Mar 18, 2007
I have started a new company. Content Here is a vendor neutral consulting and analyst firm specializing in content technology selection and architecture. While I will continue to focus on open source technologies, I have expanded my scope to be able to recommend proprietary software and SaaS where appropriate. Read here for a list of services.
The decision to leave Optaros was a hard one. As the seventh employee, I am proud to have helped build a great company and to have been part of such a talented team. Optaros is doing a tremendous job implementing Next Generation Internet applications for clients, and will continue to grow as a premier systems integration firm and thought leader (check out some great employee blogs: John Eckman, Erik Smartt, Sebastian Wohlrapp, Lukas Kahwe Smith, and Hugo Schotman). My interests are more focused on strategic technology consulting and analysis.
My goal is to keep doing what I've been doing: writing, publishing, consulting, and helping to make good companies even better with strategic technology decisions. I will continue to collaborate with companies like CMS Watch to complement their broad market perspective with my specific areas of expertise. Plus, I intend to publish a couple of reports on my own. If you want to learn more, please drop a note to seth@contenthere.net.
Mar 14, 2007
Bryant and I just posted the latest installment of The Malcontents. This week we hosted Toby Ward from Prescient Digital and James Robertson from Step Two Designs to talk about the promise, successes and disappointments of corporate intranets and what can be done to improve matters. In addition to crossing many time zones (GMT-8, GMT-5, GMT+11) we covered a lot of ground:
- The value that a good intranet can bring
- The current average grade of an intranet
- The amount of interest that companies have in improving their intranet
- Tools and how best to use them
- Why companies fail in their intranet initiatives
Will the much awaited MOSS 2007 solve all that? You will have to listen and find out!
Mar 14, 2007
Stefano Mazzocchi, who has been called a "serial community builder" and has lead a few ASF projects, once told me that the only true measure of the strength of a community is how it endures a change in leadership. Well, the Bricolage community is about to find out how strong it is. David Wheeler who, under his company Kineticode, has been the driving force behind the Bricolage project, has taken a full time job with Values of n, to help build a new product called Stikkit.
In an email posted on the Bricolage list, David pledged to stay engaged with the community and remain a committer on the project, but said he will not be able to devote as much time to developing and extending the platform himself. He put out a call for others to actively contribute and step up into a leadership role. While the Bricolage community has a critical mass, David's energy has really kept the project going. He answers most of the questions on the list and takes ownership of most of the operations and enhancement ideas. In these cases, you never know whether having one really active member enables others to be more passive or whether that active member is just filling a vacuum. It looks like we are about to find out.
There are a number of companies that use Bricolage. Each one has a clear motivation to keep the community energized. It remains to be seen whether they will invest their time to do it. I have been watching Bricolage for quite some time and I hope that we see a new leader grow out of this change.
Mar 06, 2007
I frequently hear the terms "Proof of Concept" (POC), "Prototype", and "Pilot" used interchangeably. This is unfortunate because they mean different things and serve very different functions. In fact, I think that if you want to successfully implement technology, you should be doing all three. The good news is that, at least to some level, you probably are. But the extent to which you are benefiting from POCs, prototypes, and pilots depends on the level of consciousness and deliberateness you practice. By "deliberateness," I mean having an understanding of purpose. I use "consciousness" to say that you pay attention to the process and are aware of the results. More on that later.
Proof of Concept
A Proof of Concept (POC) is a small exercise to test a discrete design idea or assumption. Software developers tend to do POCs instinctively when they experiment with technology. An example of a POC is testing whether one technology talks to another. To be deliberate, a POC should clearly state what it is to be proven and to what degree. For example, it may not be enough that a message can be transfered from system A to system B if the complete solution calls a specific level of performance and reliability. You may need to test under certain conditions. POC's often take the outward form of a simple "Hello World" but that may not be enough if the system needs to support an extended character set.
The results of a POC need to be measurable so that they can be fed into the decision making process. Your decision should be based on thresholds like a performance level that is acceptable. Thats the consciousness part. It may not be enough to for someone to just say "yeah, we tested that and it works." You want the results of the test to see how or how well it works. A POC may involve secondary research if you trust the source. Maybe another group tested the same concept. If their process was as rigorous as yours, you may be able to use their results. There are also user interface POCs that explore the usability of a specific UI control or visual metaphor. These need to be designed and tested with the same degree of thoroughness.
Prototype
A Prototype is a more fleshed out system that tries to simulate the full system or at least a material part of it. Prototypes are used to test the viability or usefulness of a system or subsystem. You plunk an intended user of the projected system in front of the prototype and he/she/it (the user might be another system) should be able to visualize the experience of using the complete system. The completeness of the prototype depends on what you are testing. For example, you might want to build a three dimensional physical model to test an innovative new shape for a telephone handset. If there is question as to whether the person can hear a speaker which has been designed in an unconventional place, the prototype may need a speaker. Or possibly, you could do a POC of just holding a speaker in that position and testing audibility in different conditions. Pretty much all manufactured goods go through a prototyping process because that is usually the best way to figure out the feasibility and cost of manufacturing the product. For software, prototypes can have varying degrees of fidelity from visual mockups to working software.
You need to be deliberate in defining what you hope to gain through building the prototype and the minimal level of completeness that it would take to get that information. There is some disagreement as to whether a prototype should be constructed to be thrown away or whether it should be the initial building blocks of the complete system. I think it depends on a number of things. You should invest as little as possible in the prototype otherwise the sunk costs might make you stick with a bad idea longer than you should. If that means building it out of a technology which is agile to use but unsuitable for full scale deployment, then use the easy technology with the expectation of throwing it away. However, if you are dead sure on the core idea and you just want to prototype different variations, it may be more practical to build the core technology framework and then build prototypes off of that.
If you go through the hassle and expense of building a prototype, use it. Get it in front of your intended audience and listen to what they say. Don't just listen. Hear them. If you are not doing to do that, don't call it a prototype. Call it an iteration.
Pilot
A Pilot uses the full production system and tests it against a subset of the general intended audience. The reason for doing a pilot is to get a better understanding of how the product will be used in the field and to refine the product. Maybe there are some open ended questions about scalability that only a live audience using the product can answer. If you are doing a Pilot (or Beta) for a reason other than to build hype, make sure that you target the right group of people and you are prepared to collect the right metrics. You may consider prepping your pilot group to evaluate the full breadth of the application and give them channels to provide feedback. If there are particular areas of the application that you really want to test, call attention to them. Determine what kind of quantitative metrics you will be collecting and have the tools and time to analyze them. If you are going to do a Pilot you should be prepared to act on the information that you collect and fold refinements into a general release. You should probably have a process to prioritize enhancements ideas and a threshold for determine what enhancements to implement.
POCs, Prototypes, and Pilots are all important tactics in implementing technology. However, just using the words is not enough. You need to engage in these activities deliberately and methodically for them to be of any value. And you will never realize that value unless you consciously record the results and turn this data into usable, actionable information.
Mar 01, 2007
Russ Danner, from the Christian Science Monitor, is hosting a Boston Alfresco User Group meeting at the Monitors offices in the heart of Boston's back bay. This originally modest idea has grown into quite a big event with presentations from Rivet Logic, Optaros, and Alfresco (maybe). I posted the details of the event on Upcoming.org but here are the highlights to save you a click:
When
Monday, March 12, 2007
11:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Where
Christian Science Monitor
200 Massachusetts Ave
Boston, Massachusetts 02115
Parking
$5
Lunch
Free if you RSVP to dannerr [at] csps.com
Feb 26, 2007
Last week I spoke at The Integrated Media Association's Public Media 2007 Conference in Boston. The audience and most of the speakers came from the public radio and television community that is trying to deal with the disruptive force of new media. I really enjoyed the opportunity to listen to new perspectives in content management.
Resource constrained, this industry has fallen behind in digital innovation and there was a great sense of urgency to adapt - or perish. The different stations and shows were looking to work together, embrace risk, and pick up the pace. Innovator in Video Journalism Mike Rosenblum gave a great talk about technology disruptions. Using several examples, he made the point that "technology happens," someone figures out what to do with it, then market revolution happens. Tom Mohr talked about the traditional print publishing industry's struggle to stay relevant and brought on some guests from the BBC and CBC to talk about their transformations.
My session on selecting a CMS, was a lot more grounded and tactical. We talked about current state and small steps to help get parity as cheaply as possible. Many of public radio stations and shows are starting with something as simple as a static HTML site and a blog. Some were growing out of this platform and moving to Drupal and various Nuke applicaitons
In general, open source is very attractive for the price but many organizations have small to non-existent technical groups. This makes operating and installing any software (commercial and open source) a challenge. One attendee that I spoke with made the point that public media needs a new generation of engineers that is as passionate about software as preceding generations was about audio/video engineering. Public Interactive's SaaS product has a huge marketshare as does Expression Engine which is free for non-profits and non-commercial use. However, I expect that these turnkey solutions could hold an organization back if it really wanted to turn the corner and become innovators. You can't innovate without some level of investment and risk.
There was a lot of talk about collaboration between public media organizations. This would share the cost of innovation so that the sector would innovate together without differentiation. There is an initiative to share Google Analytics data. There may be opportunities to standardize on data formats and even standardize on using the same technology. On the open source side, my co-panelist Brendan Greeley talked about the high degree of overlap between the open source community and the public media audience., He should know, he runs the web site of the popular radio show "Open Source." He posts technical questions on the show's blog and listeners write back with answers. Drupal has a module called "Station" that provides tools for a radio station such as a schedule and a playlist. Plone has a number of add-on products to address issues like high bandwidth streaming and large file handling. Joomla! has Joomla Radio. I am sure there are others.
I guess the big question is whether the public media companies have anything to offer this growing social media phenomenon. Is YouTube the new definition of "listener supported" programming? Public Radio and Television have the advantage of trusted names and loyal audiences. They just need to figure out a way to leverage these assets without allowing them to become encumbrances in a fluid and agile media world.
Feb 24, 2007
Alfresco recently announced that it will be moving their Community Edition from the MPL (Mozilla Public License) + Attribution to the GPL (v3) with an FLOSS exception that makes it easier to for other open source software with a OSI certified open source to use Alfresco as a component. Version 3 of the GPL is not quite fully ratified yet so there might be some slight changes in Alfresco licensing depending on where the GPL lands. The license change will affect the 2.0 release of Alfresco and apply to any software downloaded after February 20, 2007.
For most companies using Alfresco, the shift to the GPL will not have much impact because the Enterprise Version (which Alfresco recommends you buy if you are using the product in production) will carry a commercial license that is distinct from the GPL. I don't know the ins and outs of how the Alfresco commercial license interacts with the licenses of the underlying open source components that Alfresco is built on (Spring (Apache License), Hibernate (LGPL), MyFaces (Apache License), etc.). However, I would stay that Alfresco has too much to lose and access to too much legal advance to do anything in violation of those open source licenses. Alfrescians, please feel free to weigh in here.
For those of you who have been keeping score, this is the third major licensing incarnation that Alfresco has gone through. Originally, they had a limited featured Community Edition and sold an Enteprise Edition that consisted of the Community Edition plus proprietary extensions. Then they open sourced the entire application but made the community edition badge-ware. This latest model is more akin to MySQL's dual license. And MySQL seems to have built a <understatement>nice little business for itself</understatement>. My colleagues and I have been secretly hoping that Alfresco would move in this direction and I am very happy that they have because I think it makes more sense for everyone.
Feb 23, 2007
I imagine it was a great challenge to write the first book on the new Alfresco open source enterprise content management system. Enterprise content management is a deliberately broad field with a diverse audience of stakeholders. Alfresco is a powerful but new and rapidly evolving product with, as one might expect, thin documentation. I am happy that Munwar Shariff undertook this challenge to write Alfresco Enterprise Content Management Implementation.
The target audience of the book appears to be a technical person who is evaluating and getting started with Alfresco. There is good information about the architectural principles and the range of uses for the product. There are also some instructions and recommendations for installing the product. As I recommended in my review of Munwars book Plone book (Plone Live), I would consider removing the installation section because that is one of the things that is well covered in the Alfresco documentation. However, the recommendations around the configuration options are helpful.
Also, it may have been a little ambitious to cover strategies for initiating and managing an Enterprise Content Management project. That is the topic of several other books on content management (Definitely read The Content Management Bible
by Bob Boiko) and software development.
The core strength of this book is as an aid to explore the functionality of the Alfresco web client and to learn how to configure and extend it. As with most Java applications, most of Alfresco's behavior is managed through a series of XML files. The examples of how to manipulate these files in the book and as part of an accompanying download are very good. And when you go through these exercises and open up the files you can't help but notice other settings that might be useful to modify as well. I think it would be helpful to discuss the underlying technologies that support the Alfresco platform and also tips for tuning the software to meet the performance and availability demands of an actively used implementation. But those topics might be more appropriate for an advanced book. For an Alfresco beginner (and there are a lot of people who fit that description out there), this book is a great introduction.
Feb 20, 2007
Pardon the shameless plug but it is for a good purpose. This summer I am going to ride in the Pan Mass Challenge to raise money for cancer research. If you have gotten any useful information from this blog, please pass on the good karma by sponsoring me or giving to the charity of your choice.
Feb 20, 2007
We just posted the latest episode of The Malcontents. This time we hosted Theresa Regli (CMS Watch) and Tim Denby (BlueVertex) to talk about managing collaborative content. Based on recent dialogs on the CM Pros mailing list, Bryant and I were preparing ourselves for a heated debate. Collaborative content trends, such as free tagging, are disrupting traditional content management paradigms that are based on formal publishing processes and library science theory. However, instead of a debate, we got a lot of agreement on when collaborative content can be beneficial and how to manage it. What was the consensus? You have to listen.
On an administrative note, you might notice that we moved the podcast on to blogspot so you can subscribe via RSS and listen on iTunes and Yahoo Podcasts. You can point your podcast client here.
