Pattern Finder

Gilbane Conference: Day 1 Keynote

On Day 1 I attended four sessions: the keynote, The Analysts Debate Content Technologies (since I served on the panel I had to make that one), New Search Technologies and Web 2.0, and The Business Case for Enterprise Blogs and Wikis.

Moderated by Frank Gilbane, the analyst panel at the keynote consisted of Tony Byrne (CMS Watch), Dan Farber (Editor-in-Chief, ZDNet), Gene Gable (President, Gable Industries), Charlene Li (Principal Analyst, Forrester Research), and Bill Rosenblatt (Editor, DRM Watch). Frank asked each analyst to talk about three key technologies they saw as important over the next year to 18 months. The nominees were:

Bill Rosenblatt

1. Enterprise DRM outside of repositories
2. Content rendering (flexible displays, Microsoft Origami-like appliances)
3. Cross-media publishing

Tony Byrne

1. Inventorying current technology
2. Usability
3. Records management lite

Gene Gable

1. Server-based page production
2. Customers as publishers
3. Forthcoming big Apple iPod [Apple response to Origami?]

Charlene Li

1. Syndication/aggregation
2. User participation (wikis/blogs)
3. Users doing their own CMS

Dan Farber

1. Standards such as JSR 170
2. Syndication
3. Lightweight solutions

There were some interesting common themes. For example, users are the new focus, given their ability to create their own content via blogs and wikis, and the need to increase usability. (Nice to hear, given that that point is the major theme of my forthcoming report on content management). Also, enterprises want some lighter versions of things: records management and some CMS systems are being seen as too onerous and expensive. Finally, distributing content via syndication is key.

I'd wax on more, but I need to stop typing and get to the conference, Day 2.

Gilbane Conference: Day 0

I arrived yesterday in San Francisco to attend the Gilbane Conference on content management. (For you history buffs, it's being held in The Palace Hotel, the hotel where President Warren G. Harding died).

As I got in around 3:30, I was able to hustle over and catch a presentation by Tony Byrne on ECM Suites -- one of those presentations that occurs before the conference officially launches, which is today. Tony did an excellent job of portraying all peculiarities of suites -- that they offer a modicum of integration, but usually less than enterprises want. He also gave multiple definitions of ECM, noting that there really wasn't a market consensus -- with someone from the audience piping up, "It stands for 'Expensive Content Management.'"

From a selfish point-of-view, since I've been grappling with the definition of ECM in the report I'm writing, it's nice to see someone else struggle with the term as well. It helps me realize it's not just me -- which does cross my mind from time to time.

I Miss the SoftPro Bookstore

Boy, I miss the SoftPro Bookstore. For techies who live on Boston's North Shore, it was a great place to go to get books on cutting edge tech subjects: software, hardware, Linux, programming languages, board design, you name it.

For a number of years it was based in Burlington, MA, right across from the Burlington Mall. It was dedicated solely to high tech subjects, and the staff was stable, so you could go in and say, "I need a good introduction to Linux," and staffer would reply, "Well, we have three that fit that bill. What OS's are you used to? One is good if you're coming from Windows, and the other two are better if you have a Unix background."

Programmers from out of town would come into the bookstore -- often because they were attending a course at a nearby tech company -- and literally salivate. I remember watching a fellow from Montana buy $400 worth of books, pointing out, "We sure don't have bookstores like this out in Montana."

Taking the Eraser to the Paper... er, Excel

You can tell we're in digital world when employees are altering information not by erasing it on paper, but by hiding columns in Excel. The New York Times ran a story today called "N.Y.S.E. Executive Tells of Altering Documents to Hide Grasso's Full Payout."  In it, Dale B. Bernstein, the former Executive Vice President for Human Resources at the N.Y.S.E., said,

she was instructed by her boss, Frank Z. Ashen, to hide, in an Excel spreadsheet, two columns of data that provided additional detail about Mr. Grasso's 1999, 2000 and 2001 compensation. She said she hid the columns with the bonus and total compensation information in documents that were provided to the compensation committee, but included that information in documents given to the finance department, which had to make the appropriate bookkeeping entries.

"I clicked 'hide column,' " she said in the deposition, which was provided by a person close to the case.

The digital trick here was to refer to the hidden compensation in a footnote ("In 1999, Mr. Grasso will receive 50 percent of his variable compensation in the capital accumulation plan.") but make sure the compensation committee didn't see the $18 million in bonus money as they scanned down the spreadsheet columns in their meeting.

So if you're into fraud, embezzlement, or otherwise shading the truth, throw out your Liquid Paper, and make sure you know all the esoteric tricks in Excel.

Web Analytics: The Times They Are a Changin'

The Web analytics sector is changing every which way. On Monday, Coremetrics announced that it had purchased IBM's SurfAid business, and on Tuesday Omniture reported it was filing for an IPO. This following WebSideStory's acquisition of Visual Sciences on February 1 and Unica's purchase of Sane Solutions on March 7.

It's been a busy 65 days.

So what does all this mean? In a nutshell, the big players are getting bigger, and the little players are falling by the wayside. I was surprised by the Visual Sciences acquisition, but kudos to WebSideStory for bringing it off.  As I noted in an earlier post, Jim Rose of Sane Solutions had been trying to sell the company for at least a year, so that was less of a surprise. Coremetrics buying SurfAid was also somewhat of a surprise to me, but SurfAid has always been kind of a stepchild within IBM. The forthcoming Omniture IPO has been one of the worst kept secrets within the industry -- the only real question was when. Between the VC funding and Omniture replacing virtually all of senior management within the past year, the signals were clear. So the score is two surprises (Visual Sciences, SurfAid) and two non-surprises (Sane, Omniture).

At this point, the only major Web analytics company standing on the sidelines is WebTrends. Based on conversations with Greg Drew, I figured WebTrends would have dived in by now -- but it hasn't. Which either means a shoe is about to drop, or the competition has bagged all the good stuff, and WebTrends is going, "Oops...".

Trying Out the Reunion Wiki at JotSpot

Sometimes technology moves so fast it even amazes me -- and I'm not easily amazed.

But first, a bit of background. For the past five years I've served as a Vice Chair for the Williams College Alumni Fund. The Vice Chairs serve as a steering committee for the fund, setting fundraising and participation goals, as well as trying to figure out ways to get alumni more involved.

Usually, Vice Chairs are the star fund raisers. However, I'm the black sheep in the family. I'm the techie. Consequently, myself and several others have nudged, suggested, and otherwise tried to guide the Alumni Office on how they can use technologies such as Web sites, data mining, and blogs to make their jobs easier. (With limited success, I might add. Williamstown, MA is approximately 3,000 miles away from Silicon Valley, and it shows.)

Bo Peabody's "Elements of [Entrepreneurial] Style"

I just finished Bo Peabody's book, Lucky or Smart?: Secrets to an Entrepreneurial Life, and I highly recommend it. For those not old enough to remember -- or who don't live in the Berkshire hills of Massachusetts -- Bo Peabody started Tripod.com, a site for college students that eventually offered Homepage Builder, a precursor to today's wikis. Even though Tripod was based in the non-Silicon Valley location of Williamstown, MA, it had the right karma, and Bo sold the company in 1998 to Lycos for $58 million. The book talks about lessons he learned during his Tripod days, as well as the days since when he's been a VC.

It's not your typical business book -- it's sort of like Strunk and White's Elements of Style for entrepreneurs. The book is short (62 pages, I finished it in half an hour) but full of pithy points. The chapter headings should give you a feel for it. They include:

• Lucky or Smart?
• Entrepreneurs are B-Students. Managers are A-Students.
• Great Is the Enemy of Good
• Start-ups Attract Sociopaths
• The Best Defense is a Gracious Offense
• Don't Believe Your Own Press. In Fact, Don't Read.

Some quotes: