CMS Selection Workshop
Last week I was a panelist in a jboye08 session called "Running a Web CMS procurement." Jarrod Gingras from CMS watch moderated the panel that also included Graham Oakes, Piero Tintori, and Søren Sigfusson. It ran for 90 minutes and, quite frankly, we barely scratched the surface. I must admit, I share the blame because I used my 10 minutes just to ask the audience a bunch of questions (see slides). Fortunately, I will have an opportunity to do justice to the topic when I present my "How to Select a Web Content Management System" workshop at the Gilbane Conference in Boston next month on Tuesday December 2nd.
Over the years of doing CMS selections, I have refined my approach to address the specific challenges that are unique to web content management. In particular:
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The huge number of products to choose from and the lack of a clear market leader
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The different sources of content technologies: commercial, open source, SaaS, and custom
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The flexibility of these platforms
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The importance of usability
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The spanning of technical and organizational concerns
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The different uses of web content management software
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Web 2.0 and now Web 3.0
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The fact that the platform winds up being a component of a larger solution that includes implementation, process, management, and support
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And the wide range of processes that organizations use to manage their content.
I have written extensively about selection on this blog here, here, here, here, here, here, and here. Here is a chance to put it all together in one (hopefully) coherent session. If you are already registered for this workshop, please feel free to email me (seth "à" contenthere.net) with any specific things you want me to cover. If you are not already registered, you can do so so here. You can even get a free iPod Touch if you go for the "all in" Conference Plus package.
If you are going to be in town for the Gilbane Conference but will not be attending any of the workshops, you should consider going to the CM Professionals Fall Summit, which is also on Tuesday. I will be on an expert panel talking about the content lifecycle but I will be sure to save something for the workshop :)