watch In 2021 via CBInsights
  
• Wikipedia Enterprise… Wikipedia Is finally asking big tech to pay up via Wired
  
• Long but worthy article by Tim O’Reilly on the bigger picture… The end of Silicon Valley as we know it? via O’Reilly Radar

---

The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. We also publish curated content technology news weekly We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | Feed | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy

Content technology news | Contact

In this issue we look at enterprise knowledge graph semantics, how to move to a distributed data mesh, a helpful case study on UX improvements, “best-of-breed” stacks, and personal data privacy, first party ads, and consumer contradictions.

---

A definition of “Enterprise” in EKGs

Enterprise knowledge graphs are on the rise, but terminology and even conceptual understanding is inconsistent. Dan McCreary’s article is a good place to start to organize your own thoughts before diving in…

Many people co-mingle the terms from open linked data world and the semantic web stack’s role with the concepts related to sustainability and scalability of enterprise knowledge graphs.

---

How to move beyond a monolithic data lake to a distributed data mesh

If you haven’t yet had a reason to develop a complete understanding of what a distributed data mesh is, or how it relates to looking at data as a product for multiple enterprise functions, there is a good chance you will before long. Some familiarity will be important for many roles beyond pure data management. This in-depth article by Zhamak Dehghani covers the why and how, and likely answers most questions you have.

---

Quantifying UX improvements

Nielsen Norman Group’s Kate Moran presents a case study, with before and after screen shots and metrics, illustrating how an informed information architecture can increase customer self-service and improve both customer experience and sales efficiency.

---

Best-of-breed stacks

Debates on the relative merits of vendor suites versus best-of-breed application solutions have been going on for decades. The data was scarce and questionable, the arguments “qualitative”, and the conclusions invariably “it depends…”.

Scott Brinker has a lot to say about today’s version of this debate with the more complicated and flexible software architecture options available. For his latest post on the topic he came up with a great way to apply some neutral data to his view that stacks are growing and increasingly best-of-breed.

---

Also, on personal data, privacy, ads…

• The jury is out on FloCs… Building a privacy-first future for web advertising, via Google Ads & Commerce Blog
  
• Building your own first-party solution… To serve better ads, we built our own data program via NYT Open Blog
  
• Yes, we’re fickle with trust IRL… Data from Entrust reveals contradictions in consumer sentiment toward data, via Entrust
  
• Not easy, but worth the effort… Ethics as a service: a pragmatic operationalisation of AI Ethics, via SSRN
  
• An independent look… Facebook’s Misleading Campaign Against Apple’s Privacy Policy, via HBR

---

The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. We also publish curated content technology news weekly We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | Feed | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy

Content technology news | Contact

The rise of the time-series database

This certainly caught me off guard. Graph databases have been leading the popularity contests for the last five or six years, but in the last twenty four months Time Series databases have leapt ahead, as this DB-Engines chart dramatically demonstrates. Peter Wayner looks at why.

Medium is adding ebooks to its business

Business models based on being both a publisher and a platform have always been fraught. In some ways Medium has managed this better than most. They just acquired “social ebook platform” Glose, but it’s not clear how this fits into their platform/publisher model. One clue may be Ev Williams’ earlier statement that Medium’s…

top-line metric is “TTR,” which stands for total time reading. It’s an imperfect measure of time people spend on story pages. We think this is a better estimate of whether people are actually getting value out of Medium.

But in a short post about the acquisition Williams says they “are not planning to bundle books into Medium Membership, though there could be book-related benefits. TBD.”

Ethical issues in privacy, advertising and machine learning

Informed and interesting interview with Oxford philosopher Dr. Carissa Véliz. Don’t worry, this is not a long dry treatise, but an engaging and accessible discussion that does not require a technical or philosophical background.

Facets of faceted search

Both search engine developers and users treat facets as useful for refining broad search queries. But there’s a tendency to conflate broad queries with ambiguous queries. There’s an important distinction between the two.

Fortunately, we have the ever-reliable Daniel Tunkelang to explain.

Also…

• If you need to get caught up… The decentralized internet is coming, sometime? via Protocol Source Code
• Fun version… Web conversations with the year 2000, and serious version follow-up… Web conversation from the other side, via Paul Ford
• Ethereum seems to be having a moment, and not only in ETH… The Ethereum 2.0 Beacon Chain is here. Now what? via Consensus
• NLP just keeps on giving… Natural language predicts viral escape …via MIT Technology Review

The Gilbane Advisor is curated by Frank Gilbane for content technology, computing, and digital experience professionals. The focus is on strategic technologies. We publish more or less twice a month except for August and December. We also publish curated content technology news weekly We do not sell or share personal data.

Subscribe | Feed | View online | Editorial policy | Privacy policy

Content technology news | Contact