The Information Architect & The Developer
Posted on February 21, 2009
Filed Under ia, strategy, technology | Leave a Comment
About 10 years ago I was brought into a digital agency, with a burgeoning technology arm, to help them get better at delivering websites. At first, I was sat with the web developers, but over time my audience widened to include both Information Architects and Designers. That’s when the sparks started to fly and I was plunged head first into the world of mutual disrespect between all parties.
Things have moved on (a little) since then but I would like to share some of things I learnt back then, and mix that in with what I still see today. If you have any thoughts in and around this area, I would love to hear them. Be sure to let me know from which vantage point you’re coming from when commenting though… 
Cisco – EOS Platform
Posted on January 20, 2009
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Wow!
I just sat through Cisco’s Media Solutions Groups (CMSG) video promoting the EOS Platform and it looks great!
So I kept on digging and stumbled across a talk John Chambers, CEO of Cisco gave at MIT back in October. It’s about an hour in length and very interesting. For me the key part is around Cisco’s take up of social collab and Enterprise 2.0.
So Sun would have us believe that the Network is the Computer, and Cisco that the Network is the Platform. So I dug a little bit deeper to see John Chambers deliver Cisco’s Q1 2009 vision. It was a bit unfortunate that the only point in the presentatin that he stumbled on was when he spoke about Enterprise 2.0.
No matter, I still think EOS looks interesting. And Dan Scheinman, Senior VP for CMSG gives us a taster for how Content Finds You and The Story behind the Story for EOS. However, can you find any details around EOS platform beyond sales and marketing speak at the website. I think not. Shame, because this is what people want to know. Unfortunately, you’re going to have to find engage to get more details.
Delivering Content is Hard – Where’s my Content Strategy?
Posted on January 20, 2009
Filed Under strategy | 1 Comment
There are projects, and then there are content management projects. The latter are the ones that keep me awake at night. The challenges seem to have no bounds. There don’t seem to be any knowledge ceilings in sight. You are constantly learning (which is good), sharpening your tools and/or adding new ones to your content toolbox to successfully deliver these kinds of projects. So why are content management projects so damned hard then?
Now I agree with the folks back at CMS Myth when they say:
“CMS is a technology, while content management is a discipline.”
Sharepoint 2007 – Consultant Ready Software
Posted on December 27, 2008
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Sharepoint is consultant-ready, not customer-ready.
I stumbled across this phrase in an article but for the life of me I cannot remember where I read the damned thing. The articles spoke about how Out of the Box (OOTB) Sharepoint 2007 can be used by technical consultants to deliver high value, low effort sites in days rather than months. The “not customer ready” caveated companies trying to go-it-alone rather than bring in specialist consultants to assist in the smooth delivery of their initial Sharepoint projects. But when your dealing with enterprise level content/document/digital asset/record or and other enterprise level management system, that’s they norm right? But for Sharepoint, the powerful sell is just how far a consultant can point-and-click their way to rolling out web-sites.
The Pub Folks: Go! Stay on the road keep clear of the moors.
The Boys: Right, thank you.
The Pub Folks: Beware of the moon lads.
Java Content Repository – JCR
Posted on December 11, 2008
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In my last post I talked about the recently published Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) specification. A noble and worthwhile specification that enables content applications to access vendor-specific content repositories in a standard way. This is achieved by each vendor exposing their content services through CMIS web-based, service-oriented interfaces. The aim of CMIS is simple – the empowerment content applications. Arm content applications with enough of the common and core services typically attributed to managing content and sit back and see what good things we can make. As a fallback, content applications can always use vendor-specific, proprietary APIs to satisfy low level requirements.
CMIS – Too Good to Miss?
Posted on December 6, 2008
Filed Under news | 5 Comments
Background
Content is everywhere but getting to it is a different story. The amount of effort required to access content stored in multiple Enterprise Content Management (ECM) systems still takes my breath away. For example, accessing a document in Office Sharepoint and Documentum, adapting it and ultimately storing it down within IBM FileNet is non-trivial. In short, integrating multiple ECMs is hard. What tends to happen is either:
1) The customer makes do and content remains locked into a single ECM solution.
or
2) The customer invests in intricate (and brittle) solutions that span multiple ECMs.
Welcome to Content
Posted on December 2, 2008
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We’ve all heard the phrases, “Content is King” and “Everything is Content”. There is definitely an element of truth in there because we all work with content as part of our everyday lives – we just don’t call it that. We watch movies, listen to music, read books, flick through mags, agonise over instructions to get some cool device working, order holidays on-line, read cooking menus, and so on. This is content through the eyes of the consumer. Something of value. But to those few people producing something of value, its all about managing the content. And to these specialist, value producers, content is undoubtedly king!
Value producers rely heavily upon tools to assist them. Tools to store content, convert, break up, re-assemble, slice and dice content, re-purpose and deliver content through multiple channels (web, mobile, tv, print), to multiple audiences, in multiple geographical regions and languages, at varying times during the day. Content management is big business. And with big business comes choices, options, trade-offs and invariably confusion.
Picking through the world of content management is a full-time job. Having been a consumer all my life, for the last few years I’ve been working with customers to assist them manage their own content. And that is where the fun started. At Cognifide, that’s pretty much what we do. And now, I think its time to share and get a feel for what others are doing in this space…
