Digital Landfill

In the world of ECM, focus is predominately on the unstructured side of the world - documents, web content and the like. Enterprise reports are a curious form of content, while presented in unstructured or semi-structured formats, the majority of content is often rooted in structured databases. I am speaking of reports and forms such as invoices, financial reports, inventories, packing slips and spreadsheets. Enterprise reports bring challenges associated with both the data management and content management. There is also the potential for these sources of content to slip through the cracks between data and content management.

In an effort to better understand the state-of-the-industry concerning Enterprise Report Management, our Market Intelligence group is conducting a short (very short - 16 question) survey, and invites you to participate.

You can access the survey at THIS LINK or directly by typing http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB2279E83X6DY into your browser.

The Market Intelligence group will share the results of the survey with you as a thank you for taking the time to complete it. I hope you will find the 15 minutes needed to complete the survey during this busy time of year.

Thanks for your help -- and if you haven't signed up for our viral goating effort, there are just a few days left! Thousands of marketing exposures for the price of a goat!

CLICK HERE FOR DETAILS.

The AIIM Market Intelligence group has assembled an advisory panel consisting of some of the industry's foremost thinkers on Enterprise 2.0.

The panel is a veritable "Who's who" consisting of:

Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business School professor credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0 in 2006;

David Weinberger, Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, a co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and author of "Everything is Miscellaneous: The Power of the New Digital Disorder";

Stowe Boyd, industry consultant, prolific blogger, speaker and coiner of the term "social software";

Patti Anklam, knowledge management consultant and author of Net Work;

Eric Tsui, Professor of Knowledge Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and also ex-Chief Research Officer, Asia Pacific, Computer Sciences Corporation.

"We are proud to have this distinguished panel of advisers to help us with the development of our upcoming AIIM Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0, but also a new AIIM Certificate Training Program on Enterprise 2.0," stated , VP of Market Intelligence. "We did not want to provide yet another offering on Enterprise 2.0 that was either narrow or overly enthusiastic. By assembling this group of advisers we anticipate that our Enterprise 2.0 programs will reflect a broad spectrum of opinion and experience, bringing the past forward into the present and helping to define/create the future, showing the worthwhile uses of Enterprise 2.0."

Enterprise 2.0 is a concept on the minds of many business and technical managers alike, although early market research has shown that there is great confusion over this concept. AIIM is dedicating significant resources to this research project, making Enterprise 2.0 a major cornerstone of its activities in 2008. The resulting AIIM Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 and AIIM Certificate Training program on Enterprise 2.0 will cut through the confusion and provide much needed clarity, providing insights into where and how Enterprise 2.0 would be best used.

As part of this effort, AIIM will be executing an extensive market survey of business and IT managers. "The expert insights of our distinguished panel of advisers will be complemented by extensive research into real world practices and opinions obtained through the AIIM community of over 50,000 members - representing the largest assembly of content-savvy companies who could take advantage of Enterprise 2.0 solutions," stated , AIIM Market Intelligence Director. "This is a perspective that is much needed in order to accurately represent the reality of Enterprise 2.0, and not just unexamined promises and hype."

Save the Dates:

AIIM Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 survey launches on January 7th, 2008.

AIIM Enterprise 2.0 Certificate Training Program premiers at the 2008 AIIM International Exposition & Conference (Boston, MA on March 3, 2008).

AIIM Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 report available the end of March 2008.

AIIM Market IQ Webinar on Enterprise 2.0, discussing the findings of the report, will be held on Thursday, March 27th, 2008.

Early underwriters of the Market IQ on Enterprise 2.0 program include: EMC (www.emc.com), SpringCM (www.springcm.com) and Socialtext (www.socialtext.com).

Here are some of our top posts over the past 6 months...

• Building a Document RFP?
• ECM and Sharepoint
• In Case You Missed This on Sports Center...
• Sharepoint -- 85 Million Seats...
• Using Intelligent Document Recognition
• Preaching Outside the Choir -- Marketing Buzzword Alert
• What is ECM?
• SaaS

The Viral Goating Honor Roll (so far):  (There's still time to get your listing...go to THIS LINK).

• is a former AIIM staffer and now COO of PA & Associates.  PA & Associates provides completely outsourced and managed solutions for request for proposals, bid evaluations, vendor selection, rate negotiation, implementation, data analysis and reporting for businesses of all types.
• is a current AIIM staffer and director of the AIIM Standards Program.  Betsy ordered a sheep instead of a goat, but we're counting her anyway! 
• is with WinTec Consultancy Limited, an AIIM Education Partner in Hong Kong.  WinTec Consultancy Limited is an independent consulting company provides consulting and training services on Enterprise Content Management (ECM) technologies for any organizations, large or small, who understand the challenges associated with managing documents.
• is involved in the Little Bit Therapeutic Riding Center.  This is a wonderful program program in Woodinville, WA, that uses horses and riding to aid all sorts of disabled people.
• Former AIIM Chair signed himself Eumaeus in his email to me, and wisely explained that Eumaeus was the goat herder in the Odyssey.  I had originally thought it might be the newest free agent signing for the Phillies.
• from Lockheed Martin joined the list and even bought a copy of .
• (who is also an AIIM ECM Practitioner!) is from Capataris.  Check out their FREE GUIDE to justifying your Document Imaging project.
• from Docuvantage was one of our first viral goaters. Check out their web site for information on Improving the Way You Manage Your Documents and Information.
• And first to join the goating campaign was incoming AIIM Chair from Databank IMX.  Bob wanted his gift to recognize Billy Murphy, a colleague at Databank IMX.  Billy is suffering through a second bout with cancer and he is not doing well.  Bob notes that Billy "is fighting it with every once of energy in his body.  He’s done so much for our company, and others, that this is the least I can do to remember Billy at this time of year.  Somebody else will benefit and grow through these donations and perhaps there’s another Billy Murphy out there someplace that will carry on his tradition of helping others and always smiling in the face of adversity, no matter what challenges life throws at them."  I've met Billy on a number of ocassions, and he is an awesome guy.

I thought I would share a presentation I recently did for an IBM/Filenet group of end users in my own state, Virginia. The presentation can be found at .

For those of you who haven't been to slideshare before, there are a variety of other presentations I've done as well. Feel free to use any of the stats (with attribution to AIIM) and also free to forward the links to anyone in your organization who might be interested.

And lastly, don't forget our viral goating campaign for the holidays!

As a follow-up to my post about viral goating, my kids reminded me that I wasn't always this cranky. They reminded me of a not very well known fact about the President of AIIM. Actually from before I was President of AIIM. I will admit it here: I am the author of a children's book.

Well maybe not quite a children's book. Stories based on the bizarre things my kids have done around the holidays. Kind of like a Jean Shepard style (although I would never pretend to be that good). Shep was the guy who wrote "A Christmas Story," the movie that runs every holiday with the kid with the glasses who was always on the verge of "shooting his eye out." So I figured, "hey, let's throw this into my Viral Goating campaign."

So here's the last part of my deal. If anyone wants to order my strange book from Amazon (could there be a more special gift for that special someone in the ECM community?), . It's been so long since I did the book, I can't remember exactly how much royalty I get from each sale. But we'll put whatever we get into another goat or part thereof. And maybe move the ranking of the book up from #3,408,091 on the amazon list.

And if you didn't see the original viral goating post, GO HERE.

Join my viral goating campaign. And let's see if we can all do something in addition to buying and selling hardware and software.

I will admit to being a bit cranky this year about the holidays. We're not all that different from others in the document, records, and content space. It seems like this time of year one is surrounded by next year budgets, closing out the year, family obligations, and a host of other things that come crashing down. But things seem unusually out of control this year.

A colleague of mine -- Peggy Winton -- was feeling similarly out of control and offered something to all of us at AIIM. "Don't worry about gifts this year. I will give a goat to a family in a developing country through Heifer International, and in doing so, will celebrate my friends at AIIM and do something good at the same time." And not put everyone through the challenge of trying to find that perfect gift.

I liked this idea and decided to do similarly. And then I thought, "Hey, what if we started some sort of viral effort on this blog? What could we accomplish? How many potential goat givers are there out there? Are there any legs to this blog thing?"

And then I also thought, "This blog is one of the most widely distributed and read blogs out there in the records, document and content management space. We have over 2,100 regular subscribers. Maybe I/we can leverage that visibility to promote my viral goating campaign."

So here's the deal.

Give a goat ($120) and get visibility on my blog.

I'll do a post right before Christmas to all our subscribers with links to all my goat givers. I'll also list my goat givers for the month of January in the premium space on the right column usually reserved for my foolish book reviews.

So let's have at it and test the viral power of this blog thing for something worthwhile.

Buy a goat.

and tell me that you've done so, how you want the gift to be recognized (I'll trust you!) and the link you want me to promote.

I will list your link in my posts the week before Christmas and in the right nav of my blog for January. Thousands of impressions for only $120!

So let's give it a whirl and maybe all feel a little less cranky. Let others know about this campaign by posting a link on your blog or e-mailing the post link.

Buy a goat. Get thousands of marketing exposures for whatever purpose you want.