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    « July 2011 | Main | September 2011 »

    August 10, 2011

    The AIIM Conference is Back -- Managing Information in the Social, Local and Mobile Era

    AIIM Conference 2012

    Managing Information in the Social, Local and Mobile Era

    March 20 - 22, 2012 in San Francisco, CA

    With content and information management entering a new era of social, local and mobile technologies, it has created a hyper-connected world where people have more avenues than ever to access, create and share information. That's why AIIM is proud to debut an exciting new conference for a new era: AIIM Conference 2012. 

    The Must Attend Content and Information Management Event

    Attend the AIIM Conference 2012 to discover how to embrace the opportunities and mitigate the risks of this bold new era. Not only will AIIM Conference 2012 help you see what the future of information management looks like, it will provide a level of interactivity and engagement that will change your impression of what a conference can be. 

    2.5 Days That Raise the Bar on What a Conference Should Offer

    • Inspiring keynote presentations delivered in an engaging, rapid fire format
    • Unparalleled networking with peers as well as the best and brightest in content management and social business
    • Pre-arranged introductions to the leading solution providers that best match your requirements
    • Insightful breakout sessions to help you overcome roadblocks and execute your information strategies
    • Opportunities to achieve professional certification through pre-conference training courses

      Session Tracks Tailored to Your Requirements

      When it comes to content management and social technologies, one size doesn't fit all. The AIIM Conference 2012 features three distinct conference tracks, each tailored to a set of similar usage scenarios.

      • Engage: Use content and social technologies to share knowledge and engage with customers
      • Process: Automate and optimize the flow of content associated with operational and administrative processes
      • Control: Manage information throughout its lifecycle in order to minimize risk and comply with regulations

      Sign up now to receive news and information about the conference.

      We look forward to bringing you a totally new and unique event.

       

      Posted at 09:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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      August 09, 2011

      Reflections on the blessings (??) of ubiquitous connectivity

      Photo I just got back from vacation. 

      We go to perhaps the most boring place in the world for vacation, but that's how I like it. (Just FYI, while at the beach I stumbled upon an article I wrote about our beach from 12 years ago while doing a Google search. Proof that electrons live forever - caution, kiddies - but that's another story. Here's the link; scroll down to a "Traveler's Guide to Buxton."

      The place is called Buxton, NC, on the beach at Cape Hatteras.  Whenever they give hurricane directions, they always refer to our beach.  

      Stumbling across the article and thinking about our 30 years at this strange location, it occured to me that my time at the beach has been characterized by three main phases - phases that map directly to the revolution going on in information management.

      Phase One (1981-1995) - What is Connectivity? - There was no cable on the island, and it was too far for a TV signal, so there was no TV. The small hotel we stayed in did not have telephones in the room, and of course, we had no cell phones. So if you needed to make a call, you walked up the road to a pay phone.  And -- get ready kids - there were no portable computers and no email. 

      Phase Two (1996-2009) - Selective Connectivity - I now had a laptop and a cell phone. But there was no cell phone coverage. Much to my wife's chagrin, I would check e-mail at the beginning, middle, and end of the week and this was considered a huge intrusion on "our" time.  For the first part of this period, I checked email via a speedy modem; toward the latter part, by roaming around the neighborhood, holding up my PC like a divining rod in search of water, look for a wifi signal to mooch off. In either event, it was a pain, thereby providing a natural gate on frequency of checking email. Cable TV arrived on the island, much to the relief of the kids who normally had to play Board games with us or -- God forbid -- read.

      Phase Three - Ubiquitous Connectivity -- AT&T actually works now on the Outer Banks, better than it does in the DC area. Wifi has arrived at the individual cottage level. Between the 6 people staying in our house this year, there were 6 smart phones, 2 MacBooks, and 3 iPADs. On my iPhone I have Kindle books I am reading, music I am listening to, and Audible books I listen to while bike riding. I am not strong enough to resist the lure of business connectivity when it's availability on the very device that I am using to help relax. The place we love has a Facebook site, as does the awesome .

      Social. Local. Mobile. This is a mantra I first picked up from a Kleiner Perkins presentation by John Doerr and have used many times in my own presentations. It is transforming everything we know or do relative to information management and relative to business and organizational processes. And yet it still seems like many organizations are stuck in Phase Two, thinking that they can choose to exist like we were all back in the era of Selective Connectivity. 

      Note that I am not sure that all of this is always personally good - the days of Phase One seem so peaceful in retrospect - but that doesn't really matter. It is what it is. And I am afraid that organizations that do not embrace the social, local, and mobile revolution and adapt their information management strategies to meet the revolution head on will be left in the dust.

      How does your web site look on my mobile device? How many of your core customer processes have you ported to mobile? Are you taking advantage of the geo-location capabilities of mobile devices? Are you actively monitoring what is being said about your organization - and responding to same - on social networks? Are you planning for the day -- soon -- when your employees will be working outside of a traditional office on devices that are not PCs?

      -----

      We'll be discussing these issues at our virtual conference on September 8. Sign up today.

       

      Posted at 06:02 AM in Compliance and records management, e20, ecm | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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      August 08, 2011

      7 Ways to Thrive - Not Just Survive - In a Hybrid Records World

      The reality of juggling both digital and physical data – a so-called "hybrid records environment" – requires an integrated approach in order to reduce risks, costs and inefficiencies. But the million dollar question is how you do it.

      I'll be doing a webinar on Aug. 18, 2011, at 2 p.m. ET with Richard Reese, chairman & CEO of Iron Mountain. We'll share industry trends, best practices and actual examples to help you become a more effective information manager. 

      Check it out - it's free. Registration is here.

      Registration Link.

      Posted at 05:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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      Mark Your Calendar for AIIM Social Business Conference September 8

      Don't miss the AIIM Social Business Virtual Conference on September 8th, 2011 to get answers to these questions:

      • What types of business processes can benefit from using social technologies?
      • Are records and information managers able to achieve meaningful governance in a social world, or are they just getting in the way?
      • Will conventional content and process management applications be able to adapt to a new generation of always on, always connected information workers?
      • How can you develop an effective social business strategy?

      Register Here - http://www.aiim.org/Events/SOE-Conference

      Follow the event on Twitter using hashtag #sbcon11

       

      Posted at 02:42 PM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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      August 04, 2011

      In case you missed it the first time, Info360 is no longer the "AIIM" Show

      The End of an Era - and the Beginning of Another...

      [I'll be on vacation for the last week of July and first week of August. While I'm gone, I thought I would reshare some of our more popular blog posts from earlier this year.]  

      [Note...for a summary of who we are and why we do what we do in the wake of the end of our run with the "AIIM" label on the Questex show - see this post.]

      The Info360 event taking place from March 21 – 24 in Washington, DC will be the final “AIIM” Show to bear the AIIM name.  This is the culminating activity of an evolutionary course we began 10 years ago when we sold the event (known as the AIIM International Exposition and Conference) to Advanstar/Questex.  It also marks the successful transition to the Info360 name for the event, a transition initiated by Questex 3 years ago.

      Our action at that time was based on the belief that: a) large scale horizontal trade shows were changing rapidly; and b) so too was our industry.  We believe that the past decade has borne out the foresight of AIIM and our Board of Directors from that decision a decade ago.

      When we sold the Show, our objective was to create a revitalized association with 4 key functions:  1) networking for peer-to-peer engagement; 2) small scale vertically and geographically niched events, both in-person and virtual; 3) market research centered on the experience of users with content, document, and records management technologies; and 4) a standardized curriculum and structure for industry training.

      The success of this strategy is reflected in a few data points:

      Networking -- We now have 72,200 basic members and 5,300 professional members, up significantly over 2009. This is the first year since we sold the AIIM Show  (when professional membership was embedded in Conference attendance) that we have topped 5,000 professional members.  Our professional members are represented by 34 local chapters that, in 2010 hosted a cumulative total of 160 local events.

      Niched Events -- Our Content Management Seminar Series (often called “the Roadshow”) continues to set the standard for effective local events in both the US (run by AIIM) and in the UK (run by a partner organization, Revolution). This multi-city series generated a total of 5,841 registrations in 2010; it is  a major source of “new blood” into the user membership. We also host virtual events every week (37 total in 2010), in both North America and in Europe.  In 2010 these webinars yielded over 20,000 registrants; a new record.

      User Focused Research -- Our Industry Research program published 11 titles in 2010, including 5 in the popular Industry Watch series. This information, provided at no cost to end users, is underwritten through sponsorships. There were 10,139 downloads of our Industry Watch reports in 2010, and the research was featured in a long list of industry press reports and presentations. We convened a major industry initiative in 2010 headed by market strategist and best-selling author Geoffrey Moore focused on defining the role of content management in the emerging world of Systems of Engagement.

      Training -- In the training arena, we passed the 17,000-student mark in 2010. Over 42% of our training business is now on-line, reflecting the migration of professional development to the web. 3,200 students took 4,511 courses in 2010 alone.  In 2010 we launched our 7th core training competency, focused on the role of SharePoint in an ECM strategy, and just this month launched an 8th course focused on Capture.

       

       

      Posted at 10:48 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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      August 03, 2011

      Google+: A great new potential tool, or just another darn thing to check?

      Like many of you, I have waited for a long time for Google to enter the social realm. Well, they’re in it now, and it’s called Google+.

      The first question to be answered before moving on to thinking about the implications is What the hell is Google+ and why should I care?

      Here are a few articles to get the basics…

      Google Plus and the Social Media Moonshot

      Google+: First Impressions

      Google+ a clean, intuitive mobile experience so far

      So with that as background, here are my initial impressions about Google+, particularly in the context of associations. In thinking about this, I asked 60 early Google+ users for their impressions, and those are reflected in the data that follows.

      1 -- Google+ appears to be winning the PR battle with Facebook.

      Based on a very superficial level of usage so far, I am stunned at how receptive my little set of early adopters are to throwing Facebook under the train.

      Here was the question I asked…Based on what you know right now or have heard, how do you think Google+ compares with Facebook relative to the following...(% indicating Google+ better among active Google+ users)

      • 85% -- Privacy
      • 89% -- Security
      • 93% -- Portability of your data
      • 93% -- Flexibility of different messages to different audiences
      • 87% -- Suitability for business networking

      Perhaps even more impressive – even though the sample is small – those who are not currently using Google+ responded in roughly the same percentages.  Given the intensity of the anti-Facebook feeling among some, it comes as no real surprise that Google+ is being given the benefit of the doubt.  But by this big a margin?

      I got this comment from an association colleague – “It reminds me when Facebook was getting its start. MySpace was getting more and more complex as users were adding too much content to their pages. Facebook came along and it was easier to use because of the crisp and clean pages that had a standardized layout. Then, Farmville happened and all of the other apps. The news feed becomes an app circus as I see how my friends have leveled up to 'master farmer.' The reason I got away from MySpace was because of all this ridiculous content and now it's happening to Facebook. Then Google+ comes along and it's back to crisp and clean content pages. I think it will become a serious contender to Facebook.”

      There clearly is an opportunity for Google out there.

      2 – However, Google+ has a major switching cost problem.

      If Google+ had been introduced 2 years ago, it seems like a no brainer to say that it would have been incredibly successful.

      But it’s not 2 years ago.

      I remember the great enthusiasm that greeted users of Google Wave a few years ago. It was rolled out in a similar way – with a beta to the “in” crowd. The functionality – while a bit dodgy – was really impressive. However, the user interface required a great deal of patience (to say the least). And more importantly, when you tried to collaborate on anything, there wasn’t anyone to collaborate with. Because only the “insiders” had received the invitation to the beta.

      Facebook has a gazillion users (technical term).  I’ve been asking my kids and their friends over the last few days whether they have heard of Google+.  Not a peep of recognition. Without the kids this will never take off, no matter how much more compelling the Circles concept is to old people like me who don’t like that Facebook exposes my nephew’s bodily noise jokes to my business colleagues.

      It is going to take more than insiders to get to the sufficient critical mass that will actually get people to switch. As one of my mini-survey respondents said, “It will take G+ more than a pretty UI to lure whole communities (especially non-IT) away from FB. What would be the compelling reason to move, if FB has been ‘good enough’ to achieve the success it has now?”

      3 – The rich get richer.

      A great site – Google+ Statistics – has emerged to keep us in the loop in terms of the sheer numbers of what is going on out there. There are two pieces of depressing news for me in this.

      First, the list of the “most influential” is the same list you always see on every single new social tool that comes down the pike. I love these guys, but it would be nice if things weren’t somehow so hard-wired to wind up with the usual list of “influencers.” There is a bit of interesting variation in the trio at the top of the list are Mark Zuckerberg, Larry Page, and Sergey Brin. I want to be present when they get together to celebrate their 1-2-3 ranking.

      The second bummer? 86.3% of Google+ users are male. As if we aren’t all nerdy enough.

      4 – Initial reaction positive, but not overwhelming.

      Here’s what my sample of early adopters said about the potential for Google+ relative to communicating/networking with EXTERNAL audiences (members, constituents, customers)?

      • 25% -- Terrific
      • 47% -- Good
      • 18% -- OK
      • 10% -- Terrible

      Not bad, but there seems to be an attitude (with good cause) of wait and see relative to using Google+ for serious networking.

      5 -- The name of the game initially seems to be peaceful co-existence with existing tools.

      Which brings me to my last point. Who will Google+ potentially hurt the most?

      The answer seems to be that Facebook (surprise) is the biggest target.  But the most depressing thing is the feeling that Google+ will be a complement to Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn rather than a replacement.

      Here is my question.

      Imagine that one year has passed. What would be your guess as to how significant Google+ will be relative to how you communicate/network with members, constituents, or customers?  (e.g., "outside" audiences)

      • Google+ will replace Facebook (24%)…will replace LinkedIn (7%)…will replace Twitter (14%)
      • Google+ will play a complementary role to Facebook (53%)…to LinkedIn (53%)…to Twitter (47%)
      • Google+ won’t have a role relative to Facebook (14%)…relative to LinkedIn (34%)…relative to Twitter (33%).

      This comment perhaps captures things best: “LinkedIn and Facebook already divide the space pretty clearly: LinkedIn for business, Facebook for personal relationships. It's going to be hard for G+, as a ‘me too’ offering, to insert itself into this landscape. Google has faltered with Google Wave and Google Health, this could easily be the third misstep in a row. We're in the fad/hype phase. It may fade and people will go back to LinkedIn and Facebook, in which they have invested so much time building their connections.”

      So there you have it. My advice? Get an invite to Google+. Play with it. See how the next stage of open access works out beyond the public beta. Keep an open mind, but don’t jump on the bandwagon quite yet.

       

      Posted at 12:20 PM | | Comments (2) | TrackBack (0)

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      August 02, 2011

      The Year for CMIS

      8 reasons why 2011 will be the year of CMIS

      [I'll be on vacation for the last week of July and first week of August. While I'm gone, I thought I would reshare some of our more popular blog posts from earlier this year.]  

      In December 2009 I published an article explaining 8 reasons why CMIS will transform the ECM industry (http://aiim.typepad.com/aiim_blog/2009/12/8-reasons-why-cmis-will-transform-the-ecm-industry.html ). In May 2010 the initial version of the CMIS standard was released by OASIS. In the last few months I have been asked by several people of what my opinion is now, looking back at my thought-provoking predictions that I made in this article one year previously. So it’s time for me to reflect on these statements and to state 8 reasons why 2011 will be the year of CMIS:

      1 -- CMIS is the SQL for Content Management.

      I’m still convinced that CMIS will have a similar effect on the ECM market in the same way SQL did on the database market 30 years ago. Some people criticize that up until today SQL hasn’t been a perfect standard and that it is still quite tricky to build portable SQL applications. That’s true, but the standardization of SQL was good enough to ensure a healthy business for thousands of ISVs dealing with structured data in the application space. So in light of this, I don’t expect CMIS to be 100% perfect as a standard, but even as an 80% standard it would suffice in creating a huge impact for all ISVs having to deal with large amounts of unstructured data.

      2 -- CMIS is not just another standard.

      One year ago there were some questions raised regarding the adoption of CMIS in the standard products of several of the larger vendors. Some critics noted that the software giants would not be readily committed to a standard that would allow their products to become more interchangeable. I agree that the large vendors have no appeal for a CMIS-backend standard that will give their customers greater freedom and independence away from their proprietary systems. However the big guys have to accept (and they do) that the point of no return has passed with the release of CMIS V1.0. After 6 months since the release of the initial version of this standard, we now see that most of the market leaders such as IBM, Microsoft, Open Text and Alfresco, have already released their CMIS-compliant products on the market. None of them are promoting their efforts particularly well and at least one software-giant made a bad job of its first attempt of implementing CMIS, but that’s another story…

      3 -- CMIS is already well accepted by the customers.

      One year ago a survey was conducted among a group of AIIM-members, in which only 15% of them acknowledged that CMIS would be an important step for them in the future. 12 months later in a recent survey made by Generis (www.generiscorp.com), 77% of the participants said that they were very much aware of CMIS and 42% of the participants acknowledged that this standard would be a key factor of their ECM projects in 2011. Although this poll is probably not a representative survey, these figures are very promising and I’m very optimistic that the adoption of CMIS will grow rapidly within the next year.

      4 -- No more lock-in to one ECM-vendor thanks to CMIS.

      During 2010 I had many discussions with customers who were very upset with their proprietary ECM-infrastructure vendors. Almost every customer aspires to the vision of CMIS helping to separate business applications from their ECM-infrastructure. Just one year ago this was merely a vision, but today we are already seeing early adoption of CMIS from our own customer base with all the signs of continuing in this direction. A few weeks ago, we signed a significant contract with an insurance customer. They were looking to replace their mission-critical ECM-infrastructure from a proprietary system developed by a leading vendor and decided on an open source alternative based on the CMIS standard. I expect that we’ll see many similar projects from 2011 onwards, especially when the first success-stories of larger CMIS-implementations start hitting the street, which will probably occur towards the second half of 2011.

      5 -- With CMIS the ECM infrastructure will become a commodity.

      It’s now well accepted in the marketplace that the core functionality of an ECM-infrastructure is a commodity and that ECM vendors cannot differentiate themselves any further on the backend of the business. That’s probably the most important reason why the large vendors will lose even more market share, while competing against CMIS-based open source alternatives, such as Alfresco in 2011.

      6 -- CMIS-based applications will become the differentiator.

      2010 was the year when the large ECM-infrastructure vendors added CMIS compatibility to their ECM platforms. During 2011, we will see a significant number of customers who will update their ECM-platforms with a new release so that for the very first time there will be a customer base ready for CMIS-applications.

      I expect that in 2011 we’ll see new offerings in the marketplace promoting CMIS-based business applications and ECM application frameworks ready to run on different ECM-platforms. Already today there are first offerings available by early adopters in this evolving market like Generis with their Cara product ( http://www.generiscorp.com/cara.html ) and WeWebU with the OpenWorkdesk suite of applications available as open source (http://www.openworkdesk.org ). I think this is just the beginning of a growing market, which will attract new ISVs during the next year. However don’t expect too much: I think we’ll see some nice successes from the pioneers in 2011, but it will take until 2012 before we would see any significant revenues generated out of a CMIS-based application business.

      7 -- CMIS will help to create a 360° view of your customer.

      During 2010, I changed my mind regarding the need for federating different repositories with CMIS. Many customers want to federate exactly two repositories and that works fine, but I don’t see a large demand for a CMIS-based standard software federating many different repositories at once. So I agree 100% with Craig Rhinehart from IBM that 2011 will be the year when “Intergalactic Content Federation Is Exposed As A Myth”. (http://craigrhinehart.wordpress.com/2010/12/03/top-10-ecm-pet-peeve-predictions-for-2011/). I think that even with CMIS it is quite simply impractical trying to use content federation for every conceivable use case. Customers don’t want to spend all their dollars on maintenance costs and so they will be looking more closely at consolidating their ECM infrastructure, instead of federating everything together.

      8 -- CMIS 1.0 is just the beginning.

      The critics of the current CMIS 1.0 were correct to say that this first version of the new standard is the lowest common denominator. Many proprietary API’s offer much more functionality than available with CMIS today and sometimes it’s a little bit tricky to work around the limitations of CMIS to support different repositories with one CMIS-based business application. But nevertheless ISVs are used to dealing with such limitations of open standards. CMIS V1.0 is a huge step into the right direction and already a lot of use cases can be accomplished.  The CMIS TC at OASIS has already decided to work in 2011 on the next versions of CMIS. In my opinion there will be enough pressure from customers, analysts and ISVs to push the larger vendors further towards CMIS V2.0, even if they decide not to promote this development to the open market. I expect that in 2011 we’ll see that even vendors with no presence in the CMIS TC, such as Hyland and Autonomy, will probably need to rethink their product strategy to incorporate support for CMIS in the future.

      The point of no return has passed and I’m looking forward for a review of this article in December 2011.

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      The author: Stefan Waldhauser is the founder and CEO of WeWebU Software, a specialist in Enterprise Information Management. With the WeWebU products, enterprises can access their complete information infrastructure via a unified, process-oriented working environment. WeWebU operates internationally. It cooperates with leading ECM/BPM vendors and consulting firms and is an IBM Advanced Business Partner as well as Alfresco Solutions Partner. He can be reached on Twitter () or via LinkedIn -- .

      AIIM background information on CMIS.

       

      Posted at 10:38 AM | | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0)

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