Digital Landfill

For those who haven’t seen it yet, we have a brand new survey available on Enterprise 2.0 technologies – the first real quantitative analysis I’ve seen of Enterprise 2.0.  You can access the survey (90 pages!) by going to the link below; all that is required is registration.

Market IQ – Enterprise 2.0 

While I’m at it, thought I would remind readers of some of our “greatest hits” from previous surveys and presentations.  No charge for any of them; enjoy.  Some of them are on the AIIM web site (free, but requires registration or log-in) and some are on Slideshare.net.

– 3,546 views

AIIM Recommended Practice (ARP1-2007) -- Analysis, Selection, and Implementation Guidelines Associated with Electronic Document Management Systems (EDMS) -- (I know the name is terrible, but these are standards people, not marketing people!  But seriously, this is a terrific publication.)

– 1,787 views

– 1,500 views

Market IQ – Content Security – 1,293 views -- 50+ pages.

– 1,174 views

– 891 views

State of the ECM Industry – 591 views

The AIIM Market Intelligence group has released its Market IQ study "Enterprise 2.0: Agile, Emergent and Integrated”. 

The study of 441 end users, underwritten by CoreMedia, Day Software, EMC, OpenText, Socialtext, and SpringCM, found that a majority of organizations position Enterprise 2.0 as critical or important to business goals and objectives, but that few organizations have a clear understanding of Enterprise 2.0.  The single greatest factor impacting attitudes, adoption rates and definitions is corporate culture. 

To download the FREE AIIM Market IQ go to: http://www.aiim.org/article-industrywatch.asp?ID=34464

AIIM is hosting a Special Webinar on Thursday, March 27 at 2:00 PM EDST for organizations interested in the study results. Register for this FREE webinar, presented by the report authors, by going to http://www.aiim.org/webinar-events.asp?ID=4192.

Per my colleague :  “Enterprise 2.0 is on the minds of most organizations.  44% of respondents indicated that Enterprise 2.0 is imperative or significant to corporate goals and objectives.  Another 27% positioned Enterprise 2.0 as having average impact on business goals and success.  That’s the good news.  The bad news is there is still much confusion in the market concerning Enterprise 2.0.  Of the organizations polled, 74% stated they have only a vague familiarity or no clear understanding of Enterprise 2.0.”   Market confusion was further evidenced in the study by the failure of respondents to popularly select a common definition of Enterprise 2.0. 

One reason for this chasm between appreciation of impact and a lack of understanding of Enterprise 2.0 stems from the strengths of Enterprise 2.0, low-barrier, low-cost deployment.  Many organizations are experimenting with facets of Enterprise 2.0, but few take a holistic strategic view to deployment.

The report, which contains over 50 pages of commentary and 71 distinct data points, includes some surprising insights.  According to Dan Keldsen, report co-author and AIIM Market Intelligence Director, “Our research showed that senior management is as much behind the drive for Enterprise 2.0, as end users.  This is a far different reality than popular market belief that Enterprise 2.0 is predominately being ushered into organizations through purely bottom-up user-based implementations.”

While age had some influence on opinions and attitudes concerning Enterprise 2.0, the study found that corporate culture was a far more influencing factor on organizational adoption and success with Enterprise 2.0. 

This AIIM Market IQ was conducted during January 2008, and was administered through an online survey instrument.  A total of 441 end users participated in the survey.

An advisory panel provided opinion and guidance on issues such as the construction of the market survey and general frameworks for the publication.  Members of the panel were:

• Patti Anklam, Knowledge Management consultant specializing in networks and collaboration, author of “Net Work; “
• Stowe Boyd, author of the blog /Message and an internationally recognized authority on social tools and their impact on media, business and society;
• Steven Mandzik, Innovation Consultant for Jasmah Consulting, providing support and consultation to the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) around Enterprise 2.0 usage in the US intelligence community;
• Andrew McAfee, Harvard Business School professor credited with coining the term Enterprise 2.0 in 2006;
• Eric Tsui, Professor of Knowledge Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and also ex-Chief Research Officer, Asia Pacific, Computer Sciences Corporation.
• David Weinberger, Fellow at the Harvard Berkman Center for Internet & Society, co-author of "The Cluetrain Manifesto" and author of "Everything is Miscellaneous.”

To download the FREE AIIM Market IQ go to: http://www.aiim.org/article-industrywatch.asp?ID=34464

AIIM is hosting a Special Webinar on Thursday, March 27 at 2:00 PM EDST for organizations interested in the study results. Register for this FREE webinar, presented by the report authors, by going to http://www.aiim.org/webinar-events.asp?ID=4192.

According to our "State of the ECM Industry" survey (free downloads available by going HERE), end user spending plans are focused on the records, documents, and processes.

At the top of the list of spending plans for the next 12-18 months are workflow/BPM (45% planning a spending increase), document management (45%), and records management (43%).

Search also ranked highly in the results, with 1 in 9 end users planning on spending "much more" on these technologies in 2008. 

All of which is consistent with the anecdotal evidence we hear from end users as well as what we saw at this year's AIIM International Exposition and Conference.

It was interesting this year to note the attendance pattern at the AIIM training pre-conference sessions at the Show and how consistent the attendance was with the above priorities.  For the first time, we offered our Practitioner training in all six areas as a one-day pre-conference session.  The top sessions?  ECM (150+ attendees), ERM (100+) and BPM.

Over the next few weeks we'll be packing our bags for the annual round of seminars.  The cities are listed below -- we hope to see you there.  AIIM will be focusing on this theme of content control vs. content access -- and more specifically "the SharePoint Effect."  Click HERE for details.

April 2    Houston, TX (Renaissance Houston)
April 9    Denver, CO (Marriott Denver City Center)
April 16  Los Angeles, CA (Sheraton Anaheim)
April 23  San Francisco, CA (Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport)
April 30  Bellevue, WA (Meydenbauer Center)
May 7    Dallas, TX (InterContinental Dallas)

Got a blip from a friend from 50 person company looking for an IT director. Responsible for 3 other people and particularly looking for someone who can shape strategy as well as implement it. Forward any interested people to my .

Subscribers will recall our holiday campaign related to the Heiffer Project. 

When my e-mail feed went berserk during February, one of the past random posts it sent out was the one on viral goating.  The feedburner feed going berserk is the bad news.  The good news is that it triggered some additional participants.

Bex Huff bought a llama, not a goat...Bex helped write the Stellent product, wrote a book on it, and also blogs on occasion:  http://bexhuff.com/.

MaryAnne Sinville from Attivio also bought two goats -- thanks so much!  Attivio provides a universal repository for both data and content, and a real-time alerting system that connects relevant answers directly   to your corporate processes.

Speaking of feedburner, I am switching the email subscription service to feedblitz.  One of the problems was the random emails from the old system.  But the good news is that the new service will aggregate all of the AIIM blogs into a single weekly email (hopefully reducing email clutter at least a bit).  So bear with us while we make the change -- it should start showing up this week under the name "Digital Landfill."

Christine Herbert of the IT Knowledge Exchange has any interesting post on Bill Gates' keynote at last week's SharePoint conference that's worth reviewing.

She notes...

Most interesting to me personally was Gates’ discussion of the various levels of sophistication companies have when it comes to SharePoint deployment and usage. Ascending in complexity, they are:

Personal Sites (My Sites)
Collaboration Team Sites (unstructured content)
Departmental Solutions (structured and unstructured)
Enterprise Data Repositories (highly structured)
Web Portals (corporate intranets and websites)

Part of the reason that I find the post so interesting is that it dovetails with the results we found a few weeks ago during our "State of the ECM Industry" survey (free downloads available by going HERE).

Our survey says a couple of things that reinforce the themes in the keynote:

1. In a remarkably short time, SharePoint has established a very large footprint.  33% say they have current MOSS implementations and another 20% are on the way in the next 12-18 months.  For large organizations, the numbers are even higher.
2. As noted in the keynote, users are still looking at SharePoint in terms of personal sites, team sites, and intranets (see chart below).
3. At the same time, though, a strong 60% are looking to it for document management functionality.

A theme not touched upon in the keynote or the post is that many organizations are just winging it when it comes to SharePoint and ECM integration.  When asked whether there are specific plans for such integration, only 15% of those surveyed responded positively.  Almost 50% say they have no plan and  have no starting point for developing one.

Given the fact that the digital landfills that engulf most organizations were the result of deploying powerful content creation tools in the first place without thinking through the end destination, that's a scary thought.

AIIM will be focusing on this theme of content control vs. content access -- and more specifically "the SharePoint Effect" -- in our upcoming seminar series.  Click HERE for details.

April 2    Houston, TX (Renaissance Houston)
April 9    Denver, CO (Marriott Denver City Center)
April 16  Los Angeles, CA (Sheraton Anaheim)
April 23  San Francisco, CA (Hyatt Regency San Francisco Airport)
April 30  Bellevue, WA (Meydenbauer Center)
May 7    Dallas, TX (InterContinental Dallas)

My colleague Dan Keldsen has posted his two conference sessions from last week -- on social networking and on innovation -- on slideshare.  --

Well I have to hand it to the TIBCO folks (people from the industry may recall that Staffware was acquired by TIBCO a while back). 

Check out the web site for "Greg the Architect."  I don't know others will find this as bizarre and hilarious as me, but worth a look. 

Finally an ECM/BPM-ish campaign that could be viral!  63,000 views of the most recent episode!  And somebody with a sense of humor about all this stuff we all do (I may be a bit cynical after sitting through one too many sterile 10 pt font powerpoints at the Show last week). 

Here's a link to the -- .  Enjoy.  There are others.

Kudos to David Meerman Scott for spotting this.

Looking for more information on PDF/A and PDF/A training?  Contact at .

AIIM announces the introduction of a new training course on PDF/Archive. Beginning in April, this two day training focused on PDF/A (ISO 19005-1) and its use as a file format for archiving and preserving electronic data will be available as either web-based, public or private class offerings. This course will enable the person attending to speak more knowledgeably about PDF/A as well as know how and when to apply the use of PDF/A in their organization. With the ever growing number of electronic documents being used today, PDF/A will allow organizations to preserve their critical documents without the need of printing them for scanning prior to storing.

AIIM is the leading authority for PDF standards responsible for the majority of the PDF family of standards which includes PDF, PDF/E, PDF/UA, PDF Healthcare and PDF/A. The concept of PDF/Archive began as an AIIM standards committee and went directly to ISO for publication. Our experience in developing the PDF standards gives AIIM the expertise necessary to be able to provide reliable, accurate training for the PDF/Archive standard.

Day 1:

Introduction to  PDF/A 
Digital  Preservation 
PDF/A: The  Standard 
Preservation  Metadata
Day 2:

PDF/A Indepth -  Part 1 
PDF/A Indepth -  Part 2 
Using and Creating  PDF/A Files 
PDF/A  Implementation Issues

Contact ( or ) for more information and to inquire about a public class near you.

If you are like most organizations, the answer is "not so good."

When we asked end users to evaluate their effectiveness in management electronic information on a scale from 1 ("terrible") to 10 ("excellent"), not too surprisingly there is a lot of concern out there.

Over 50% of organizations would give themselves a grade of 5 or less -- hardly a ringing endorsement of the state of information management.

Some of this is due to increased awareness -- in the past, organizations simply weren't that aware of how bad their "digital landfill" had become.  Even small and mid sized organizations are now realizing that their are tangible costs -- process costs, risk-related costs, litigation costs, and lost productivity -- from information management systems that are often no more than a set of shared drives with randomly named and unmanaged folders and files.  Files with names like r:/executive/presentations/2008/johns stuff.  You get the idea.

For more information on the state of information management in organizations, check out our annual state of the industry survey results -- the download is free -- at THIS LINK.