ECM for 2009

So it's that time of the year again - the time of the year where we spend most of our days writing endless year round-up or prediction stories for your delectation. Having had my fill of that, and stretched my tiny little brain about as far as it will go, I'm going instead to list some of the main predictions made by analyst firm CMS Watch.
Now the firm has scored a pretty good success rate in years gone by, so with any luck, I'm going to look pretty good when the following actually happens. With any luck. First off, the inevitable; you may have had your fill of "economic meltdown" stories already, but it's likely to genuinely impact the market next year, and could mean good news for buyers.
As I've mentioned a few times throughout the year, if you're prepared to bargain hard, good deals can be had from ECM vendors on up-front license costs, and this will be especially true as vendors become desperate to retain as well as attract new customers. According to the analyst, year-end discounts of 50-70 per cent are already starting to crop up, although as CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne told me, vendors are unlikely to budge on maintenance and consulting fees, where they will hope to claw that money back.
The economic climate is also likely to encourage IT shoppers to look at open source alternatives, although a word of warning here from the experts: unexpectedly high development and integration costs may mean that these offerings are less of a bargain than they first appear.
Another knock-on effect of the downturn could be low valuations for WCM firms, which may spur some M&A activity in the industry. Some big ECM firms without a strong web content management solution may see this as a perfect time to buy-in some expertise.
Moving away from the credit crunch, and back (briefly) to SharePoint; the next version of Microsoft's flagship 'content management' solution could be seen in beta by the end of 2009. However, it's unlikely that firms will be seriously considering it, as many have yet to fully digest SharePoint 2007.
And finally, there is perhaps a spot of bad news for Oracle, whose lack of investment in knowledge worker-facing technologies could leave the firm trailing rivals Microsoft, IBM and others. Fine for heavy duty document management and back office stuff, but in the lighter weight Web 2.0 applications and web content management space it could be struggling, said Byrne.
And there you have it. Now let's sit back and see what happens.

PHP and .Net - a third way?

There are certain topics in the world of information technology which always excite intense debate and near-religious fervour. PC versus Mac, open source versus proprietary; whatever stories we push out which may come down on one or other side, you can be sure that feedback from readers will be swift, uncompromising and sometimes abusive.
Now I'm all for debate, I'm up for a lively exchange of views as much as the next man, but sometimes the level of devotion to one or other side is so high it's quite bemusing. Wouldn't it make everyone's life a little easier if we all just got along and put their differences on the back burner?
We've already seen promising moves being made in the content management space to bring together the competing ECM vendors and make their products interoperate with each other. The Content Management Interoperability Services initiative has been hailed by many as a major breakthrough in the industry as it could finally ease the IT headache of having to manage multi-vendor and multi-repository environments. With Microsoft, IBM Alfresco, OpenText, Oracle, SAP and Adobe all on board, it stands a great chance of success. Finally the vendors have realised that the industry can't grow unless greater interoperability is achieved.
And now, at a programming level, a new initiative which could finally reconcile the great divide between PHP and .NET programming languages for the good of everyone - courtesy of WCM vendor Jadu. Development of the Phalanger PHP compiler was funded by the firm, but it is now releasing it into the open source community. It basically enables the creation of PHP applications which can run natively under the .NET Framework, allowing firms to make use of PHP apps without needing to rip out existing .NET/Visual Studio environments.
So PHP developers will finally see the lucrative Microsoft customer base open up to them and, as Ovum analyst Tony Baer told me, it provides "one less reason for .NET development shops to oppose allowing PHP into their wall gardens". It seems web developers can finally have their cake and eat it by profiting from the ease-of-use and effectiveness of the PHP language and the richness of the .NET platform; a benefit which will surely cascade down to end users ultimately in the form of more compelling applications. Good news too for the careers of developers, who will no longer have to go through costly retraining on PHP or .Net if they want to get on in the industry. See, everyone's a winner when look for ways to work together.

UK data breach notification laws?

After all the recent news about the new powers to be granted to the Information Commissioner, Richard Thomas, another piece of information pushed out by the Ministry of Justice appears to have gone rather unnoticed.
It was a definitive statement saying that the government would accept Thomas's request that there should be no US-style data breach notification laws for private sector organisations in this country. Of course, public sector organisations are already forced to report any significant "actual or potential" data losses to the ICO - so why not private sector firms?
Well, Thomas has argued that the US experience has not been a particular good one. It's certainly true that mandatory notification laws have the potential to desensitise the public to data losses. If breaches are in the news all the time then the public is less likely to pay any attention - although you could argue that this is pretty much already the case. Then there are problems such as how high should you set the notification threshold, and who should firms be obliged to notify - just their customers or the relevant authorities too? And on top of this there is the potential problem of phishing attacks. Criminals could well decide to send out mass emails after a large data breach, hoping to hit gold by appealing to an organisation's customers that there has been a data breach and that they should reconfirm their details.
But is the alternative to breach notifaction laws really the best option? ICO Thomas, and now the government, seem to warnt a situation where private sector firms have to report breaches only as a matter of good practice, but although fines will be levied according to the seriousness of the breach, a system of voluntary disclosure hardly seems like the best solution
The negative impact of a data breach can be so great that it may well tempt some firms to keep quiet in the hope it could be covered up. No breach notifaction law also means that the government and law enforcers can't get any idea of the true scale of the problem, which is woefully underreported at present, according to most experts.
This could all be a moot point of course, if the EU has its way. Data protection supervisor Peter Hustinx told me recently that European breach notifaction laws could be put in force for telcos and ISPs as soon as 2011. He also argued that it would be "fair and in line with reality" for them to be extended to all firms. Were this to happen we could be in that rare situation where European laws actually have a positive outcome.

Online Information Conference - Day 3; The Digital Company in 2013

How will technology change the way organisation operate and do business with one another?
The task of understanding how we use information whether as casual browser, consumer or scholar has been one of the elements examined rigorously on the last day of the Online Information Conference.
The JISC National Observatory project studied how eBook usage in academia operated, what was required and what was needed by students and librarians alike. Traditionally trusted sources (such as journalists) were no longer seen as credible as they once were. "Print is dead" said one speaker. David Nicholas meanwhile gave us a stark warning to start understanding how users interact with information (based on our traditional assumptions - not the way we would like to think) we need to adjust our models accordingly, that much is clear.
The irrefutable conclusion was that things were going to change with the demand for information online continuing to rapidly increase.
In attempting to meet that demand, it is essential for content providers, whether publisher or amateur to understand how users operate when searching.
Dennis McCauley, Director, Global Technology Research of the Economist Intelligence Unit came to talk to us about what the digital company would look like in five years time.
McCauley explained the research his organisation has conducted recently found that there will be a greater age of collaboration - why? Because it is much harder for firms to go it alone, there will be a need for organisations to "let go" he said.
Technology will remain the greatest influencer of business change and it will cause excessive complexity, such as the change of business models and the changing nature of demand for a company's products, he added.
Because customers will continue to become more tech savvy, there will be a great increase into the importance of online communities, this will be beneficial in that organisations will get to hear what their customers think (whether they like it or not) as well as the risk of mob mentality should your cross them.
This all ties in with the collaborative behaviour McCauley outlined. There is the expectation that some of the best ideas will arise from improved interaction with their clients.
Social networking applications will be widespread in the enterprise organisation; those that don't like this idea will need to start accepting it and with it give their trust or get left behind.
In summary McCauley gave us these points to consider
 There will be no big tech jumps in next 5 years - although e-books will become more widespread
 Technology will be used more effectively but differently in an organisation
 Collaborative technology will be mastered
 Obstacles include: rigidity in organisations, tight budgets, skill shortage and security concerns

UPDATE: What Future for Search?

I was going to wait until tomorrow's keynote on Search before blogging about this, but I understand that the session will now count Andrew Kanter, Chief Operating Officer from Autonomy as a panellist.
As one of the senior figures at Autonomy it is going to be revealing what he has to say about search and what plans the organisation has for its technology. If you are involved in Enterprise search or just interested in semantic developments, this will be a must see.
With search guru Stephen E Arnold moderating the session I have a feeling that the panel will get a thorough grilling.
We will be blogging from the session so if you can't make it check back here around mid afternoon for a round up.

Online Information Conference - Day 2: Using Web 2.0 tools in a learning environment

We all hear a lot about how Web 2.0 is applicable to all areas of life, both at work and at play. The education sector is certainly no exception with the library poised to play a crucial role in what is offered to scholars.
Professor Anne Morris, from Loughborough University examined the technology surrounding libraries and the service they provide in Higher Education. What they want to offer students is a richer learning experience.
The key thing with 2.0 tech is that the more people use it the better it gets, as far as libraries are concerned, she said.
Morris gave us a quick run through of what is on offer and its potential for helping students learn better.
Blogs - encourage the development of communities, they facilitate communication among librarians (Stanford University being a very good example).
Wikis - Offer an easy way to create lists and tips as well as the easy ability to comment on LIS services. There are of course issues with trust and security, but then that is true of any wiki.
Instant Messenger (IM) - Has been used for reference management, training and immediate online assistance.
One example that Morris gave us was the offering from the OCLC or QuestionPoint as it is known to its users. It's a good example of library's spreading the burden of information sharing and works well with a group of libraries using this technology.
Podcasts - a wide choice of material is made available to students whether as a lecture, interview, conference or tutorial. The list is substantial.
Social Networking - can be applied to recommendations, listings of popular materials and the opportunity to work in groups. The Virtual bookshelf available on Face Book is a nice idea to highlight the favourites in your collections and offer recommendations and reviews.
What the Pilkington Library have done at Loughborough is adopt a range of these ideas, such as a podcast introducing the library, a blog, RSS feeds on either all new material that comes in or a specific subject area.
What did the students think about all this? Had they even heard of the concept of Library 2.0? The research that Morris and her team conducted on the Information Department students showed that less than half of the scholars knew what the library 2.0 term actually meant. More worrying was that over 70% hadn't even used the tools or knew that they existed. However when asked if they would find receiving updates about their specific needs useful over 70% expressed a positive interest.
The general conclusions that Morris came across were mildly positive views of Library 2.0 tech. The most welcomed technology came from RSS feeds, podcasting, IM and professional reviews of books. There was little faith that fellow students would contribute much in the way of their own recommendations. The key thing to consider is that whatever technologies you are thinking of adopting, make sure they are user-centric, specific to their course needs and of course wanted in the first place.

Online Information Conference - Do We Have a Profession? (part 2)

Following Natalie Ceeney's presentation, Gloria Zamora (President Elect, SLA, USA) examined the alternate careers on offer for the intrepid info pro. With a similar position to Ceeney she added "We are our own worse enemy, we need to blow our own horns more than we do", Zamora believes that sometimes the profession attracts the kind of people who want to help everyone but don't have a tendency to promote themselves.
One of the things the SLA have taken on to deal with this issue is the Alignment project which has concerned itself with finding out what the senior decision makers think the librarians, record keepers and specialists in the organisation are doing.
The perceptions seemed to be that while people understand what a Librarian is and does there is also a lack of appreciation of the specialisation that comes with the territory. Similarly there was uncertainty into what an information professional is. Sound familiar when you are trying to describe what you do to the layperson?
For Zamora, so long as the info profession get out there and bang their drums, there is a positive future, so much so that she believes we should start by bringing in people from other disciplines such as IT. Of course that doesn't mean making way with influencing the decision making process. The fight to make yourself heard will be an ongoing one.

Online Information Conference - Day 2

Do We Have a Profession?
The somewhat controversial sounding title of this morning's session was posed to us by Natalie Ceeney, head of The National Archives (TNA) and as of last night, IWR's Information Professional of the Year.
"We are now living in an 'information society'" said Ceeney, whether that is through the daily use of tools such as Google to Wikipedia and a host of social networking services. During her 8 years in the profession she has seen the importance of information rise in the organisation from that of the outsider to of critical importance.
Information of course is the life blood of public services, it has a fundamental impact on the education system said Ceeney. Information is now a mainstream issue in British politics and recognised as such at the most senior level.
What has been driving Ceeney however is her quest to get us all to consider how much of an asset information is to business and to get that recognised by the most senior decision makers. Just as importantly it's about getting recognition for those who actually work with information and the skills they bring.
Ceeney explained how a report from Cap Gemini released in March this year, found that by not exploiting their information assets, the cost to organisations equated to lost opportunities of approximately £46bn in the private sector and £21bn in public sector.
Where does this all sit for information professionals? For Ceeney, it's about how the info pros define themselves. The culture is such that "we define ourselves by our sub professions - librarians, record managers, archivists she said, "The problem is because everyone has a different job description there is a lack of a cohesive identity for info pros among the organisation." Because of that definitive description, the due recognition is amiss in their organisation.
"If we sub-divide ourselves too much there is a risk that jobs are given to other departments as they don't fit properly at the moment." "Why do we think we are so different from other departments in the organisation?" Ceeney asked, murmurs of consent rippled around the room.
Ceeney outlined her own experiences within government as an example such as her role in the data handling review, getting the acknowledgement of information as an asset. The crux of her point was that these ideas are less for the profession and more for the eyes of senior management.
In making information management mainstream, Ceeney gave us the example of her Digital Continuity project that meant a joined up strategy of information management across government rather than each department trying to achieve it themselves and the great cost each would generate.
The biggest challenge we have got is getting senior people to realise that this matters and less the information professional.

Reasons to be cheerful

First day of Online Information always has a special buzz about it and yesterday was no exception. The conference was crowded and at some points during the day it was standing (or sitting on the floor) only in some of the tracks. The exhibition was also buzzing with the usual range of meeting by chance of old friends and contacts, as well as the fulfilment of carefully planned meetings and briefings.
The IWR stand was particularly busy with the December issue in great demand (no surprise there). If you haven't seen a copy or you want to join or rejoin the circulation list, then come by the stand and leave your business card.
There is no doubt that much of the conversation at the conference and the exhibition revolved around how the profession would cope in a downturn. I think the answer is pretty positive. The profession is brimming with ideas and initiatives to help organisation do what they have to do better and there are a seemingly endless stream of new products and tools which should help to harness the brain power.
And yesterday's business pages in The Times agree with my assessment. Discussing Reed Elsevier the report suggested the information business is not "overly sensitive to the economic cycle".

IWR Information Professional of the Year 2008

IWR would like to offer their congratulations to Natalie Ceeney (CEO of The National Archives) who has just been announced as Information Professional of the Year 2008.
Having met and interviewed Ceeney soon after I joined IWR, I was quickly aware of her passion for information and the role it has to play in government. Hearing her speak on various occasions since it is clear that passion also applies to the people who are involved in that profession.
Although Natalie had a prior engagement this evening and couldn't pick up the trophy in person, well done from all of us here.
To hear more from Natalie, she will be addressing the conference tomorrow morning in her session "Do We Have a Profession?"
More then.

Online Information - Innovators Under the Spotlight

After my somewhat lengthy post of Clay Shirky's opening keynote I wanted to keep this next post brief. It was a session of information innovation experts giving us their advice on how best to implement your own online strategy.
As moderator to this session, Euan Semple noted that by engaging in the more cutting edge of innovation there is a high degree of risk being involved (citing the experience of his own redundancy). Big changes how organisations work and how they relate to the people that work with them are coming he said.
Here is the gist of key points and principles I picked up from them:
 Consider what are the information needs of your target audience?
 Where are the gaps in what people want?
 Make what you do fun and entertaining for users. Experience is key not necessarily the information
 Pilot groups often don't work as customers often don't know what they want or need
 Let people make their own niches in your space
 The process should be about lifting the lid off of something - rather than creating it, it should be easy because there should be a vacum of information to fill
 Too many tools can put off users and spook them
 Explaining what the idea is key. How would you explain it so that it is easily understood?
 People need to see the benefits offered to communities in order to recommend an online service.
More later...

Online Information - Open Keynote, Clay Shirky part 2

Utilising crowds in Business
What does that mean for business models? For Shirky in the old Gutenberg economic model (publisher decides what is distributed in order to make money) the risk is born by the publisher. What the internet has done is allow anyone can publish to anyone (less risk less cost) anyone can say anything to anyone. It's too much content to corral, instead of why publish something? it is now why not publish something?
Because there is no economic/efficient way to control what gets published, so instead it is better to allow content to get out there and then choose what is of interest and therefore value. Also consider that even though some information out there is in public, the content might not be for public consumption - think twitter or your average blog
One of Shirky's final examples (which I love) is the story of how long suffering Josh Wheedon fans (long suffering because all the popular programmes that Wheedon makes get cancelled). With his latest venture, Doll House due to air in 2009, the fans have this time takend the initiative and have already started a "save the show" group. Cynical maybe, but they figure why wait until that decision is made? By then it will be too little too late, they don't trust the official marketing department so have instead become an unofficial one.
The old divisions of information management content producers have gone said Shirky, or are at least disappearing, it means that everyone involved can move across these boundaries.
So with these horizons and no boundaries what is the next thing to do? For Shirky, its about discovery and innovation. "Explore, try new things there is no obvious roadmap
he said, "It's a period of experimentation not transition".

Online Information Conference - Opening Keynote, Clay Shirky

Part 1
Clay Shirky, author of "Here Comes Everyone" spoke to assembled delegates this morning about the nature of how we like to share and use our information and how that has led to the next information distribution revolution.
Shirky discussed how communities work and come together through publishing their shared interests, all a platform like flikr needs to do to work is provide the infrastructure. Users then share tips and help each other with their problems - it's a good example of how every URL has the potential to be a latent community he said.
Ultimately people turn themselves into a user community.
The distinction between publishing and communication is more blurred. Flikr's advantage is that it doesn't have to decide what info will be useful Shirky pointed out, by managing less Flikr offers more opportunities for its users. It is one of many such areas out there that do this successfully and makes a good example.
Another intersting example Shirky shared with us was the attention to detail given to the Dr WHO Wikipedia page - edited no less thab 9000 times! That would average about 2-3 edits per each users one would expect - however to demonstrate how we can't rely on a simpistic model of user behaviour Shirky pointed out that the editing process and contribution was far more skewed. For example, 2200 contributors edited the page once while 965 edited it multiple times, one user in particular has edited the entry over a 1000 times! The point is though is that there aren't typical users or typical behaviour.
If you wanted to tap this kind of commitment (especially if its provided for free) for your content consider how you would pitch that to a decision maker - would you even dare?
Colaboration and Collective Action
The story of HSBC reneging on its "free" OD fee for students recently was a PR disaster. When the bank went back on its word it angered many of its student customers. As a bank it knew that to move your money and finances to a competitor is no easy matter and so therefore they could afford to upset them. What tHSBC didn't count on was that students use Facebook and know what it can do.
The protest group acted as staging post for the outraged to come together, others offered advice on how to move their money and who to, it acted as a clarion encouraging even more dissaffected so the story made the national press. HSBC backed down not because the students were upset but because they were upset, organised and co-ordinated.
It is the difference between just reporting what HSBC had done than reporting and offering a way to do something about it.
However Shirky noted that we still tend to underestimate these tools, as they are often used for entertainment and frivolously so. For Shirky they can (and have) been utilised for far more significant uses - the example he gave was of flash mobs entering the main square in Belarus to protest against the law that crowds were not allowed to gather there. The state could do little as each person came there individually not as a group and with a big grin on their face. What is important is that there was the intention among each individual in how they would use this tool, by doing so they became a community with power - albeit shortly.
It is this in part that means there is no longer a difference between the producer of information and the consumer of it. The internet has the many to many element at the core of its nature.
CONTINUED in part 2

Online Information Conference - Opening Keynote

"We are now seeing a new set of business innovations and it's an interesting time to develop business, information being at the heart of business. Without the information tools and tech that we will here about can't hope to be successful." So opened this year's Online Information Conference courtesy of its chairman Adrian Dale
The theme for this year (subsequent to the economic bubble bursting)
Dale explained how in the 1960s and 70s it was those professionals in personnel who saw the importance of their role in a businesses strategy to justify their place on the board. Their its predecessors in Finance were the same. Meanwhile, the 1980s and 90s was the time for the business process managers - the supply chain managers in other words to take the lead and further influence their organisations for business benefit.
For the information profession, that role has largely been contained and formed as a number of cottage industries such the realm of the librarian, web development, the records manager. Now though we are moving into a time when it's the information manager that takes the lead, said Dale - at least in those organisations that have the foresight.
Why now?
For one, because of the vast amounts of information being generated across the globe. A live feed from EMC showed a row of whirling numbers projected across the world to represent this current data generation, in fact 432bn GB created since 1st Jan 2008.
We are dealing with the explosion of information and it has now caught up with us, said Dale, we have got to get to the heart of these processes. Most businesses won't understand how to manage information properly. Unfortunately that can mean less cottage industry of information management and more like a personal approach with everyone managing their own, but is that really a strategy?
This opened up the floor for Keynote speaker Clay Shirky, author of and "Here Comes Everyone - the power of organising without organisations. More to follow...

New powers for the ICO

Just when you thought it was safe to dismiss the UK's data protection tsar the Information Commissioner as a toothless watchdog, Justice Secretary Jack Straw finally grants him the powers worthy of the title. Yes, last week saw Information Commissioner Richard Thomas finally get what he has been asking for over the last year or so - the ability to impose monetary penalties on organisations for "deliberate or reckless" loss of data. He is now also able to inspect central government departments without having to ask permission first - a rule so absurd it totally undermined the ability of the ICO to carry out effective checks.
And the experts I spoke to broadly welcomed these new powers. Most seemed to think that the long, long list of public and private sector organisations which have lost sensitive data could all have avoided their infamy if they'd just followed the DPA. By granting the ICO the power to enforce this much-maligned piece of legislation, the argument goes, they might actually pay more than lip service to the law.
Another interesting element of the news is the new funding structure the ICO will be getting. Instead of a flat-rate notification fee, the ICO will be able to charge depending on the size of the notifying organisation. Details have yet to be thrashed out but the idea is that it will finally give the watchdog the financial support it needs to carry out its work effectively, although if it's partly used to fund the £50,000 pay rise mooted for Thomas, the move will not win many supporters.
So what does this mean to you? Well, if you were thinking of just paying lip service to the DPA, you're probably better off re-examining your data handling strategies and taking it a whole lot more seriously. The ICO has teeth at last and is probably not afraid to use them. However, while it certainly will be handing out fines and punishments and naming and shaming those who are reckless with data, Thomas has consistently stressed that much of the work of the ICO is in educating organsiations about good data handling practices and compliance with the DPA.
To that end, the ICO last week also released a new report, Privacy by Design, listing ways in which firms can design information systems incorporating privacy enhancing technologies from the get-go, rather than thinking of these technologies as an add-on, or an afterthought. It's well worth a look.

Speaker of the week - Hazel Hall, Reader Napier University, UK

Hazel Hall, Reader Napier University, UK. Hazel is a track speaker on day two of the conference
Day 2: Track 1 - Risk 2.0 Or opportunity 2.0 - hype or hope
Q: Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Hazel: Topic: Social computing tools and their application in business to support collaborative work practice. Why: my main research interest is information sharing in online environments, in particular how to motivate people to information share. Social computing tools have great potential here.
Q: Apart from your own, which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Hazel: Clay Shirky's keynote (I would recommend delegates read Here comes everybody over the next few days); immediately afterwards track 1 "Web 2.0 after the buzz: Innovators under the spotlight - who stayed the distance" (to find the two Euan/Ewans simultaneously on stage together is a treat not to be missed); track 1 on Wednesday 11.45-13.00 "New ways of working: socialising, collaboration and innovation - exploiting social networks".
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Hazel: Catching up with colleagues/friends from the industry. I particularly enjoy seeing graduates from Queen Margaret and Napier University who are now in established careers. For many of them, their first ever contact with Online was to attend with me as students, and in some cases the three days in London very much influenced their later career choices. I'm hoping to see as many of the graduates as possible together this year at 15.30 on Wednesday 3rd December in the bar/café next to Theatre F.
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Hazel: I'm a Facebook fan.
Q: And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Hazel: On one of the big sofas at my parents' house in Northumberland, in front of the fire, with a pile of novels, a ready supply Viennese truffles and weak black tea at hand, and an eye on the window to watch out for the red squirrels scampering across the lawn.
About Hazel Hall
Dr Hazel Hall is Reader in the School of Computing at Napier University, Edinburgh. Her main research interest is information sharing in online environments. She has published widely on this theme, and most recently was involved in a project exploring risks and opportunities of the adoption (or non-adoption) of social computing tools within organisations for collaborative working from the perspective of the priorities of information and knowledge management. The main sponsor of this work was TFPL Ltd, to whom Dr Hall was seconded in 2006, supported by a grant from the Royal Academy of Engineering. As well as maintaining an active role in the external academic community, Dr Hall has worked with a number of organisations on information and knowledge management projects. These include public sector bodies such as Scottish Enterprise, large companies such as KPMG and Sun Microsystems, and small and medium-sized enterprises.
http://www.dcs.napier.ac.uk/~hazelh/esis/hazel.html
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

HMRC - one year on, are we any wiser?

It's around about 12 months since the HMRC scandal broke, and with it the floodgates for countless subsequent public sector data loss incidents. The Tories released some rather timely information at the end of last week concluding that these breaches have amounted to the equivalent of one PC lost every week since the HMRC incident, and that's not counting the 36 BlackBerries, 30 mobile phones and four memory sticks also lost.
Various reasons have been bandied about as to why the sudden deluge of stories about data loss in the last 12 months, and what is so wrong at the heart of government to have led to this situation. Well, it's fair to say that this sort of thing has been going on for years, it's just that there is more transparency and awareness now. And the experts I've spoken to about this - security vendors, security consultants and legal bods - have offered a range of opinions as to why it might have happened, but most seem to believe things have been moving in the right direction since HMRC. The problem with government though, is that it's a large, lumbering beast of an institution and any change will be slow.
Paula Barrett, a partner at law firm Eversheds, pointed out that new standards on data handling are being drawn up, but that more awareness-raising across departments needs to be made to ensure individuals know what they are. She also hinted that the Queen's speech in a few week's time could very well contain more measures aimed at forcing departments to improve their data security practices.
A more interesting comment came from Matthew Tyler of consultancy Evolution Security Systems, who told me that his company was recently involved in a government project, evaluating the feasibility of rolling out encryption technology for all USB sticks. This would seem a laudable step in the right direction, but as he added, most recent data breaches were due to individuals not following correct procedures, so surely the best approach is to design systems where sensitive data can't be taken out in the first place.

Speaker of the week - Neil Infield, Manager, The British Library

Neil Infield, Manager, The British Library, Neil is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference.
Day 1: Track 3 - ROIP (Return on information professionals) or RIP (rest in peace). Neil will speak specifically on 'Moving from readers to customers and clients in the business and IP Centre at The British Library'
Q: Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Neil: I am interested in practical applications of Web 2.0 technologies. Something we are experimenting with in the Business & IP Centre.
Q: Apart from your own, which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Neil: I always find Mary Ellen Bates informative, challenging and entertaining.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Neil: A great networking opportunity with old and hopefully new contacts.
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Neil: Facebook is great for keeping up with friends and family. I have found blogging to be slowly addictive (although I'm not sure my readers would agree).
Q: And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Neil: I used to go skiing religiously, but after several years of terrible snow conditions I plan to stay at home and probably have to cut my winter grown lawn between rain showers.
About Neil Infield
I am the Manager of the British Library's Business & IP Centre. Until 2005 I was manager of Business Information Services (BIS) at Hermes Pensions Management (the principal fund manager for the British Telecom and Post Office pensions schemes). During my time at Hermes I developed the BIS far beyond its traditional library services. I have been active in SLA Europe for over 15 years. Having previously been President, I now edit their newsletter and manage the website.
Neil's Blog .. http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/inthroughtheoutfield
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

SharePoint on the ropes again?

It's a common problem in virtually any industry. Once you become the de-facto leader, or at least somewhere near the upper echelons, then people start having a go at you. Virgin has found it out the hard way, Channel 4 is probably discovering it to a certain degree, and, um, well the less I say about JD Wetherspoons the better, probably.
The tech world is packed full of examples, probably because technology moves at such a rate of knots, it can lead to pretty fluid movement up and down the establishment table - just look at Gartner's hype cycle and Magic Quadrants over the last few years to chart the rapid rise of firms like Google and Facebook and the sad demise of Netscape and the rest. It's been a long while since Microsoft was such a firm, back when Steve Balmer had hair and Bill Gates definitely didn't hang out with Jerry Seinfeld. But on the content management scene it is a relative newcomer.
However, Microsoft does not waste its time, and it's flagship offering in this space, SharePoint, has climbed the greasy pole in rapid time. And although there is debate over whether it is a true content management solution - which it's not, really - there's no denying the figures. According to the Wall Street Journal, by 2007 "Microsoft sold 85 million licenses to the enhanced version of SharePoint across 17,000 companies." And analyst firm Gartner reports that approximately 50 per cent of the mid-size businesses it surveyed are running some variant of SharePoint.
It's definitely one of the establishment in the content management space therefore - and so to the backlash. Enterprise provisioning firm Courion interviewed SharePoint users recently to find that the majority did not have nearly enough visibility into their SP environments and feared the exposure of sensitive data on these sites. Yes, you could probably say Courion research would conclude that, given that Courion is into enterprise provisioning, but it's still a legitimate concern.
Firms need to bring their SharePoint initiatives under the same access and identity management and data loss prevention frameworks as the other disparate technologies they're running if they want to close off this potential back door to breaches. The problem is that SharePoint is often adopted ad-hoc under the radar of IT. The first thing CIOs will need to do is make sure their IT managers get a good idea of who is using what in terms of SharePoint in the organisation. Sorry Microsoft. I guess when your products go to the head of their field, they're kind of there to get shot at.

Speaker of the week - Salvatore Reina

Salvatore Reina, Programme Manager, PricewaterhouseCoopers LLC, UK is this weeks speaker. Salv is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference.
Day 1: Track 1 - Web 2.0 after the buzz, Innovators under the spotlight - who stayed the distance
Q: Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Salv: For me it's how social tools can help businesses get the most bang for their buck as we enter more austere times. Quantifying the ROI is key where possible. The other key areas for me are both search and how social tools will affect the role of the information worker.
Q: Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Salv: It would of course very much depend on what line of business you are in as to which tracks are most useful, but there are several tracks that are relevant for all. Web 2.0 - After the Buzz is a good one as it has a focus on business value and ROI. Also, Understanding Behaviours is relevant for all as it looks at Generation Y...
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Salv: First of all, it's a great opportunity to hear from a range of experts and to have a chance to discuss the latest thinking in our field. Secondly, good old fashioned web 0.0 networking! Meeting people face-to-face, sharing ideas, thoughts and creating opportunities.
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Salv: It would be micro-blogging. When I first saw this idea, I thought it was an irrelevance and I dismissed it. Then I started blogging internally at work and thought that the idea of mini status updates, posted to my site, could be useful. This proved true when I posted an update to say I was going on a conference. A loosely connected colleague saw this and subsequently joined me at the event as he shared an interest. I also started following others and quickly found that I had a very good sense of what key people in my network were doing.
Q: And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Salv: This year I will be at home with my family in Surrey. As well as the usual Christmas activities, we'll probably spend a bit of time wandering around the North Downs and taking in some of the winter sights in Guildford.
About Salvatore Reina
Salv has worked for PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) for 12 years in a number of technology related roles. In recent years he has specialised in Knowledge Managment (KM), seeking out opportunities to maximise the business value from KM technology implementations. He currently heads up a number of programmes aimed at making it easier for PwC people to connect with each other and to find useful knowledge.
This has led him to explore the world of social media. Salv believes that social technologies provide huge potential for organisations to help their people connect with each other more effectively. He has led the development of a number of innovative products that are testing the extent to which PwC can derive benefit for important business scenarios; scenarios that include client engagements.
Salv is also at the forefront of the User Profile work currently in progress in PwC globally (the facility for people to store and access expertise, interests, networks and etc). He is keen to develop the firm's capability in this area as he sees the strong connection this has with social media and the benefit that this linkage would give.
Salv runs an internal PwC blog in which he comments on the world of social media and profiling.
Email: salvatore.reina@uk.pwc.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

ID card time again

Well, it has been a few months but once again ID cards are back in the news. Or rather the National Identity Scheme, which has managed to garner more column inches in terms of stories about huge, over-budget, failing public sector IT projects as the NHS Spine. As citizens we all get very nervous about the government handling our data, storing our data or even glancing at our data for a bit and then putting it back where it was. And with good cause it seems, if you believe the story in the Times last week in which Gordon Brown was reported as admitting the government could not be trusted to ensure that our personal data is kept safe.
Well, whether we like it or not, some form of national ID card scheme is coming. Jacqui Smith, the home secretary, has released plans for compulsory identity cards for airside workers at the country's airports. London City and Manchester will blaze the trail with trials as early as autumn next year. Add to this compulsory identity cards for foreign nationals from outside the European Economic Area from the end of this month, and you sense the momentum is definitely building.
One of the more controversial ID card-related announcements last week involved the Home Office effectively announcing that it will open for tender to high street businesses the opportunity to become a "biometric enrolment centre". Wow. Do I even need to state the inherent risks in becoming one of these centres? Think about how much time and money you may be spending on PCI compliance, to ensure the secure storage of credit card information, and then double it, and then add a thousand.
Becoming one of these centres is a sure fire way to drive your compliance manager or your chief risk officer, or your chief information officer, to an early grave. Little is known about the actual details, and as we all know, that is where the devil is, especially when we're talking ID cards. But it's likely that banks, post offices, high street stores and the like which join up would be tasked with collecting biometric details from customers, such as fingerprints, and then storing them or securely transferring them to a database.
Seems to me though that the government is trying to push some of the sizeable cost and risk of the National Identity Scheme on to the private sector. You'd be mad to say yes, and the experts seem to agree. Ken Munro, director of pen testing firm Secure Test, said the security implications of this announcement had clearly not been considered. And Susan Hall, IT expert at Cobbetts LLP, argued that sub-contracting the collection of biometric data is inherently dangerous if it gets in the wrong hands, simply because these details can't be reset or altered like a password, if they are stolen.

Projecting the future of IP findability

One of the main reasons for the Information Retrieval Facility's (IRF) existence is to find workable solutions to the challenges faced by Information Retrieval specialists operating with IP data.
The 2007 event concluded by sending all those concerned on their way with the remit to come back next year with something workable. This morning the project presentations got underway.
The first project we were shown looked at Semantic Annotation for IP. Presented by one of the project leaders Valentin Tablan, research fellow at the University of Sheffield, its main goal since the project began last February was to find a way to achieve semi-automatic semantic annotation with larges scale document collections.
I won't pretend to have fully understood some of the more complex issues about Semantic Annotation nor the complex structure of the system he and his team are developing, but from what I did see it's all about applying the annotation information (the method of adding metadata to the relevant parts of a document). Thereafter this is subjected to an ontological process which will give far more related information to data through a hierarchy of relationships in the terminology of a patent filing. Therefore this will improve the accuracy of results. However the conclusion was that for something even better, a hybrid model should be adopted that utilised both semantic annotations and knowledge management technology.
Another method on show was Text Mining, the goals of Cornelis Koster's project was the development of a deep linguistic search engine and in tandem to find an accurate parser - the analysis of linguistic structure (to put it loosely) for complex documents. By combing these to processes, Koster's aim was to create a Text Mining system that was tailored for searching through IP material.
An interesting point Koster made was that patent searchers prefer to search using older technologies like Boolean over ranked search because of the transparency that Boolean offers. Its ability to offer the searcher more control and precision with results makes it the preffered choice in many cases. This he said was what his project (PHASAR) would also offer with exact matches returned rather than ranked matches. The recepetion from delegates (who i don't think are easily won over) was warm.
The final project to dazzle us with formulas came from the University of Glasgow's Leif Azzopardi. Credited with being involved in two related world-leading projects; his task in the Findability Project has been to map how easy it is to find patents depending on the retrieval systems used. This examined the success of results by comparing the differences between Exact Match and Best Match systems as well as the analysis of how retrieval systems shape the access to patent information.
The audience seemed to like what they heard with the words 'fascinating' and 'inspired being thrown around on more than one occasion during the post-presentation Q&A session.
All in all, it would seem that the ambitions of 2007 are on their way to being fulfilled if not quite there yet.

Collaborating within the organisation for better results

As Director of IP Processes and Tools development for General Electric, Keith Dilley will be as familiar with the challenges facing IR specialists as anyone. He gave assembled delegates at the Information Retrieval Facility Symposium (IRFS 2008) a handy breakdown on how to get a team working effectively in the Informatics and Analytics arena.
The premise of the collaborative interfacing sessions asked a number of questions, such as what is the information seeking behaviour in patent retrieval? What contextual factors influence their behaviour? How can a search interface support collaboration in patent retrieval? And how can we divide labour, share knowledge and resolve disagreement on relevance in patent retrieval tasks?
Historically, Dilley argued the focus has been on the tools of IR rather than the processes of it. The 'bad old days' he explained were a time when patents were asked to be checked as a product launch date loomed. Poor briefings and communication between different islands of the organisation all compounded the problems for the IR specialist.
These days however Dilley explained how he takes a different approach with his team at GE and it made some worthy points, not least of which is that the solution to better IR should also come from the way you work, the solution not always having to come from a technical angle.
The method that is used at GE involves a number of factors such as getting buy-in from senior decision makers, by involving them directly, results become 'theirs' as well, because they have been involved in the process from the start. It's a good way of spreading best practice around by agreeing what objectives are going to be with all concerned at the beginning to avoid having to go back two or three times in the analytics stage because the aims weren't clear at the get-go.
To keep facilitating this Dilley suggested sharing preliminary results and if necessary modify the search details, it was necessary to share the lessons of best practice
Perhaps a little more obvious was the suggestion not to share results in a dull spreadsheet but utilise a variety of tools to present information in interesting and unique ways
Admittedly the procedures suggested are better suited to large, resource wealthy organisations, but the lessons on offer here can use scaled back technology to apply to the smaller companies operating with a more disparate team.

Annotation and Ontologies in the context of patent retrieval

So far, the Information Retrieval Facility Symposium (IRFS) has pretty much focused on tricky issues surrounding the search of patent data, or rather from the IR specialists point of view. Approaching this issue from the other side was Pierre Buffet, Executive Vice President of Questel (and co-founder). His presentation "How NLP techniques can and should help in structuring Patent Information" aimed to explained to us how that could and should be done. For the uninitiated NLP techniques refers to Natural language processing, the relationship between how computers interact with human language.
Stressing that in order to improve IR, the structure of patent documents needs to alter. Buffet gave delegates a variety of examples of what patents are comprised of and the areas that they need to change to be more searchable.
For example the variety of language styles used between a patent disclosure and a patent claim can widely alter, patent filings with a corresponding drawing are "a nightmare to map the differences between the illustration and the description" Data held in patents in the form of tables, however small can be crucial information the researcher was hunting for. This is because it is difficult to search a table and still keep the understanding as to what it says when viewed as a standalone piece of information.
The way citations are currently applied is also a cause for concern considering that there are no standards, the example that Buffet gave us from his own organisations' files had different styles all within one page. One salient point Buffet added to this was the frequency of hyperlinks used in citations the problem of course was how long would the pages they linked to remain online? Ten years? Five years?
The classification of patent materials also received somewhat of a drubbing with Buffet offering us a reminder as to what classification is for (the arrangement of a collection of objects in a single dimensional world). This was for the purpose of storage and when needed retrieval at a later time. The problem I think he was arguing with this is that these 'one-dimensional worlds' are weak because the systems in place USCLASS, (USA) ECLA (Europe) and Japanese FI are culturally specific.
Some standardisation wouldn't go amiss I presume.
As Buffet says though, "Describing a document isn't classifying a document"
There were plenty of suggestions mooted on how to get around these problems (linking descriptive items in an illustration to the same descriptive items within the text area as well as the necessity of standardisation of data such as in the area of statistical analysis.
Critically though, few would disagree with Buffet that what the IR/IP worlds need to find is a way of deciding who takes responsibility for what.

The challenge of Multi-language Patent data

The opening sessions from the IRFS in Vienna have been dominated by the need to find workable solutions to retrieving and translating multi-language patent information. In particular that from Asia.
In the last 30 years the amount of information from the region has exploded. Originating mainly from Japan - China, Korea and Taiwan are doing their level best to catch up. In total half of all patent application filings now originate from the region.
From the limited number of options available, finding accurate patent information can be achieved in several ways, at present the options available are as follows such as manual human translation - slow and the most expensive option; automatic Machine translation is faster but besieged by the complexity of differences of language context between different global areas. A hybrid of the two methods mentioned above sees Human assisted translation as a possibility.
In his presentation Professor Jian-Yun Nie from University of Montreal outlined what he thought the ideal system should be (using the analogy of 3 cogs in a translation machine.
1) Query in English goes in, this then is automatically translated into an Asian Language,
2) The exact required information is then retrieved.
3) That information is then accessible to be read in English.
Sounds simple enough but it's a tough problem to crack because due to the many differences in language structure between the West and Asia a number of obstacles will need to be overcome such as the way different terms apply to different words and to consider this when applying the relevant technology.
In part there is the need to recognise the relationship between these different terms - but the real question seems to be how do you determine that relationship? How do you weight the terms?
As far as language structure is concerned consider for a moment that the Chinese language doesn't use spacing in it sentence structure while Korean does, albeit sporadically and not to the same rigidity as western languages. There are also marked differences in how the Chinese language in patents is applied compared to the different but related regions of Taiwan and Hong Kong. From the presentation given by Benjamin T'sou, Director of Language Information Sciences at the University of Hong Kong, taking into account the differences in just one sector (the automotive industry) between these three areas is proving to be a major headache. It illustrates well the difficulty of applying the same problems to a much different culture with its own set of languages.
The suggestion was that what seems to work effectively right now is to use machine translation to get the gist of the document and then use a human to evaluate whether its worth digging deeper and engaging the services of a professional translator. This might be good enough for now but whether that remains true is another matter.

Information Retrieval - one year on

Last year, when I first ventured to the Information Retrieval Facility's symposium the fledgling event made no bones that it didn't have all the answers to problems facing the worlds of Information Retrieval and Patent specialists, it did however promise to make inroads into attempting to solve these by opening a dialogue between the two camps. The intention was to make better use of the expertise of both professions and therefore help both cope with the deluge of complex patent information out there. There was a sense of purpose if you like.
12 months on and a bigger and better venue hosts the 2008 gathering, by my (crude) estimate the attendance has doubled - thankfully though there is also more elbowroom.
Opening proceedings, a spokesman from the Austrian Council for Research and Technology Development emphasised how the Austrian economy (alongside many others in the developed world) depends on effective patent research.
Explaining that there are now 60 million patents filed worldwide, it was not that surprising to here the industry is worth 60billion Euros. With 3,000 patent applications filed each day across the globe (at least half of which originate in Asia) the scale of information to contend with for professionals is staggering.
All our effort is being made to bring these new technologies to the forefront, "it will be worth the effort" he said
Meanwhile, John Tait, Chief Scientific Officer for the IRF outlined the challenges that still faced the industry as well as the current scenario facing the IR and IP worlds, he suggested that the IP community had not fully embraced the full scope of search technology of the last 15 years, but the purpose of the IRF was to make both practical and affordable systems available to them.
With that proceedings moved quickly on to the formidable problem of multi-lingual information search, more to follow...

Information Retrieval 2008

Regular readers may remember IWR's coverage last year from the Information Retrieval Facility Symposium in Vienna. It was all about bringing together Information Retrieval and Patent specialists in order to deal with the complex search issues that dog the industry. In part this is due to the sheer volume being generated each year, written in a variety of languages. Also, the tricky and evasive nature of how patent filings are constructed is always there in the background.
As I catch up before the symposium opens up officially, hosts, Matrixware, are currently running sessions on IP for IR and IR for IP specialists. Practice sessions to see what delegates have learnt during the day have just started. I'll be sure to ask fellow delegates what they thought having now had the chance to sit on the other side of the fence.
Proceedings kick off tomorrow at 9am with the opening sessions discussing the information retrieval challenges facing researchers in an increasingly multi-lingual patent world. More then...

Speaker of the week - Mary Ellen Bates

Mary Ellen Bates, Owner, Bates Information Services, USA
Day 1: Track 2 - Breathing new life into search
Mary is speaking on - Building and customising search engines: how you can out Google Google
Q: Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Mary: Probably all the Web 2.0 topics. What's challenging for me is keeping up with all the interesting applications people have come up with to leverage the communities and networks in the collaborative web. Web 2.0 feels as game-changing now as the web did 10 years ago - we're just in the early stages of this evolution, and we're going to be seeing a lot of flashes in the pan as well as solid innovations. What I appreciate so much about the Online Information conference is that I have a chance to hear a lot of speakers with many different perspectives on how to Web 2.0-ify ourselves.
.
Q: Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Mary: It really depends on why you're at the conference. As I said, Web 2.0 topics are in my radar right now, so the "Web 2.0 After the Buzz" track is one I'd highly recommend, as a way to get a lot of new ideas on how to find and use Web 2.0 content most effectively. I'm particularly intrigued with the "ROI 2.0 - the evolution of the bottom line" sessions. I'm seeing a lot more attention being paid to R.O.P. - return on participation. Particularly among digital natives, the concern isn't just "what can I get out of this resource " but "what will I get back if I participate?" That means that we're starting to assume that we will be interacting with information resources, not just using them. That's a really exciting prospect.
And, as an information professional in an "alternative" career, I'm looking forward to hearing the presentations in the "Information Professionals Surviving and Thriving in the New Age". It's more and more critical that we info pros continually redefine ourselves, as the information environment changes. Thinking about this in the context of this conference means that we'll be integrating new technologies into our vision of what our roles are.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Mary: That's a hard question! I always find the sessions thought-provoking, and the exhibit hall always has a lot of the vendors I have wanted to talk with. But what I look forward to most are the random conversations outside the conference session rooms. It's exciting to see a crowd of people all talking about information, and I always come away with new ideas and new contacts.
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Mary: Probably LinkedIn, but only because that is where most of my contacts hang out. I have found that it's a lot easier to find the contact I'm looking for on LinkedIn than other social network. If that's what a colleague is looking for, then LinkedIn may have the best features. If, on the other hand, I was talking with someone who wanted to create communities on a network, I would probably recommend Facebook or even a build-your-own network like Ning.
Q: And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Mary: I'm not much of a Christmas person; my main holiday is Thanksgiving here in the US. My partner and I are having both sets of families over, which will mean somewhere between 20 and 25 people. Plus two dogs. And a turkey cooked by a vegetarian. It's a wonderful holiday that focuses on family and food, and I really enjoy opening my house to lots of people I love.
About Mary Ellen Bates
Mary Ellen is the owner of Bates Information Services, providing business research to business professionals, and consulting and training services services to the information industry. She has been an online researcher since the days of keypunch cards.
Firm principal and founder Mary Ellen Bates is widely known as one of the nation's leading business researchers, with more than 25 years of experience in this discipline.
She has written hundreds of articles and white papers, conducted hundreds of speaking engagements related to research, and has provided expert comment on research topics to many media outlets including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, Business Week, Forbes, National Public Radio, Wired, Computerworld, and more. Bates also routinely conducts workshops and training programs on various aspects of online and Internet research.
www.batesinfo.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Collaboration 2.0

In these economically troubled times, the content management vendors have managed to jump onto something rather tangible that might help them sell more products. Basically, give your staff tools to help them collaborate better and somewhere along the line it'll benefit your bottom line. Or that's the way the story is usually told.
So we had Alfresco and RedDot launching new products last week, the latter of course in the web content management space and the former probably the best known open source ECM vendor around, which has been gaining pretty impressive adoption in the enterprise space. Although RedDot has been criticised by some of the analysts for failing to innovate at the pace required by its customers, maybe since its acquisition by ECM giant OpenText, its new Web Solutions Suite ticks most of the right boxes.
The main message behind the release seems to be to let firms harness the power of Web 2.0 tools like blogs and wikis on their internally and externally facing sites, while retaining the vital enterprise control over content that often puts companies off the brave new world of Web 2.0. So it's about encouraging collaboration on intranets and extranets but giving IT administrators vitally the final say over what content goes where, which is important for your compliance efforts.
Alfresco has released Enterprise Edition 3.0, which is focused a great deal not on the web side but on document collaboration, although it also draws heavily on Web 2.0 features and ideals. The most interesting, and judging by initial feedback on the product, the most popular, feature is Alfresco Share, which allows users to capture, share and retrieve information. It's also got handy functionality for creating virtual teams for projects, and a neat Facebook-like activity feed feature, which allows users to see who's doing what in a project and if there are any important updates.
The key, according to the firm, was to democratise the process of collaborative content management, which is I guess the holy grail for ECM vendors - putting the tools in the hands of the business end users, so that costly, timely, inefficient IT inteference is minimised. If we're getting nearer to that promised land then it's just in time for firms, as we all look to wring the most productivity we can from our existing human resources.

Speaker of the week: Chris Sherman, President, Searchwise,

Day 1: Track 2 - Breathing new life into search
Q: Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Chris: The sessions discussing the semantic web. After years of hearing that "it's almost here," I've been seeing solid evidence that the semantic web has in fact, arrived, and is set to dramatically change the way information professionals work on the web. This isn't incremental change - it's truly a new paradigm (as much as I hate to use a cliche), and I find the whole area very exciting.
Q: Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Chris: I'm biased - the Breathing New Life into Search and Order out of
Chaos- Creating Structure in Our Information Universe tracks.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Chris: Meeting with my UK and European information professional colleagues.
It's always a pleasure to get the perspectives of info pros throughout the world, to compare and contrast their issues and concerns.
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Chris: LinkedIn. While I am a member of other social networks, LinkedIn is the only one I find truly valuable, primarily because it has a professional focus, and the people who participate are more interested in sharing useful information than playing games or dithering away on trivial topics (heh - sorry I don't have a stronger opinion about this... :-)
Q: And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Chris: With my wife's family in the Northern Neck area of Virginia. The community they live in is the oldest settled area in the U.S., and the local dialect has more in common with Elizabethean English than contemporary U.S. or U.K. English, so it's always a special treat to be there.
About Chris Sherman
Chris Sherman is President of Searchwise, a web consulting firm based in Boulder, Colorado. He is also Executive Editor of SearchEngineWatch.com, penning a daily newsletter and serving as chair and organiser of Incisive Media's international Search Engine Strategies conferences. Chris writes regularly for Information Today, ONLINE, and other information industry journals.
Email: info@searchwise.net
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Are you integrating properly?

By Phil Muncaster
I will stop harping on about SharePoint one of these days. Promise. But probably not until it ceases to become one of the most popular content management tools among enterprises. So you know what I'm going to say next: despite the hype, SharePoint cannot be all things to all people. It isn't a one stop shop for your ECM needs, and if you think it is, you're going to find pretty quickly that the add-on functionality required to make it so will blow your budget through the roof.
 
In the web content management space too, the shadow of SharePoint looms large again. Most WCM vendors - such as RedDot, FatWire and Immediacy - are trying to promote their own product's easy integration with Microsoft's flagship product, again, mainly because SharePoint isn't very good at web publishing itself. And yet, as Tony Byrne of independent analyst CMS Watch explained, it is still well regarded, and very often used in firms for document collaboration. So in many scenarios, it will be necessary for firms to expose those same documents to the web, hence the need for a decent tool to do that.
 
But while the vendors have caught on to this and are trying to differentiate by offering their own forms of integration, a word of caution from the analyst firm: not all integrated products are born equal, some are more integrated than others. These products' connectors vary greatly, said Byrne - some only working with SharePoint lists, some with its libraries too, some are bi-directional, some aren't, the complexity goes on. Why can't things be easier for enterprise buyers? Well, they're not, so it probably pays to do your research as for any other products, and question all vendor claims. Integration? Exactly what do you mean by integration.
 Interestingly, the larger players in the WCM space, Interwoven and Vignette have remained a little more aloof from SharePoint and such integration issues. Perhaps it's because they want to promote their own document collaboration system, as Byrne suggested. In any case, it would seem a brave move to make, considering the popularity of the Microsoft product among, virtually every firm I've come across.

Mastermind

I was pleased to hear recently that Bart Smith a reference librarian at the British Library (BL) and part-time quiz supremo is to once again step under the spot lights. This time on tonight's Mastermind.
The legendary quiz show will see Smith pit his wits against fellow contestants using his knowledge of the Spanish Civil War as his specialist subject.
I had the pleasure of interviewing Bart late last year to talk of his career as an information specialist at the BL over three decades. However his second passion for memorizing dates has undoubtedly helped him with appearances on Test the Nation and University Challenge: The Professionals in which he captained the BL team to win in the final.
With that kind of record of success it should make for good viewing. Good luck from all of us here at IWR.
Mastermind will be screened tonight at 8pm, BBC 2

Speaker of the week: Kate Stanfield

Kate Stanfield, Head of Knowledge Management, CMS Cameron McKenna LLP is this week's speaker. Kate is speaking on day two of the conference.
Day 2: Track 3 - Information professionals surviving and thriving in the new age
Kate comments here on her session
Hybrid professionals mean a thriving library; the experience of a European Law Firm
"All too often some members of the information profession feel that they are not given credit or are fully valued for their expertise, although this is a generalisation - this can result in a defensive attitude and at it's worst, a perception of that professional as a "cannot do" rather than "can do" person. They may do their job well, but will not "stretch" or step outside their comfort zone, and gradually the more interesting work is not brought to the information function. This vicious circle can sometimes be broken if new and complementary roles can be taken on, to demonstrate the skills and value of an information professional.
"I have been lucky in my career, in that I have been able to stretch the boundaries of my scope - I have had to include some boring tasks as part of that, but it has usually improved my credibility and increased my understanding of organisational needs, strategy and goals. The result has been a more fulfilling job, and a role valued by my organisation."
Q: Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Kate: Collaborative working - we are finding web 2.0 technology can be applied to such good effect within so many communities of practice, but this is fraught with issues - policies, protocols, longevity and archive storage of knowledge. I hope to find out more about how other people are tackling this - and what to avoid!
Q: Besides your own, which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Kate: Track 2: Order out of chaos - creating structure in our information universe - so much in all of the tracks, but the semantic search is such a key thing for me going forwards - this could make such a difference to information retrieval.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Kate: The discussions! Knowledge is all about the people, so to hear what such a great range of experts are doing will be most interesting.
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Kate: LinkedIn probably, it is becoming really well populated now.
Q: Finally, out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Kate: At home - we are renovating an old house and with eight coming to Christmas dinner, I aspire to have a cooker by then, a whole kitchen would be nice too but....
About Kate Stanfield
Kate Stanfield is the Head of Knowledge Management at CMS Cameron McKenna LLP. Her background is that of an Information Manager, she joined the firm in 1990 having spent 7 years in public and business libraries. A Chartered Librarian with over 20 years experience she has implemented several knowledge systems, including electronic systems for sharing information. Kate received the Lexis Nexis Butterworths award for excellence in 2005.
Kate has helped several clients with knowledge and information services, ranging from carrying out knowledge sharing audits, helping to create a knowledge strategy, through to developing taxonomy for the business.
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Credit crunching IT

Well, it didn't take long did it? Green IT has already been toppled as the topic on everyone's lips in the technology industry, just as compliance before it. Now every vendor, every services organisation, every analyst is talking about what CIOs should be doing, buying and saying in the "current economic climate". Some of it is of course, spurious rubbish, but other advice makes a little more sense.
Former European head of security at IBM, Nick Coleman, for example, predicted a massive restructuring in the security industry as capacity is reached on staff numbers and firms look to cut back. And then everyone's favourite analyst behemoth, Gartner, came out with all guns blazing. IT leaders must not be shy, it said, they must grasp the nettle by the horns, or some such metaphor, and embrace transformational change projects.
Now, if we're talking about near mission critical applications which could make or break your reputation as CIO, enterprise search is probably somewhere up there. So it was no surprise last week that Jean Ferre, chief executive of French-based search firm Sinequa, was waxing lyrical about his firm's products and their ability to help you out in the current economic climate. When you think about it, he's kind of right when he says that one of the few assets your organisation has that won't depreciate is your talent, your human resources. The only problem is that the knowledge locked away in their brain holes can't easily be tapped.
Which is where knowledge management tools of old were meant to help. Trouble is they were universally panned as unwieldy, hard to use, and thus largely failed. Newer firms like Trampoline Systems are making a good stab of reinventing the area, allowing firms to manage projects by mapping out the relationships their staff have with each other, and with the information they deal with on a daily basis.
Coming at it from a slightly different angle, Sinequa's 'thing' is that it allows users to search for corporate documents according to who is mentioned in them, or who has authored them. It can be tremendously helpful to be able to pull out this kind of information, especially dealing in an enterprise context, because reading a document is often not enough - you'll also need to ask someone who can offer insight about that document, talk through what you need to talk through, and then make your informed decision.
That's the idea anyway. I haven't used it yet, but the demo seemed pretty smooth and, in these oh so trying times, you could do worse than looking for ways to maximise staff productivity, break down silos, increase efficiency and so on.

Speaker of the week - Richard Wallis

Richard Wallis, Technology Evangelist, Talis, UK is this weeks speaker. Richard is a track keynote speaker on day two of the conference.
Day 2: Track 2 - Catch the semantic wave - or drown in a sea of content
Q: Which are the most important topics, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Richard: Having spoken with several key speakers, whilst recording the Online Information 2008 podcast series, it is clear that many sessions that I am looking forward to are building on the experience of Web 2.0 and new social patterns to predict an exciting and challenging future.
Q: Besides your own, which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Richard: The Web 2.0 after the Buzz track - because we need to take the lessons of Web 2.0 and project them forward.
Q: What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Richard: Meeting both speakers and attendees to join in the physical social networking
Q: If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Richard: It would totally depend on their area of interest - dependant on the conversation I use Linked-in, Facebook, Twitter and Doppler.
Q: Where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Richard: A few old fashioned web-less (with the exception of iPlayer) days at home with the family and lots of food.
About Richard Wallis
Richard's thirty year plus career in the computer information industry, the last eighteen of which has been with the UK's leading Library Systems and Semantic Web technology company, Talis, coupled with his passion for and involvement with new and emerging technology trends, gives him a unique perspective of the issues challenging Libraries, and Information professionals today. Richard has been at the birth of several major System Developments, as architect, research and technical lead. As Technology Evangelist he is at the forefront in promoting, explaining, and applying new and emerging Web and Semantic Web technologies in the library and wider information domain. Richard is an active blogger on Panlibus, a regular podcaster in the Talking with Talis series, and host and chair of the Library 2.0 Gang.
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

ECM - a risky business?

Forgive me if this is a bit grandmother-sucking-eggs stuff, but have you thought about the risk profile of your ECM investments recently? I would normally have thought, and I think a good many IT buyers think similarly, that the safest options lie with the big boys - the IBMs, Oracles and EMCs of this world. Well, in the world of content management, that's not necessarily the case.
A new report by analyst CMS Watch - yes, sorry to harp on about them again but as independents they don't really have many peers in the business - suggested that actually you may be better off opting for a smaller, mid-tier player. Why? Well, according to Alan Pelz-Sharpe, the report author, many of the large vendors in this space are still undergoing costly, timely eye-off-the-ball type integrations of recent acquisitions - think IBM and FileNet for example. Another reason is that some, like Oracle, are still finding their way in the area, having only relatively recently entered the ECM market. What that means for IT buyers is change, and that is never a particularly reassuring trend among your suppliers, least of all in the current climate.
Another advantage of the mid market vendors is that they generally tend to do one thing and do it well, rather than try the all things to all people approach. This means that you may accrue a whole load of point products of course, but that's kind of how people buy ECM technologies anyway, according to Pelz-Sharpe, and it's easy to see why. Pressure on IT is usually such that it's pretty difficult to sit back and look at the long-term, big strategic picture. That would be the ideal of course, but if your finance department is screaming because they need a quick fix to a workflow forms-related issue, you kind of have to suck it up and just support the business.
So I guess the advice of the week is take a look at the smaller players, because in the long run it may be in your best interests; in this economic climate you have to be as risk averse as possible, and that could mean putting your eggs in a smaller vendor's basket.

Speaker of the Week: Jeremy Gould

Jeremy Gould, Head of Internet Communication, Ministry of Justice, UK is this week's speaker. Jeremy is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference.
Day 1: Track 1 Web 2.0 After the buzz
Q Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Jeremy: I'm really keen to learn more about how business can better adopt semantic web technologies
Q Besides your own, which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Jeremy: search and SEO aren't the 'sexiest'; of subjects but they're vital for business, and easily overlooked in the web 2 media hype. I think there's plenty to learn there still.
Q What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Jeremy: Meeting new people!
Q If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Jeremy: I get more business intros through LinkedIn right now - it's become my online CV
Q And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Jeremy: West coast of Ireland.
About Jeremy Gould
I am a civil servant at the UK Ministry of Justice with responsibility for digital media strategy. I lead a team of web professionals managing a portfolio of websites, developing customer-centric online communication propositions, and using social media tools to encourage online engagement.
Prior to joining the civil service, I worked on web 'stuff' in wider public sector, corporate, and agency environments.
Jeremy Gould's Specialties:
Proposition development with a technology agnostic approach
Defining user experience - strong ability to act as an 'informed customer'
Using social media for online engagement and delivering lean, functional web presences
Delivering with limited resources
Building and motivating teams - physically and virtually
Qualified and experienced OGC gateway reviewer
Learn more about Jeremy by checking out http://whitehallwebby.com, http://twitter.com/jeremygould, http://linkedin.com/in/jeremygould/
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Information Professionals guiding you to the best bits of the blogosphere

Still baffled by the popularity of his blog, Stephen Arnold, who will give the closing keynote speech at the Online Information 2008 show, has little enthusiasm for blogosphere backslapping and puts his efforts into content critique instead.
Q: Where is your blog?
A: arnoldit.com/wordpress
Q: Describe your blog and the categories you have on it
A: I'm an adult goose who comments on search and content processing.
Q How long have you been blogging?
A: Since January 2008.
Q: What started you off blogging?
A: To protect my term "beyond search". My attorney told me that to protect those two words I would have to do something with the term. It's an intellectual property matter. Now I'm stuck with it.
Q: Do you comment on other blogs and what is the value of commenting?
A: I comment on anything that interests me that is related to content processing: traditional media, upstart companies and anything in between. I'm highly critical; I make no attempt to be fair.
Q: Which bloggers do you watch, link to and why?
A: Not many. The list is on the site. I'm not interested in links; I provide opinion.
Q: How does your organisation benefit from your presence in the blogosphere?
A: Again, I was told that I needed to blog if I wanted to own the "beyond search" term.
Q: What are the blogs in your sector that you trust?
A: No clue; I pay no attention. I do primary research for organisations. Most weblogs are written by people who aren't experts. Most of the ones I've seen are baloney.
Q: What do you personally get out of it for your career?
A: I'm at the end of my career; I get nothing. I own the term "beyond search" on the strength of the content on my weblog. I put no new stuff on my weblog and I make that clear. I'm the antithesis of the 25-year-old who works in search.
Q: What good things have happened to you that could only have happened because of blogging?
A: Nothing good, other than owning the term. I had no idea that the weblog would become popular. Its baloney compared with the studies I have done. I'm baffled by the fascination with my weblog. I have no interest in being popular. I have a readership in the tens of thousands and I'm baffled. I'm the opposite to IWR. My weblog is about what's important. When someone criticises me, I think that's good, and say "keep thinking". That's what it's about.
Q: Setting work aside, which blogs do you read just for fun?
A: None, I work.
Selection box: Beyond Search's blogroll
What search sounds like: altsearchengines.com
Content management big boys' scrap: bmoc.wordpress.com
Advice from Down Under: steptwo.com.au/columntwo/archives/cat_search_tools.html

A pair of Google goggles: blog.adheresolutions.com and blogoscoped.com
Natural language processing: lingpipe-blog.com
Search engine marketing/optimisation: pandia.com/index.html

A web of information relationships

This week I wanted to highlight a few examples I have recently come across that display and contextualising complex data in innovative ways.
The first up is a basic but clever little Java applet that displays the structure of any given website. You pop in the URL of your choice and the applet gets busy making a conceptual diagram of your site.
Links (blue), tables (red), images (violet), forms (yellow) and HTML tags (amongst others) are allocated a particular colour and placed accordingly in a spider chart. That is then laid out on the basis of how the various elements of the site relate to each other and on their frequency.
Although simple it's interesting to compare the structure one site to the next. Have a look how the IWR blog compares to the IWR home page.
IWR Blog

IWR Website

The outcome is a unique and pretty graphic, but the question is how useful is it?
In its current form maybe not so much for the average information pro, but what if rather than search through the amount of DIV tags and HTML links on a site, it could search a number of key words and how they relate? Fortunately the source code has been made available so if anyone is interested have a look.
As a start it illustrates how people are being inspired to show the things they find fascinating in unique and innovative ways.
Next up is Breathing Earth a 'real-time' map of the world that shows very clearly the co2 emissions of any given country while a series of either sun or shadow icons flash up whenever someone is either born or died in the world.

The simulation takes its data from sources ranging from the United Nations to the World Factbook (published by the CIA) and works out the averages. Apart from the world map itself, a table in the corner of the page shows the amount of co2 generated and how many births and deaths their have been since you opened up the page.


It's a clever way of hammering home the momentum of civilisation from the energy it takes to maintain the lifestyles of richer nations to poignant flickering of a multitude of sun and shadow icons in the developing regions on the planet. By making the point so well it rather impressed me.
Finally, I also came across a rather handy vendor generated tool while conducting a review of their recently revamped website.
Credo Reference (or Xrefer as you may remember them) has recently relaunched their web services platform, and tucked away in there is a reworked Concept Map. This self animated spider diagram is another excellent way of showing the researcher what the relationships are to different but related search results. Results can be manipulated so easily, even the ability to display the depth of your results is available. You can probably tell that I rather liked it. But more of that in the review to come.

In the meantime any of the more technical minded of you out there think you could apply these to your work, do let us know what results you had.