infoarch

Last up at the Content Marketing and Webediting conference is Andrew Davis . His keynote was about less content with more success. I really enjoyed listening to this talk. Lots of examples that I can hardly share in a blogpost. I'll link to the presentation as soon as it's published somewhere. Key messages from his talk were: We should create content brands, not branded content. It must relate to a subscription. Build a relationship with your audience before they need you. Content brands build relationships, relationships build trust and trust drives revenue. How do you do that? Think like a tv executive. He had 5 secrets to achieve this (of which I missed one... sorry, it's been a long day): get rich, focus on a niche think in fractals, explore your niches exploit content holes … missed this one (will look it up and update this later…) create a hook That wraps up a great conference, although I'm biased because we organize this conference. Happy...

Micha Coster is de derde keynote tijdens het congres contentmarketing en webredactie . Zijn verhaal gaat over overtuigende en virale content. Hierbij wat 'notes' van zijn verhaal. We nemen ongeveer 600 beslissingen per dag. Wat zijn de mechanismen onder de keuzes die mensen maken? Witte jas (autoriteit): als iemand in een witte jas wat zegt, dan nemen we dat serieuzer Meer=belangrijker: als meer mensen het doen, dan doen we het sneller Sympathie: mensen zeggen ‘ja’ tegen personen die ze kennen en aardig of sympathiek vinden Deze punten kun je ook toepassen op content. Denk aan: review sites, sites om vakanties te boeken (met review en doelgroepencategorieën), wat experts over producten zeggen en ‘x anderen kochten ook’. Tenslotte gaat hij nog in op de vraag wat content viraal maakt? Daar is onderzoek naar gedaan. Virale content ont Maakt gebruik van 'word-of-mouth' (want het is overtuigender en gerichter) Vertelt een verhaal Speelt in op emot...

Second keynote at the Content Marketing and Webediting conference is by Noz Urbina about going omnichannel. Here are my notes of his talk. Do you know the difference between multi- and omni-channel? Noz will answer this question during his talk. Overt selling has given way to problem solving. Sweeping statements have given way to conversation-like message. (Rose) Good example of omni-content: cards Google is showing based on searches. E.g. showing the opening times of a supermarket when you Google for it, instead of showing you a link to the site of the supermarket. There are more and more channels and there's more and more need for personalization of content. We’re realizing content is the strategic business asset, not the deliverable that wrap it. Content is vital across channels. We must: fix the content (make it media-agnostic; make is reusable, well-modelled; apply semantic metadata; apply audience, applicability and context metadata to decide where and when to ...

I’m sharing some of my notes from the Content Marketing and Webediting conference I’m attending today. First up is Margot Bloomstein about content strategy using slow content for long-term change. How to give people the right content in the right context? Margot’s definition of content strategy is: planning of the creation, delivery, and governance of useful, usable, brand-appropriate content. Margot’s talk is structured around the following ways to slow down your users with content: 1. Editorial style and structure Points to tracking personal data. Lots of uptick around phone and apps to share and capture personal data (Fitbit and the like), but they don’t happen to good at long-term change. On the other hand 10Q is a good example of using content for long-term change. Content affects experience… and the user’s perception it. Frustrating activities feel slow, but if the activity make happy it does not feel slow. 2. Discover and comparison-style content type...

Many companies are looking into social tools for their internal organization. Lots of others just select what related companies have chosen. Hoping this is the right choice. As with selecting content management systems, many struggle to select a social platform. There are so many tools out there and they all say they can help you support internal networks. How to choose the right one? Is there a right one? Does the success of a tool elsewhere mean it will also be successful in the company you work for? The Social Now conference in Porto (June 26-27), organized by Knowman , addressed these questions. And it did so in a unique way. Basically the idea was to have social tool vendors present based on a concrete company case that wanted to move forward in knowledge sharing, idea management and collaborative project work. The vendors were asked to share their approach in 20 minutes and then an expert panel helped the company ask the right questions to the vendors. Many brave vendo...

Many organizations have a hard time with selecting the right technology for their business. There is a huge need for expert support here. The company I work for helps select Content Management Systems for instance. Decision makers wonder what to choose. "Should I focus on a platform that is good at content management? Or should I focus on social first? What is the right approach?" Not many people are experts in this field. Not many people have to select new technology very often. Organizations do this every 3-5 years. So when they do, they get nervous and find it hard to oversee the field they’re looking at and the decision they’re making. They don’t want to invest in technology that will become irrelevant in just one or two years. They want to make a sustainable choice. Interestingly, there is now a conference that helps decision makers (and their helpers) do just that. There are basically two kinds of conferences: one focuses on business (users, adoption, business ca...

The company that I work for, Entopic , recently organized the Web editor’s conference (Dutch: Congres Webredactie) . It was the first conference in Holland (and the world?) for web editors. Dutch posts about the conference can be found here . The tweet stream can be found here (#webred11) and all the presentations here . I’ll share some highlights from the conference with you here. The Future of Content The conference started out with a talk by futurist Gerd Leonhard about the future of content. He gave an interesting talk about the past, present and future of content. He started in the broadcasting era and move to what he calls the broadband era; the time we are experiencing now. He stressed this is happening now and if we or institutions don’t get on board we/they will be disrupted. I liked they way he pointed to the increasing influence of technology on our lives, but also stressed the extreme importance of human ingenuity. Of course, Leonard also addressed the post pc statements...

The company I work for, Océ , has a clear track record as a sustainable company. Way before it became the hot topic it is in these days. Every year we have a Sustainability Week to focus even more on this topic. During this week an interesting whitepaper was released. It is about 'All in Balance. Océ's eco-efficient and eco-effective approach to analog and digital document'. Reference is made to a paper I wrote with others about (personal) document processes. I hope you enjoy the whitepaper. If so leave a comment below or here .

Breakout session by Toby Ward (and blog ). Gives a general overview of Sharepoint old and new versions. "Sharepoint does a lot of things, but does very few things very well." (CMSWatch) Search is ok, not perfect. Content management is basic, simple, but some need heavier stuff. Some clients have site sprawl. Although not many in the room seem to have this problem. Good integration with Microsoft tools, although sometimes work is needed. Sharepoint can be extensive. The above-mentioned remarks relate mostly to Sharepoint 2007. Not many using Sharepoint to power to the corporate intranet. More on department and workgroup level. Now over to Sharepoint 2010. Release date is May 12. (A guy in the room won the Canada cap for getting that right.) Toby says: don't migrate right away. Wait for the first service pack to be released. Parts of Sharepoint 2010: sites composites (mashups) insights search content communities Biggest improvements...

Recently I was honored to co-write a paper with Olha Bondarenko and Ruud Janssen . It is titled: ''Requirements for the Design of a Personal Document-Management System" and was published in JASIST . I think Olha's work in general and this paper in particular is very valuable for the whole information, content and document management industry.  Because it truly tries to understand how knowledge workers use information and documents. That knowledge is translated into requirements/principles for a document management system. But you decide if Olha/we succeeded! I hope you like it. This paper was written in the context of Olha's PhD research - which was finalized recently! - about personal information management. Her PhD defense will be on February 11 (at the Technical University in Eindhoven, The Netherlands). I hope to be there and will blog/tweet about it. Tags van Technorati: information management , knowledge management , document management

Just wanted to point you to the following post. Recently two colleagues of mine were interviewed about their work in rolling out Sharepoint in the company I work for . It's a nice story and their approach is thoughtful. I'm curious if your Sharepoint implementation is different. If it is could you explain in which way or point to your post describing it? Tags van Technorati: sharepoint , collaboration

Introduction Most companies have loads of tools to help employees share and store information. Because we have so many of these tools, it can be hard to decide where to share and store my information. The company I work for also has this problem. I was asked to explain the differences between the tools and help our employees decide where to share and store information. As promised, I would share this with you . This is what I came up with. Please keep in mind this is focused on our situation. But I think and hope this could be of help for other companies as well. If so, let me know. If not, also let me know! Situation Every employee within searches, creates, collaborate and stores information. Several methods and solutions support these processes. However many employees wonder where and when to share and store certain information and what solutions are provided to support the above-mentioned processes. This post gives our guidelines on storing and sharing information using these...

Ran into this interesting news via Michael Sampson's blog : EMC started a company that will focus on personal information management. I've always wondered why the large enterprise information management vendors never adequately addressed the personal information space. I found they basically said: use the enterprise system, even if it doesn't fit your personal way of working. Will Decho, the new company, truly address this gap? I'm really curious if they will and will follow this step. Also refer to EMC press release and Decho site (which basically tells you Decho now 'only' sells a backup service). Tags van Technorati: knowledge worker , knowledge management , content management , information overload

For some time know I've been looking around for a blog platform with which you can post internal and external posts. (I wrote about it here and here .) I'd like to be able to write a post and decide to post it internally and/or externally from one platform. (There's a caveat though, when you have an external blog post, which you would like to extend for internal use.) Well, it looks like this has become possible with the new version of SocialText (3.0). I haven't tried it yet, but Robert Scoble's interview with Ross Mayfield (with demo of '3.0') seems to point in that direction. Am I correct? What I also really liked about the new SocialText was the online/offline feature! Great thinking and essential stuff for the mobile workforce. It also integrates with Sharepoint, SalesForce, etc. For me, SocialText is a true inspiration for current (usually cloggy) corporate Intranet's and maybe the foundation of the intranet of the future. Tags van Te...

I have a pile of articles on my desk categorized as "someday/maybe". Meaning (following GTD) I will read them "someday" when I have time. Well I recently ran through the stack and found an article that I should have read before, although it's from 2006. It is an "Ethnographic study of collaboration knowledge work" by S.L. Kogan and M.J. Muller ( IBM Systems Journal, vol. 45, no. 4, 2006 ). It was a really interesting read. For one, to see how far we have come. But it also stressed some issues in collaboration that are still very hard to support digitally. To begin with the last point. This article gives an interesting Table (table 3) with an overview of "Attributes associated with work processes". Or, in another way, it summarizes the tension knowledge workers live in. These tensions are: - unstructured <> structured - static <> dynamic - ad hoc <> predefined - one person <> multiperson - single use <> re...

Well Google Sites was just launched and there's all kinds of debate on whether it will compare to Microsoft Sharepoint. Here are two interesting ZDNet post by Mary Jo Foley and David Greenfield . And a (long) post by Sarah Perez on ReadWriteWeb . Her posts also addresses what to think of Google trying to circumvent the corporate IT department. W.r.t. Sarah's post: I understand what she's saying and I share many of her thoughts. I would like to add what I wrote before: what does Google Apps and Sites imply for corporate Information Management ? What I do find, though, is that her post is written in a very defensive way, as if she is an IT department employee (as I am myself...). I miss a more opportunity-driven approach to your post. Of course Google sites isn't going to compete directly with Sharepoint, for now. But where could this take us anyway?

Nice demo of how Cocreate integrates structured and unstructured information! The CAD model is encapsulated in a Word document and a task is added to it. This can be seen in Sharepoint and in Cocreate tooling. I was wondering: Is it also possible to view the actual CAD model/file in Sharepoint (not encapsulated in Word)?

Relating to this post by Column Two , which is more about web content structuring/un-structuring, I'd like to ask you the following questions. But first I'll give you some context. Introduction Product research, development, engineering and manufacturing is an interesting process. To certain extent it is structured and follows agreed upon work flows. On the other hand much is done in an ad hoc and unstructured way. An important part of product research, development, engineering and manufacturing is information management. To design a product information must be gathered, structured, distributed, searched, etc. Over time a clear description of this product (part) is stored, versioned, communicated, etc. These facets of data, document, information and knowledge management are also sometimes very structured, while in other parts of the process totally unstructured. Most companies manage structured data, documents and information fairly well (in PLM and ERP systems). Most inf...

CMSWire posted that IBM updated it's Classification Module. It "automates the categorization of large volumes of enterprise information" and integrates with the FileNet P8 CMS platform. Well it doesn't automate it upfront: it gives suggestions and learns from corrections. You can find more information on this module here . This is interesting stuff. Neatly organizing our structured information is taking up most of our time in organizations. But what do we do with all our corporate unstructured information (- assuming we manage this information centrally). This Classification Module can help us sort it out and check our taxonomy and classification. One great use of such a tool is when a company worked on a certain topic, left the topic for some years and wants to come back to it. Where do you start reading and sorting through the information? Having this Module suggest a classification of that information could then be a big help. I was wondering: Is this Module based...

Interesting post on the ECM market by CMSWire . I was mainly triggered by the question marks that were placed by the future of IBM and ECM. It says: CMS Watch founder, Tony Byrne, characterizes the situation as: “Workplace Web Content Management seems lost at IBM… That doesn’t mean current licensees should stop using it, but it does mean that Big Blue customers should not automatically implement WWCM without carefully considering other alternatives.” How much further behind can IBM afford to fall in the web content management market? This is also what I see happening around me: companies are considering alternatives. Gartne r also pointed in this direction, as I posted earlier .