Gilbane Conference, Day 1

I attended and spoke on an analyst panel today at the Gilbane Conference. The conference started out with a panel discussion among:

• Jim Howard (CEO, CrownPeak)
• Jared Spataro (Senior Product Manager, Office Servers, Microsoft)
• Detlef Kamps (President, RedDot)
• David Nelson-Gal (Senior VP, Engineering, Interwoven)

The question that Frank Gilbane posed was, "What are the top 3 technologies that companies should look at over the next 12-24 months?" The one everybody mentioned was "integration," with "improving the customer experience" and "search" as runners up. Jared Spataro from Microsoft said, "SharePoint 2007," which elicited a large laugh from the audience.

Other interesting items were Jack Jia (formerly CTO of Interwoven, now CEO of Baynote), demonstrating how  Baynote can improve search results and modify web site navigation by reacting to user behavior on the web site. Another way to put it is web analytics instantly fed back into the content management system.

There was also a session with CEOs/CTOs from enterprise wiki companies (Socialtext, CustomerVision, eTouch Systems, and Traction Software). Competitive intelligence and project management still seem to be the most popular applications.