In preparation for our panel on Content Globalization Workflows on Thursday November 30th at our Boston conference, we have created a survey to gauge how organizations are dealing with increasing market demand for localized content.
We hope to see you at this session. But whether you join us or not, contribute to it by answering our survey questions. We'll publish the results in a blog entry after the conference, including the results from our audience survey. Give us your input and you'll be eligible to win a free conference pass for one of our future conferences!
Here is a short URL to the survey you can share with others: tinyurl.com/yjy694
Here's what we'd like to know:
1. Which issue is your most pressing business driver for providing localized content to your customers?
2. Who is responsible for purchasing translation software in your organization?
3. What is the most difficult challenge within your localization processes?
4. Do you have one or more content/document management systems in house?
5. Do you have one or more translation management systems in house?
6. If you do not have a translation management system in house, who do you work with to manage your translation processes?
7. If you have both a content/document and a translation management system in house, are they integrated?
8. If the systems are integrated, select the most appropriate description of the integration.
Posted by Leonor Ciarlone at 09:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
The recent Web 2.0 conference predictably accelerated some prognostication on Web 3.0. I don't think these labels are very interesting in themselves, but I do admit that the conversations about what they might be, if they had a meaningful existence, expose some interesting ideas. Unfortunately, they (both the labels and the conversations) also tend to generate a lot of over-excitement and unrealistic expectations, both in terms of financial investment and doomed IT strategies. Dan Farber does his usual great job of collecting some of the thoughts on the recent discussion in "Web 2.0 isn’t dead, but Web 3.0 is bubbling up".
One of the articles Dan links to is a New York Times article by John Markoff, where John basically equates Web 3.0 with the Semantic Web. Maybe that's his way of saying very subtly that there will never be a Web 3.0? No, he is more optimistic. Dan also links to Nick Carr's post welcoming Web 3.0, but even Carr is gentler that he should be.
But here's the basic problem with the Semantic Web - it involves semantics. Semantics are not static, language is not static, science is not static. Even more, rules are not static either, but at least in some cases, syntax, and logical systems have longer shelf lives.
Now, you can force a set of semantics to be static and enforce their use - you can invent little worlds and knowledge domains where you control everything, but there will always be competition. That's how humans work, and that is how science works as far as we can tell. Humans will break both rules and meanings. And although the Semantic Web is about computers as much (or more) than about humans, the more human-like we make computers, the more they will break rules and change meanings and invent their own little worlds.
This is not to say that the goal of a Semantic Web hasn't and won't generate some good ideas and useful applications and technologies - RDF itself is pretty neat. Vision is a good thing, but vision and near-term reality require different behavior and belief systems.
_______________________Posted by Frank Gilbane at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords: Semantic Web, Web 2.0, Web 3.0
In preparation for our opening keynote at our Boston conference in a couple of weeks, we have created a survey to help fuel the debate on the future of content management. The list below is what we are starting with. Of course we won't have time to address all these questions. That is why we want you to tell us which of them are the most interesting to you. To vote, simply go to the online survey. There is also a spot on the survey where you can add questions we haven't listed. One lucky voter will win a free conference pass to one of our future events. By the way, you don't have to attend the event to vote, and we, and others, will be blogging about the results of the questions.
Here is a short URL to the survey you can share with others: tinyurl.com/uo3f8
Cast your vote!
_______________________Posted by Frank Gilbane at 09:31 AM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
A story on page 1 of the Nov 10 Wall Street Journal reports that the SEC is re-evaluting interpretation of Section 404 of the SOX rule, which dictates internal review and external auditing of financial reporting systems.
Citing pressure from "the nation's business lobby," the SEC is taking steps to allow a "more flexible reading," and intends to "propose guidance . . . to help companies and auditors interpret Section 404 in a way likely to save them time and money." The new guidance is expected next month.
See "Business Wins Its Battle to Ease A Costly Sarbanes-Oxley Rule" for details.
Posted by Mary Laplante at 04:52 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
I know I'm not alone here when I say that content management projects are HARD to do right. I've been doing a lot of thinking about this subject – particularly around the project management aspect of it. All is rosy at the beginning when you put together a master project plan, but it seems that within a very short time, you're heading towards scope creep, over budget, way over schedule, and stress! There must be a better way.
Over the span of my career (the last 15 years or so), a project manager has become standard fare for any corporate IT project. As I'm sure many of you recall, however, there was a time when having a person dedicated as a "Project Manager" was seen as an unnecessary frill. Thankfully, that's changed (in most places).
When you embark on something as complex as a major content management initiative, not only do you need a dedicated project manager, you need a highly skilled and experienced project manager. That's another issue.
The good news is that organizations like the Project Management Institute (PMI) have their PMP certification, which I believe sets a really good foundation for project managers. But even PMP certified individuals who have managed other types of system implementations or software development projects may struggle with a content project.
So what's different about content management projects?
Continue reading "Managing CM Projects: There must be a better way!"
_______________________Posted by Rita Warren at 08:51 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
$25 billion.
That's the cost of compliance in the U.S. Securities Industry for 2005 according to the Securities Industry Association (SIA).
59 percent.
That's the percentage of respondents to a SearchStorage.com poll that did not know if they were in compliance because they could not figure out what they have to do.
$15 million.
That's the amount Morgan Stanley was fined for failing to produce tens of thousands of e-mails during SEC investigations from December, 2000 through through July, 2005.
No wonder compliance issues today = fear. They don't have to.
Compliance is about recordkeeping. The core issue is surprisingly clear -- focus on the lifecycle of paper and electronic communications – how information is created, routed, managed, accessed and archived.
Join us tomorrow, November 9, 2006 at 11:00am EDT for my panel discussion with Omtool CTO Thaddeus Bouchard and HP Financial Services Solutions Manager Joseph Wagle to discuss how to make compliance practices a seamless part of your business processes. Register here.
_______________________Posted by Leonor Ciarlone at 02:05 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
Not as manipulative a headline as you might think! Google announced it had acquired Jotspot today, and Socialtext announced "SocialPoint", a wiki for SharePoint, on Monday. The timing of these announcements may be accidental, but Socialtext and JotSpot were very competitive and have countered each other's releases before. In any case this is big news for the enterprise wiki world, and good news for many, including the other enterprise wiki vendors - at least in the short term since the market is so young. This will obviously be a hot topic in our Collaboration & Enterprise Blogs & Wikis Track in Boston at the end of the month, especially in the Enterprise Wiki CEO/CTO Panel where Socialtext, MindTouch, Traction, CustomerVision, and eTouch will debate - maybe Google can join them... Enterprise wiki vendors Atlassian and SilkRoad will also be there. Note we are again hosting an "American Idol" type contest along with CMS Watch, but this year it is an "Enterprise Wiki Idol" instead of a CMS Idol. This is a free event in the demo area. More information including the judges and contestants is here.
There is a lot of commentary on this week's announcements. See what our friends at Between the Lines, Dan Farber and David Berlind have to say, as well as Don Dodge (Microsoft), and Ross Mayfield (Socialtext).
_______________________Posted by Frank Gilbane at 07:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (1) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
In a October 27th entry on Dave Mainwaring's Publishers' SIG at www.printplanet.com/scripts/lyris.pl?enter=publishers-sig, someone named Chet Ensign wrote: "I have just read the press release at www.adobe.com/aboutadobe/pressroom/pressreleases/200610/102406Digital
Editions.html for Adobe's beta release of Digital Editions. It is an eBook reader that uses PDF, XHTML, Flash and includes digital rights management support, subscriptions, ads, etc.
He continues: "I have not seen anything like a groundswell of excitement in publishing around eBooks so I don't see this as a major development. In a review on ZDNet, Ryan Stewart wrote: "Users have been slow to take to eReader solutions, but I think technologies like the New York Times reader and Digital Editions are going to change that." I don't agree. I think people are not adopting ereaders because they add nothing new; they still just move print to the screen - where I personally just turn around and reprint so that I can read it in print.
"What do others think? Is there more excitement around eBooks than I have been seeing?"
I wonder the same thing...
Somehow I think iPod when I read in Adobe PR of the new software:
"With native support for Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) as well as an XHTML-based reflow-centric publication format, Digital Editions delivers an engaging way to acquire, read, and manage content, including eBooks, digital magazines, digital newspapers and other digital publications. Initially available as a free public beta for Windows®, Digital Editions will support Macintosh systems as a universal binary application, Linux® platforms, as well as mobile phones and other embedded devices in future versions."
I've always thought that the big problem with eBooks was/is the name, with the implicit connotation that we should be reading lightweight paperbacks on heavy digital readers... I now refer to ‘e-content’ rather than e-books. There’s a lot of digital information — most of it much shorter than book-length — that makes more sense to be consumed digitally than it does to be printed before consumption.
Somehow I also think about pending competition between Adobe and Microsoft on file formats, the long rumored battle of the PDF versus the XPS (although Wikipedia informs us: "XPS is viewed as a potential competitor to Adobe's portable document format (PDF). XPS, however, is a static document format that does not include dynamic capabilities similar to those of PDF.")
Microsoft doesn't seem too hot on eBooks right now. Microsoft Reader was last updated in November, 2002 (the Tablet edition), although I was surprised to find today on the MSoft website: "Microsoft Reader Catalog of eBooks: search over 30000 free and retail ebooks, with direct links to downloading free content and samples...www.mslit.com/default.asp?mjr=FRE
However, looking more closely at the site, one finds that most of the eBooks are for sale, not free at all.
The International Digital Publishing Forum (IDPF, formerly the Open eBook Forum), the trade organization that speaks for the eBook "industry" (if that is not too grand a term) reported earlier this year that eBook sales increased 23% in 2005. Not bad, until one realizes that this represents under $12 million in revenue, and that unit sales were flat. As in all things digital, the result led publishers to increase title output by 20%, year over year.
The Electronic Text Center at the University of Virginia Library does offer 2100 free eBooks (old titles, out of copyright -- etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/)
Still, it turns out I hadn't bothered installing Reader on this 6-month-old computer -- I'm doing it now -- to find out if I get any more pleasure out of reading Dickens' Tale of Two Cities on a computer now than I did (not) four years ago (etext.lib.virginia.edu/ebooks/lit/DicTale.lit).
As my friend Crad Kilodney once wrote: "It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of Light, it was the season of Darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair, we had everything before us, we had nothing before us, we were all going direct to Heaven, we were all going direct the other way -- in short, it was a Monday."
_______________________Posted by Thad McIlroy at 04:08 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
I bet that question made a lot of you cringe and start down a guilt spiral of rationalizations about why your web site isn’t really quite what you wish it was. If you have a bad web site, it’s because your organization is producing a bad web site. And no one who is visiting your site cares why. They don’t care about the bickering between marketing and IT over web site control. They don’t care about the 18-month argument about who gets a link on the homepage, or about the 30 years of history which makes it “impossible” for all the various programs and offices in your organization to cooperate in order to create the integrated web presence that your site visitors long for. They don’t care. But, everyday they are clicking away on your site, frustrated, trying to do business with your organization and trying to get information from your organization. And your organization continues to dither. By rationalizing low quality, you are prioritizing your organization’s bad habits over your customer’s and constituent’s needs.
For a business or an organization with a clearly articulated mission, the intent and purpose of its web site(s) should be obvious—expressed most clearly as a high quality web product. The mission should also be front and center for those producing the organization’s web site(s)- expressed as a coherent set of strategic policies and tactical standards for web site product development. But, we all know this is seldom the case. Web site quality is frequently at the mercy of some set of ill-thought-out, status quo web production processes and a lack of strategic oversight by senior management. All this for what is most likely the first point of contact for individuals interacting with your organization.
Continue reading "When Web Sites Go Bad"
_______________________Posted by Lisa Welchman at 04:35 PM | Permalink | Comments (0) | TrackBack (0) | Keywords:
Every organization, regardless of size or market, shares a common set of goals: generate and grow revenue, satisfy customers, and operate at optimum levels of efficiency. In recent years, executives and boards of directors have put another critical mandate on the plate for management: regulatory compliance ranging from Sarbanes Oxley to SEC mandates to HIPAA. This mandate is daunting. The number and scope of worldwide laws, regulations and standards is staggering and continues to expand. Overlay geographic and industry-specific regulatory environments, and it’s easy to understand the frustration and concern within all global companies.
Implementation deadlines, audits, and high-profile non-compliance prosecutions have created a “culture of fear” in organizations that is counter-productive to standard corporate goals. Many regulations are complex, subject to interpretation, and lack best practices.
A culture of compliance strives to bring "order to disorder" by focusing on three tenets for overcoming corporate challenges: focus on people, process and technology. Shared, enterprise-wide understanding, business process optimization, and infrastructure content technologies are some of the key components to this approach. Join us on Thursday, November 9, 2006, 11:00am EDT for my panel discussion with Omtool CTO Thaddeus Bouchard and HP Financial Services Solutions Manager Joseph Wagle to discuss how to make compliance practices a seamless part of your business processes. Register here.
_______________________