San Francisco, April 24 -26, 2006

(Also see the co-located Enterprise Digital Rights Managment conference program.)

Main Conference Program

Keynotes

Keynote Panel: New Technologies That Will Influence Your Content Management Strategies
The pace of information technology development continues to increase as organizations develop experience in implementing content applications, and as software vendors vie to incorporate their customer’s feedback into product technologies ahead of the competition. As most enterprise applications become more content-oriented, content technology developments are coming from a broader base of suppliers and developers. In fact, most interesting new computing technologies will, or should, influence your short and long term content management strategies. Our opening panel of industry experts will look at both specific technologies and market trends. This will be a lively interactive panel with plenty of debate.

Moderator: Frank Gilbane, Conference Chair, President, Gilbane Group, Inc.
Panelists:
Dan Farber, Vice President, CNET Networks, Editor in Chief, ZDNet
Bill Rosenblatt, Editor, DRM Watch
Charlene Li, Principal Analyst, Forrester Research
Gene Gable, Gene Gable Industries
Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch

 

CTW Keynote Panel: Enterprise Panel on Best Practices & Implementation Strategies
Speakers in the keynote session for the CTW track complement the opening keynote on technology and trends by sharing their experiences with actually putting content technology to work. This panel features enterprise executives who will describe how their companies leverage the technologies discussed in the first keynote. We’ll examine actual business and IT planning scenarios and identify the characteristics associated with successful content technology deployment. The panel sets the stage for the day’s track of user success stories and case studies.

Moderator: Mary Laplante, VP Consulting Services, Gilbane Group; Director, CM Pros
Speakers:
Marc McQuain, CEO and President, Vindico Retail
Pat Tiernan, VP Product Content and Data Management, Hewlett Packard

 


Content Management Track (CM)

This track is for anyone authoring, managing, or delivering content of any type, for everything from small websites, to knowledge management intranets, to large enterprise content initiatives.

CM-1: What to Watch Out for When Starting a New CMS Project
Whether you are working on your first, second, or third content management project, it can be easy to overlook some important considerations that will have a major impact on the success of your project. The presenters in this session have seen deployments succeed and fail, and will share their insights on what you should look out for.

Moderator: Renaud Richardet, COO America, Wyona Inc.
Speakers:
Rahel Anne Bailie, Intentional Design Inc.
Human Factors in Content Management Projects
Scott Wolff, WOLFF & Associates, LLC
Five Mistakes to Avoid When Buying a CMS

CM-2: Understanding Your Content’s Use and Value
This session includes presentations on two different types of disciplines that will contribute to a more successful content management implementation. Common to both disciplines is the importance of understanding how your content is used, which translates directly into its business value.

Moderator: Ann Rockley, President, The Rockley Group
Speakers:
Theresa Regli, Director, Content Management, Molecular
Content Modeling for Content Management
Dell Joshi, Manager, Information and Content Management and Six Sigma Deployment Champion, (I&CT) Division of R&D, DuPont
Using Six Sigma to Optimize Content Use, Licensing, and Procuring

CM-3: Experiences Implementing Large CM Projects
Content Management projects come in all shapes and sizes, but even if you are involved in a small or medium-sized implementation there is usually a lot to learn from looking at the plans, strategies, technologies and experiences of demanding large-scale deployments. This session includes presentations from senior IT or project managers wiling to share their experiences and expertise.

Moderator: Erik Hartman, Hartman Communicatie BV; President, Content Management Professionals Association
Speakers:
Steve Bond, Sr. Technology Manager, AOL Content Management and Engineering, AOL
CM Technology at AOL
Tim Kapp, Principal, BayHill Group
Case Study: Best Practices for Deploying Collaborative Content Management Technology

CM-4: Experiences Implementing Large CM Projects, cont.
Content Management projects come in all shapes and sizes, but even if you are involved in a small or medium-sized implementation there is usually a lot to learn from looking at the plans, strategies, technologies and experiences of demanding large-scale deployments. This session includes presentations from senior IT or project managers wiling to share their experiences and expertise.

Moderator: Erik Hartman, Hartman Communicatie BV; President, Content Management Professionals Association
Speakers:
Sean Murphy, CMC, CMA, Senior Manager, Canadian Public Sector Enterprise Content Management Practice, Deloitte Inc
Janice Yates, Manager, Web and New Media, Communications Branch, Natural Resources Canada
Web Content Management as a Shared Service

CM-5: Expert Help on Some Big Content Technology Decisions
In this session a couple of expert consultants will cover two of the trickiest areas of a content management project. The first presentation covers a contemporary version of the old “build vs.buy” decision – “contemporary” because these days you also need to consider renting or sharing some or all of the software you’ll need. The second presentation looks at the relationship between portals and content management systems and the challenges in integrating them, to help you make decisions about when, how, and how much to integrate your CMS(s) and portal(s).

Speakers:
Seth Gottlieb, Content Management and Collaboration Practice Lead, Optaros; Treasurer, Content Management Professionals Association
Build vs. Buy vs. Rent vs. Share
Janus Boye, Managing Director, Boye IT
Challenges in Integrating Portals & Content Management Systems

CM-6: Putting DITA to Work: A New Approach to Creating and Using Modular Content
Single-source publishing has matured as a method for producing complex documents in many formats. XML in particular has become the preferred format for single-sourcing, enabling companies to both repurpose their content into different formats and reuse content modules in different content types. The premise-and promise-is that a procedure that appears in one document can be stored once, edited once, reused in many different documents and repurposed into many different formats. For all of its upside, XML-based single-source publishing can be expensive and complicated to implement. It requires tool development, data conversion, and system integration prior to realizing the benefits of repurposing and reuse. To mitigate this, some vertical industries have developed their own XML tag sets. While successful on their own, these vertical industry efforts have not been extensible to other industries. The Darwin Information Typing Architecture, or DITA, is showing early promise as a way to reduce costs, conversion, and integration efforts within organizations that develop documentation for many kinds of products. DITA was recently ratified as a standard by OASIS (the Organization for the Advancement of Structured Information Standards). Attend this session to hear how companies are beginning to reap the benefits of putting the standard to work.

Moderator: Bill Trippe, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group
Speakers:
Yas Etessam
, XML Consultant, Blast Radius
Implementing DITA: Considerations Beyond Specialization
Eric Silberstein, CTO & Founder, Idiom

CM-7: Authoring for Content Applications
Authors have very strong feelings about both the individual products, and the types of tools, they use to write and edit. But in the past ten years it has become important to consider the back-end functions of authoring tools as well as the author-focused features. The common requirement for storing content and metadata in repositories for sharing or reuse has forced a dramatic change in authoring tools of all types. Does this mean you can use any tool your authors want? Do authors need to use a specialized tool for organizations to benefit from a content management system? This session will help you think through these important issues.

Speakers:
Kay Ethier
, Bright Path Solutions
The (Authoring) Tool Wars Are Over

CM-8: Business Issues: Compliance & Security
Although there is a big difference between a public company financial report and a marketing department’s intranet, No one involved in content management these days can ignore the potential impact of compliance regulations and security requirements. Web content, office documents, records, documentation, email etc. can all contain critical content subject to one of the many government regulations or industry requirements. In this session we explore a couple of the important issues that affect a wide range of businesses.

Moderator: Geoffrey Bock, Principal, Bock & Company
Speakers:

Thaddeus Bouchard,
CTO, Omtool
David Dahl, CTO, SpringCM
David Parry, CTO, McLaren Software

CM-9: Content Technologies: A Town Hall Debate
Join expert panelists in an engaging, fast-paced debate on key issues in enterprise content technology circa 2006. Two panelists will go pro and contra for 3 minutes each on a series of important questions in the technology community, but the best part is – you can join in. Audience members will be invited to provide 2-minute rebuttals. Have an opinion? Want to learn about hot issues with a minimum of hot air? Come join us!

Here are the planned topics our panelists will debate:

  • Web 2.0 within the enterprise is real.
  • Portal software is a cruel ruse.
  • Compliance has been bad for records management.
  • DAM is on the verge of getting huge.
  • Personalization is the wave of the future
  • The requirement for multi-channel communications will fuel the use of XML content management
  • The overarching ECM issue today is reconciling enterprise control versus individual empowerment

Debators:
Tony Byrne
, Founder, CMS Watch, Publisher, The CMS Report
Mike Maziarka, Director, InfoTrends

 


Content Technology Track (CT)

These sessions are for IT or technically-oriented content or business managers. The material is a little more technical and looks at a select set of content-related technologies, some of which will be new to content managers.

CT-1: Considerations in Managing Rich Media
Digital Asset Management (DAM) products used to be considered a separate market category. However, at least for corporate market applications like managing brand, advertising and publishing assets, most DAM solutions are being supplied by the ECM vendors who have collectively bought up the majority of the independent DAM product companies. Nonetheless, there are clearly special requirements for managing the rich media assets DAM products were designed for and you still need to decide when to buy a DAM product, or another CMS product from an ECM vendor. This session will help you understand when you may need a specialized system and when a more general purpose might suffice.

Moderator: Joel Warwick, Independent Consultant
Panelists:
Joshua Duhl , Vice President, Product Management, ClearStory Systems
Sean Barger, CEO Equilibrium
George Song, Independent Consultant
Andrew Salop,
Independent Consultant
Ann Childs, Consultant/Symantec

CT-2: ECM Suites: There is a Difference
Major infrastructure and ECM vendors alike have been assembling multifaceted content technology “suites” to solve a variety of information management problems for the enterprise. While on paper, most of the vendors can check many of the same boxes, in reality each suite takes a different approach to the enterprise content challenge. CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne will lead a short tour of the ECM suite vendor landscape then dive into key differences in focus and capabilities among the major players.

Moderator: Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch, Publisher, The CMS Report
Critic: James Robertson, Managing Director, Step Two Designs

CT-3: The Analysts Debate Content Technologies and Trends
Our analyst panel looks at the big issues affecting content management strategies, including trends in the market, technology, and best practices. The panel includes experts from multiple analyst firms who are thought leaders debating content management vs. enterprise content management, enterprise search, the role of database platforms, intranets, portals, information integration, other content technologies. The panel will look at market consolidation and the tough issues facing both vendors and users, and make predictions about the next 12-18 months. This panel is designed for anyone with a stake in content management whether project manager, business manager, IT strategist, consultant, integrator, market or financial analyst, or vendor, and will provide an informed context for what you will hear in the rest of the conference and see in the demo pavilion.

Moderator: Mary Laplante, VP Consulting Services, Gilbane Group; Director, CM Pros
Panelists:
Guy Creese, Analyst, Content Management, The Burton Group
Bill Trippe, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group
Mike Maziarka, Director, InfoTrends
Geoffrey Bock, Principal, Bock & Company

CT-4: Introducing CM Technology from IT’s Perspective
Our audience is split just about evenly between IT and line-of-business strategists and project managers that share a need to keep up with content technology. They do have different concerns and requirements however, and in this session we have put together two presentations that specifically address IT’s perspective. We think it is important for both business units and IT to have a clear understanding of each other’s needs. Whatever your role, this session should be well worth your while.

Moderator: Geoffrey Bock, Principal, Bock & Company
Speakers:
Garry R. Beaty, Chief Information Officer, City of Boise, Idaho
Content Management in Context: Introducing New Technologies Strategically in City Government
Brad Raasch, IT Team Leader, Global Computing Services, Deere & Company
The Evolution of IT Content Management at John Deere

 


Enterprise Search Track (ES)

Enterprise, desktop, and Internet search all have an important role to play in organizations as technologies integrated with content management systems, or other enterprise systems and as applications in their own right. This track will help you understand where search technology fits in your projects and IT strategies.

ES-1: How to Improve Your Enterprise Search Experience
Given the increasing amount of time professionals spend using search tools in business environments, small improvements in search effectiveness can translate into gains in productivity. Sometimes improvements can be achieved with new technology and sometimes by better use of existing technology. This session provides you with tips for getting better results from your search experience.

Moderator: Linda Burman, LA Burman Associates
Speakers:
James Robertson
, Managing Director, Step Two Designs
Improving intranet Search
Seth Earley, Earley & Associates
The Role of Taxonomies and Metadata in Search

ES-2: A Look at New Search Technologies
The importance of search continues to increase, and in spite of a fair amount of instant google-like-gratification, it is still often very difficult to find what you need – especially when you may not be sure what it is – and it is tough to have confidence you aren’t missing something. Search is hard stuff, but there continues to be lot of effort put into making it better, and it is worth paying attention to new approaches. In this session you will about three search technologies from companies you may not have heard of.

Moderator: Hadley Reynolds, Vice President, Delphi Group, a Perot Systems Company
Speakers:
Salim Ismail, Chairman & co-founder of PubSub Concepts, Inc
Search the Future
François Bourdoncle, Co-founder & CEO, Exalead
Enterprise Search Increases Customer Service at The Manutan Group
David Bean, Co-founder & CTO, Attensity
Hiding in Plain Sight: Unlocking the Secrets in Your Unstructured Data

ES-3: Organizing Content for Search – Topic Maps
All our enterprise search sessions have to do with improving search in one way or another. This session looks at a very specific approach called “topic maps”. While the subject may sound a little academic, it has very practical consequences. There is actually an ISO standard covering topic maps, but in this session you will hear about how it can be used to help your organize your information in a disciplined way to improve your ability to find enterprise content.

Speakers:
Steve Carton, Vice President of Content Technologies, Retrieval Systems Corporation
Adding Knowledge to Hypertext Links: Improving Links with TopicMaps
Scott Wolff, WOLFF & Associates, LLC
Transforming The Enterprise IA – Task Management Systems

ES-4: New Search Technologies & Web 2.0
“Web 2.0” may or may not be a buzz-term that refers to anything everyone can agree on, but it sure is being used a lot so it is probably useful to understand what characteristics Web 2.0 applications are typically supposed to have. This session will look specifically at Web 2.0 and search and technologies like XQuery. Is there a “Search 2.0” coming soon to a theater near you? Attend this session to find out.

Moderator: Steve Paxhia, VP & General Manager, Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice, Gilbane Group, Inc.
Speakers:

Dave Kellogg
, CEO, Mark Logic
Web 2.0 and XQuery
Hadley Reynolds, Vice President, Delphi Group, a Perot Systems Company
Web 2.0 and Search
Eric Negler, EVP, Business Development, Coveo Solutions Inc.

 


Blog & Wiki Track (BW)

Blog and wiki technology are rapidly finding their way into enterprises for collaboration, authoring, knowledge management, and in some cases, even light content management applications. This new track will look at how they are, and how they can be, used in organizations.

BW-1: The Business Case for Enterprise Blogs & Wikis
When we first published our article on enterprise use of blog and wiki tools there was a lot of surprise, but also a lot of skepticism. Even after finding a number of organizations who were using these tools for business applications some suspected that the examples suggested experiments rather than early adoptions signaling a much larger trend. While there are still no really good market numbers, it is clear that there has been quite a lot of very serious activity. Our speakers in this session should convince even skeptics of how real enterprise use of blog and wiki tools is.

Moderator: Sally Falkow, President, ExpansionPlus
Speakers:
Thierry Barsalou
, Chief Information Officer, Ipsen Pharmaceuticals,
Case Study: An Enterprise Weblog System for Competitive Intelligence
Rod Boothby, Manager, Ernst & Young Financial Services Advisory Practice
The Business Case for Enterprise Blogs

BW-2: RSS in the Enterprise
As Yahoo found (PDF of their research), most people don’t know what RSS is. Those that do are probably most familiar with it as a way to subscribe to blogs or news headlines. RSS (and its competitor, ATOM), is just a simple XML publishing application. However, there is a good chance that RSS use will far outpace blogs and wikis in enterprise applications — Microsoft’s RSS plans (and here) alone could ensure this. This session will look at current and future enterprise uses of RSS.

Moderator: Steve Paxhia, VP & General Manager, Publishing Strategy & Technology Practice, Gilbane Group, Inc.
Speakers:
Charlie Wood, Founder, Spanning Partners
ECM, RSS and Web 2.0
Greg Reinacker, Founder & CTO, NewsGator Technologies
Use-cases for RSS Aggregation

BW-3: Improving the Effectiveness of Business Blogs
As the amount of enterprise blog content grows, organizations will have the same problem they have with other corporate content, i.e., they’ll be challenged with finding what they are looking for. Blogs are notoriously informal, but that doesn’t necessarily mean there is no way to improve find-ability. One way to accomplish this is with “structured blogging”. Another way is to use “folksonomy”. Wondering what these are and how they can help? This is the session for you!

Moderator: Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler; Vice President, Content Management Professionals Association
Speakers:
Salim Ismail, Chairman & co-founder of PubSub Concepts, Inc, Structured Blogging
Theresa Regli, Director, Content Management, Molecular
Taxonomy vs. Folksonomy

BW-4: Enterprise “Social Software” Issues
This session covers two areas management needs to pay attention to as blogs and wikis continue to find their way into enterprises. Most coverage of “enterprise blogs” is focused on the sticky issues of employees with blogs that may or may not be condoned or encouraged by their companies. Organizations are justifiably nervous about employees with no training in PR, whether they are a CEO, customer service representative, or software engineer, representing the company to everyone the internet. Even more disconcerting are customer blogs or “watchdog” blogs. A different challenge is how to manage the growing use of blogs and wikis for internal applications when there are already content management systems and business processes in place that provide a secure level of control and accountability. How do you allow for both the all-inclusive collaboration of blogs and wikis and the need for content and process control?

Moderator: Scott Abel, The Content Wrangler; Vice President, Content Management Professionals Association
Speakers:

Alan Scott, Chief Marketing Officer, Factiva
Blogging Explosion and Affects on Corporate Reputation
Leigh Klotz, Senior Software Architect, Xerox DocuShare
Social Computing in the Enterprise

BW-5: Content Management Systems & Blogging Tools
Content management systems and blogging tools are designed for very different activities. However there is a slight overlap in the way they are actually used, and there are also ways that these two technologies can complement each other. What do CMS vendors think of blogging tools? Do they see them as a threat? Do they see them as an opportunity to broaden their own systems’s capability and appeal?

Moderator: Bill Trippe, Senior Analyst, Gilbane Group
Speakers:
Michelle Huff, Product Marketing Manager, Web Content Management, Stellent
Using Enterprise Content Management for Corporate Blogs & Wikis

Bill Cava, CTO, Ektron
The Next Generation of Blogging

 


Case Studies Track (CS)

This track presents and examines case studies for all kinds of content-oriented applications and is supported by the Gilbane Report Content Technology Works Program. The emphasis is on all aspects of successful content-oriented implementations.

CS-1: Developing Sustainable Content Strategies
Every successful deployment of a content management application begins with a well-planned content strategy. Smart companies know that attention to the strategy doesn’t end when the pilot project or initial implementation is up and running. Content strategies must be maintained and updated in order to deliver a return on investment in creating them in the first place. Who is best positioned to fill this important role within an organization? What tools and techniques can be brought to bear? Where and how do companies fail to keep their content strategies central to their business processes? User speakers in this session will address these and other issues that are central to developing sustainable content strategies.

Moderator: Mary Laplante, VP Consulting Services, Gilbane Group; Director, Content Management Professionals Association
Speaker:
Greg Duncan, eGovernment Manager, City of Las Vegas, Best Practices in Site Usability Through CMS: Case Study – City of Las Vegas, Nevada

CS-2: Content Challenges in Global Enterprises
Companies that operate globally face a number of challenges when it comes to creating, managing, and publishing product and technical content. It’s most common to think of translation and localization requirements, but the scope of the challenges are larger than multi-lingual publishing. Issues include effectively managing geographically dispersed content creators, dealing with multiple authoring tools and content management systems, syndicating content through dealer and partner networks, and keeping the technology platforms as well as content in synch. In this user case study session, attendees will learn how global enterprises are dealing with some of the toughest content issues that are critical to successful international business.

Moderator: Mary Laplante, VP Consulting Services, Gilbane Group; Director, Content Management Professionals Association
Speakers:
Christian Redmann, Director, Localization, UGS
Phil Ritchie, CTO, VistaTEC
Shannan M Kurz, International Coordinator, Global Internet Marketing, AMD

 


Automated Publishing for Marketing Track (AP)

This track is designed for content managers who need to manage marketing content, whether for an e-commerce site, or a cross-media brand or publishing strategy, or who are responsible for increasing business and need to understand how content technologies can help them achieve growth and improve customer service. This year our expanded track will focus on design-critical documents used in marketing and publishing that require an entirely new level of sophistication to meet the needs of design and branding professionals.

AP-1: Introduction to Automated Publishing Systems
Content management and digital asset management are just the first steps toward automated document production. Invariably the final output requires high-end page layout and design, multiple-resolution images, content versioning, ties to customer databases, an awareness of corporate style and many other qualities. This session takes on overview look at what it means to marry content and asset management systems to the high-end page-layout world where tools such as Adobe InDesign, QuarkXPress, PageFlex and others are used to create documents for print, the Web and PDF.

Speakers:
Gene Gable,
Gene Gable Industries
Thad McIlroy, President, Arcadia House

AP-2: Accommodating Creative Needs in Content Management
The creative and marketing sides of many businesses have been misunderstood and often pigeonholed as “not compatible” with other IT operations, largely because of the specialized tools they use. But as we move to on-demand and automated publishing, there has to be a way to integrate the brand-management and design responsibilities of an organization with the automation and speed that sophisticated content management affords. This session will take a look at the special needs of the design and marketing professionals in the organization, and outline the changes required in staffing and procedures when bringing them into automation in a meaningful and effective way.

Moderator: Gene Gable, Gene Gable Industries
Speakers:
Michael Kieran,
President, RoboCatalog
Rob Hugel, Director of Design, Thomson Higher Education
Julian Mills, Senior Consultant, Prescient Digital Medai

AP-3: The Benefits of Design-critical Publishing Automation
In order to justify the investment in automated publishing systems and procedures, it’s important to see the many potential benefits. In addition to speeding up the time-to-market of existing design-critical documents and marketing materials, automated publishing systems can lay the foundation for sophisticated one-to-one and customized documents that do not compromise design style or sophistication. This session concentrates on some of the exciting and effective examples coming out of companies that understand the value of brand image and have worked to automatically incorporate brand style into every aspect of communications.

Moderator: Gene Gable, Gene Gable Industries
Speakers:
Hugh Flynn, Director of R&D, Electronic Publishing Houghton Mifflin School Division
Will Eisley, Group Product Manager, Creative Professional Business Unit, Adobe Systems, Inc.

AP-4: The Evaluation Process for Automated Publishing
Linking content management systems to the sophisticated output demanded by page-layout applications is complicated and exacting. Like all content-related processes, automated publishing is as much about proper evaluation and analysis as it is about purchasing and implementation. And when you add in the special needs of graphic design such as font and image licensing, things get even more complicated. This session looks at the evaluation and RFP process organizations must go through before implementing an automated page-layout system, and to compare a “small-step” process to a “big-jump” investment.

Moderator: Bob Schaffel, Independent Consultant
Speakers:
Tom Voltz,
Technology Manager Lasselle-Ramsay, Inc.
Thad McIlroy, President, Arcadia House

AP-5: Publishing Solutions for a Variety of Needs
Every automated publishing system on the market today has strengths and weaknesses, depending of course on the requirements of the user. Some are better at text-heavy, long documents such as books, manuals and documentation, while others excel at design-intensive collateral like advertising, brochures, catalogs and product literature. And still others are best at automatically re-purposing documents for cross-media output. This session will focus on specific applications and the solutions they offer, and provide a thorough overview of current available tools.

Moderator: Thad McIlroy, President, Arcadia House
Speakers:
Stephen O’Brien,
CTO, Typefi
Daren Lauda, Arbortext
Kevin Brown,Vice President, Sales & Marketing, RenderX, Inc.
Ravi Dugal, President, Sansui Software USA
Michael Kieran, President, RoboCatalog
Phil Rugile, Business Development Strategist, Managing Editor, Inc.

 

Pre-Conference Tutorials

Monday April 24, 9:00am – 12:00pm

Tutorial A:
Web Content Management Systems: Architectures & Products
Tony Byrne, Founder, CMS Watch, Publisher, The CMS Report

Join us for a half-day tutorial that can help you and your team understand Web Content Management technologies, architectures, and the marketplace. CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne leads an intensive, fast-paced introduction to Web Content Management functionality, product categories, and specific vendors. The session concludes with a roadmap for product selection. Learn:

  • 16 steps in the Web CMS lifecycle: questions you should ask and how vendors
  • differ in how they achieve basic functionality
  • 7 categories of CMS products, including features and typical price ranges
  • Specific characteristics of sample vendors in each category
  • How to start evaluating and ultimately select suitable technologies for an
  • organization
  • The 4 most common CMS pitfalls, and best practices for avoiding them

This session assumes you have developed a business case and at least some semblance of requirements such that you want to get into the nitty-gritty of product functionality and architectures. As a vendor-neutral presentation, this seminar will enable you to sharpen your organization’s CMS needs and identify suitable technology choices.

Tutorial B:
Working with DITA: The Darwin Information Typing Architecture
Bill Trippe, Senior Editor, Gilbane Report

DITA is quickly establishing itself as the leading method of creating XML-based technical documents and other product support content. DITA’s success is based on several things—a tag set that is straightforward and easy to learn, a publicly available toolkit that allows users to readily create print, Help, and other output, and specialization—a flexible and powerful means of customizing the DITA for your organization’s requirements. This tutorial will combine hands-on exercises, demonstrations, and discussion where attendees will learn DITA tagging, work with the DITA Open Toolkit, and understand how specialization can best be done. Tutorial attendees will receive and work with a (time-limited) copy of XMetal Author DITA Edition.

Tutorial C:
Enterprise Portal Software: Architecture and Products – Intensive Review & Roadmap for Product Selection
Janus Boye, Managing Director, Boye IT

While it is easy to be amazed by all the features offered by a portal, it can be very hard to make the decision for a specific system and to understand the rapidly-changing market. Join us for this intensive half-day tutorial led by the author of CMS Watch’s “Enterprise Portals Report”. Learn about:

  • the current marketplace
  • different categories, architectures, features and price ranges
  • important vendor intangibles
  • best practices in selecting a portal
  • why portal projects fail and how to avoid it from the onset

As a vendor-neutral tutorial it will provide a balanced view, enabling you and your team to make a better and more informed technology decision.

Tutorial D:
Intranets as a Business Tool
James Robertson, Managing Director, Step Two Designs

Too m any intranets are just dumping grounds for “second-hand documents.” At their best, however, intranets are a valuable business tool which delivers tangible benefits to the organizations they serve.

Structured “needs analysis” techniques can be used to uncover opportunities for the intranet to deliver measurable improvements to productivity, efficiency, or customer service. Filled with concrete examples, this tutorial introduces a unique model of intranet evolution and provides a practical perspective of how intranets can support business goals.


(Also see the co-located Enterprise Digital Rights Managment conference program.)