Speaker of the Week: Jenny Levine

Jenny Levine, Internet Development Specialist and Strategy Guide, American Library Association, USA is this weeks speaker. Jenny is a track keynote speaker on day one of the conference. ...
Day 1: Track 3 New Channels, New Media and New Approaches for Libraries
Q Which are the most important topics, for you personally, due to be discussed at the Online Information Conference 2008 and why?
Jenny: The most important topics for me are the integration of user-generated content, interactivity, and syndication (RSS). I believe these three things are changing user expectations and behaviour with information and media, forcing the rest of us to adapt to these changes.
Q Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Jenny: As someone who works in an association and is implementing a professional networking service for our members, I'm interested in the "Risk 2.0 or Opportunity 2.0 - hype or hope?" and "User generated content - challenging professionals" tracks. I'm also intrigued by the "Perspectives from Generation Y" and "Information seeking behaviours in the new world" ones, as I think these have an impact on our profession.
Q What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Jenny: The piece I'm looking forward to the most is the networking and meeting new people who can provide me with new information and inspire me think of things in different ways. This conference certainly looks like an exciting group of people to do just that.
Q If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Jenny: don't think I can recommend just one social network, as I don't believe any of them meets all of someone's needs. Instead, I think each person should create their own social network using Friendfeed, although I am discouraged that the site still cannot display Facebook updates.
Q And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Jenny: I'm planning to spend the holidays at home, which will be a nice break after a fall of quite a bit of travel. :)
About Jenny Levine
I work in both the Information Technology and Publishing units at the American Library Association. As part of my job, I blog, create wikis, bug my colleagues to instant message, test podcasting and vodcasting, teach RSS, post pictures on Flickr, explore Second Life, and do similar work with emerging technologies and new tools. I am currently organizing the 2007 ALA TechSource Gaming, Learning, and Libraries Symposium which will take place in July in Chicago. Last year, I had the pleasure of traveling around the United States and Europe to give more than 30 presentations. The "strategy guide" piece of my title is providing leadership and implementation of new technologies at ALA and in libraries in general.
Learn more about Jenny by checking out her Blog www.theshiftedlibrarian.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Information assurance again

By Phil Muncaster
Information security has been all over the news ever since the HMRC scandal broke. It has forced public and private sector CIOs or their equivalents to re-examine their strategies for securing their data assets. One of the common accusations levelled at especially public sector organisations in the wake of HMRC and the following data loss incidents at Ministries of Defence, Justice, Transport and the rest, is that there is a culture of indifference to the value of data.
There's no doubt this argument has some merit. If these institutions are run from the top down by managers who pay only lip service to the numerous policies, procedures, technologies and balances that have been installed to prevent data loss, then those incidents will probably keep occurring. Cultural change of course is most difficult to effect, and will be a slow and laborious process, prompting some security experts to predict more data breaches ahead for the government in the meantime. But maybe the cultural malaise argument is a little simplistic.
People argue that you can have all the technological measures in the world in place to prevent breaches but they won't be successful unless the people and process issues support them. Now this is true, but it could be argued that the IT system is actually more important than this. It's certainly the view of Nigel Jones, director of government-backed body the Cyber Security Knowledge Transfer Network, that training and education of end users is not going to solve the problem on its own.
It all comes down to system design. They need to be architected in such a way as to have security requirements written in from the start, and systems need to be designed with the end user in mind at all times, he told me. The Cyber Security KTN has actually done some important work in this area in the form of its special interest groups (SIGs). Its privacy engineering SIG produced guidelines for firms on how to design privacy into all stages of a project, how to dispose of data safely and other issues. The secure software development SIG, meanwhile, looked to make available best practices in designing security into software products from the ground up.
There's no easy solution to the problem of data security. But going back to the basic system design and looking more closely at the technology that underpins it may help us get there a little quicker.

Reading the way ahead

So where do you stand on the great e-book debate? Is the digitisation of books as inevitable as the digitisation of every other as aspect of life in the western world in the 21st century? Or is an e-book ruining the experience of reading a book where there is as much physical pleasure as mental? Many find it hard to divide the love of reading from the love of books with careful readers finding the physical properties of the paper and the dust jacket as pleasurable as the mental devouring of the written word. It seems impossible that such experiences will be lost. However research suggests that those who are used to online are ready to embrace the e-book in a way that seemed unlikely just a few years ago. One reason why e-books may be on the cusp of being a serious proposition is that the technology has caught up with the initial hype and promise. Carrying around a thick book may have its disadvantages but that is still a better bet than being in possession of an e-book reader which doesn't quite have the right screen size, battery lifespan, lighting or weight.
Research commissioned by Nielsen Book showed that 3% of regular internet users were "extremely likely" to buy a dedicated e-book reader in the next three months with a further 4% very likely to make a purchase. The online survey generated 6,500 respondents and illustrated a widespread awareness of the device. The intent to purchase e-books was also measured with 9% of respondents extremely or very likely to buy an e-book within the same timeframe.
Whether you may have expected a higher response among such a digitally aware audience is a matter of dispute. Of course given the economic gloom and the lack of consumer confidence maybe this is not the best time to be selling a new concept to a fragile feeling buying and reading public. But perhaps what is most interesting is that Nielsen is taking e-books seriously enough to be developing a way of measuring the sales of e-books alongside the method it has for counting physical book sales. Comparing sales of e-books with their real life counterparts should be a good measure of how many of us are truly embracing the digital world.

Speaker of the Week: Ewan McIntosh

Ewan McIntosh, who currently works as Digital Commissioner, Scotland and Northern Ireland for Channel 4 Television's Innovation for the Public Fund, is our first speaker to be featured. Ewan will be taking to the stage three times during this year's conference ...
Day 1: Ewan will be on the panel of 'Innovators under the spotlight'
Day 2: Track 1 - When communities create themselves, what's the role for the organisation?
Day 3: Track 2 - Information seeking behaviours in the new world
Q Which tracks would you recommend to delegates attending the conference?
Ewan: I'd go for the track or tracks that are most relevant to you and your role, but take at least one afternoon out in something you wouldn't normally have gone to. Ultimately, though, anything to do with social media is a must for almost every profile of person coming to this event. It affects your customers' lives, your neighbours... it affects you directly. If you don't think it does now, then you'll find out how much it's affected you when you're organisation is ignored by the very people it's trying to engage.
Q What are you looking forward to most about participating in Online Information 2008?
Ewan: I like thinking through things that I haven't had time, in my normal day, to get to grips with. The mix of disciplines at Online is the best reason to attend. It pushes your thinking out of whatever boxes you've found yourself falling into over the year. It has to be said: Clay Shirky is a great feature this year, and I'll love blogging about his stuff and, with any luck, sharing a word or two over a cheap plastic cup of coffee.
Q If you had to choose only one - which social network would you recommend to colleagues?
Ewan: I'd choose the one where their friends or colleagues were. Some people find that one, say Facebook, already contains most of these people. Others have no intention of mixing with workmates, so go with the place where your high school friends are, for example. There's not one that's better than the rest; they just appeal to different groups of people. If you're my friend, though, get on Facebook - it's where most of the people I care about can be found.
Q And finally, just out of interest - where are you planning to spend Christmas this year?
Ewan: Christmas is always spent with my family at home in Scotland. I'm not going to say where, though. You can just keep an eye on my Flickr photo feed to see
About Ewan McIntosh
Ewan McIntosh helps people understand how emerging technologies such as social media, mobile ubiquitous computers andgaming can help them learn better, work better and live better. He currently works for Channel 4 Television Corporation's Innovation for the Public Fund, as Digital Commissioner for Scotland and Northern Ireland. Previously, Ewan worked in the world of education, latterly as National Adviser on Learning and Technology Futures for Learning and Teaching Scotland, the education agency responsible for curriculum development, and a member of several advisory boards, including the Channel 4 New Media Education Advisory Board. As a teacher of French and German in the high school sector and an educational technologist working with children aged 3-18, he frequently gives talks and workshops around the world, trying to find new and better ways of using emerging technologies in education. Ewan has also consulted for Governments around the world, and organisations including the BBC, British Council, General Teaching Council of Scotland, RM and Scottish Enterprise, advising on how social media can be harnessed for to improve learning in the organisation, leadership and communication. More information and previous talks are available on his website: http://www.ewanmcintosh.com, and you can follow his take on current trends on his regularly updated blog:http://edu.blogs.com
For more information, or to view the conference programme in full, please visit:
www.online-information.co.uk/conference

Speaker of the Week: Online Information Conference

Just a quick update to let you know that each week from now until December we will be featuring speakers at this years Online Information Conference (IWR's sister event).
It's a chance for them to give you a taste for what they will be discussing and for you to see in advance something that might be of interest.

SharePoint: pros and cons

Sorry to bang on about content management again, I do have better things to do with my time, honestly. It's just that a bit of news caught my eye again at the tail end of last week. A lot of noise is made by commentators about the impact of SharePoint on the industry. You certainly can't talk about content management, or ECM, these days without mentioning Microsoft's disruptive product, but you certainly can talk until the cows come home about whether it's a full ECM solution or not.
Usability has often been talked about as the secret of SharePoint's success; users love it and IT has to just deal with it. But there are other reasons. John Powell, chief executive of open source ECM vendor Alfresco, told me it was more about the distribution mechanism - being hooked into Office you might say has given SP an unfair advantage. Love it or hate it though, and most users seem to love it, SharePoint has certainly raised the profile of ECM in the enterprise.
The perception therefore has been that SharePoint's gain has been its rivals' loss, especially in the mid-market space where it has really made hay. But the latest findings from analyst firm CMS Watch reported that the ECM market is thriving more than ever before...actually more that most other areas of IT.
The truth is that SharePoint has spread the content management gospel, educating users that, yes, they probably could do with some tools to mange their content actually. Far from buying the vendor line that SP can be all things to all people, buyers are beginning to understand that they will need to look elsewhere for certain capabilities SharePoint can't provide, such as imaging and capture, said lead analyst Alan Pelz-Sharpe.
So, judging by the report, the prospects fort IT buyers are pretty good. Prices are coming down, choice is increasing and firms are beginning to fill the gaps in the market. It's obviously more complex than that, but generally speaking it's not a bad time to be looking at re-evaluating your ECM systems, as many vendors are now offering integrate with SharePoint, so for example, you can keep your highly usable SP front-end, but take advantage of more enterprise capabilities provided by other vendors underneath.

The standards are coming!

Hot on the heels of the attempts by the Content Group and BSI to create a publically available specification for Enterprise Content Management products, last week saw a very interesting announcement at the Gartner Portals, Content and Collaboration Summit. During one of the keynote presentations, analyst Mark Gilbert informed us of "one of the most interesting things I've seen in my 15 years as an analyst". No, it wasn't Bill Gates being spotted unicyclying down Regent Street in a Google branded baseball cap, it was the news that IBM, EMC, and Microsoft and others are all working together on greater interoperability.
Unlike the news from a month or so back, which involved consultancy The Content Group and other players looking to create best practice in defining and implementing ECM projects, this is a proactive vendor move, with IBM, EMC, Microsoft, OpenText, Oracle, SAP and Alfresco on board. Apparently they've been at it behind the scenes for over a year now and plan to submit their work to standards body Oasis. Maybe it isn't as surprising as it sounds though - as Gilbert said during his presentation, the big vendors have probably listened to their customers' gripes, looked at their sales, and realised that non-interoperable products in this market aren't going to help anyone. In fact siloed environments are only going to add to customer frustration, and if they look to buy best of breed, organisations are going to look to those that can interoperate better.
So what's it all about? Well, according to open source ECM player Alfresco, the so-called Content Management Interoperability Services specification is now at draft implementation phase. The objective is to deliver a common API that can be used to write ECM apps that will work anywhere. The Alfresco release reads: "Just as the database vendors standardised on SQL in the 1980s, today's leading ECM vendors have developed a draft specification with the goal of delivering and enabling interoperability across content repositories."
Bold sentiments indeed, but with the backing of virtually every major ECM vendor, this could mark a real tipping point in the ECM market, and if successful, will make the lives of IT buyers so much easier. In many ways it's a sign off the growing maturity of the market - it's not there yet, but this is certainly one to watch in the coming months.

Changing Business models

How do you make money from your content without sacrificing your rights? It's the big question to every company that provides information online.
Following on from the opening presentations at the Global Information Industry Summit, the contentious issue of protecting IP while seizing new business opportunities was where assembled delegates really got to chew the fat.
In terms of maintaining meaningful copyright online, it's all about regaining control of the content. In terms of new business models its recognising opportunities when they present themselves and then being able to deliver them to the customer without hurting your business.
There was a mass of ideas and methods that were explored in sessions through the day, but it was the panel session moderated by info guru David Worlock that was most successful in its attempt to understand the issues.
The idea was to consider which business models will be the most appropriate for publishers to adopt. Should all online content stick to the tradition of being free or is a subscription model actually more effective? Is a hybrid of the two where a solution lies?
With panellists from Nature Publishing (Steven Inchcoombe), Dow Jones (Simon Alterman), Thomson Reuters (David Craig) and the FT.com (Rob Grimshaw) the discussion examined how the business, financial and scientific publishing worlds have sought to find their own solution.
After Worlock shared the collective relief of the audience following a successful experiment of the Hadron Collider the panellists soon got down to the bare bones. Dow Jones' Alterman pointed out that the business model of content provider and publisher was and continued to be quite simple, it was about selling content to an audience and making sure there was an audience for that content.
FT.com's Grimshaw was bullish in the defence of his organisation's stance of how to manage its revenue stream with its mixture of limited free content and corporate subscriptions. He said the FT defended its right to choose its own business model and not be dictated to from outside. The FT would never be ashamed of putting value on its content he added.
A friendly dig by Worlock suggested the FT's approach was "The great laboratory of business models"
Meanwhile Nature's Inchcoombe reminded us that in NPG's long and illustrious history their business model had always been a bit of a hybrid anyway with content originating from its community of scientists and researchers that form the bedrock of its business.
David Craig from Thomson Reuters made a salient point asking what the customer is using your information for. What was it about the content that they got value from? Furthermore, the value they placed in your content was based on what they could do with it, how it helped them do their job.
It was good to have a reminder that ultimately that is what it's all about.

Global Information Industry Summit and challenges for the information world

After enjoying an extended break last week, I found myself straight back in to the throng of things. Today, I've spent time with fellow delegates at this year's Global Information Industry Summit which for the first time has been staged in London.
From a content provider's perspective it was an interesting day, the Keynote from Hugo Dixon, Editor in Chief and Chairman of financial analytic news site; breakingviews.com was a handy session full of advice on how to make a successful business from an online content platform.
Hugo outlined how the decline of print journalism has continued to challenge traditional publishing business models, citing that many under 30's rarely (if ever) buy newspapers for the source of their information. Older generations are also moving away to online and mobile platforms.
Of course we've all known that for a while now, but what Hugo discussed was helpful in understanding what does work. He explained that just pushing content online isn't good enough. Quality writing and access to information is key but it has to be paid for. At breakingviews.com they were one of the first to successfully use a subscription model, their rivals have since followed suit.
From what I understand, Hugo believed some of the key questions content providers and problems need to consider are how do they defend their revenue base? Will costs have to be cut and will that lead to a loss of talent if that doesn't happen?
The other issues are that professionals are bombarded with information, yet they demand sophisticated content, anything else is pretty much worthless to them as they don't have time to weed through the detritus. Nor are they prepared to put up with second-rate insights. Add to this the matter of speed, particularly in financial reporting and analysis and the challenge is a significant one.
Something to bear in mind for the rest of the summit...

Omnidox takes on the big boys

A little while ago I reported on the exciting happenings taking place at the Internet World trade show in Earls Court. Well, I say exciting, but it's all relative I guess. The main topic of debate in the content management arena seemed to be the suitability or otherwise of many big-name, big-brand products to enterprise requirements.
Enterprise IT shoppers were warned by various experts that they should not necessarily go with the big boys because their products may not be a good fit for many of them, and are likely to be costly, unwieldy and require lengthy implementations. Instead, IT managers were advised to clearly establish their requirements and then seek out those vendors whose products provide the best fit. Not that these experts were slagging off the IBMs and Documentums per se; it was more a polite suggestion that buying from a big vendor will not necessarily meet all your content management needs, despite the claims that may have been made by said vendor.
Well, now a perfect example of what they were talking about - a smallish vendor operating in a very specialised segment is accruing some rather impressive customers like Scottish and Newcastle, Virgin and Barclays. Now document management is probably one of the least sexy areas of possibly the least sexy technology field ever - content management - but with its Omnidox product, Stortext could well be on to something.
Perhaps most importantly, it's an on-demand product; if anything is going to encourage firms to take a chance on a smaller company like this, it's going to be the delivery model. On-demand, software-as-a-service, cloud computing, whatever you want to call it, has long been hailed for its low start-up costs, low overheads and impressive RoI and nowhere is this more telling than in the content management space.
Stortext's Mark Iveson told me that the figures alone are persuading some big names to jump on board. And it makes sense - if you're spending upwards of 100k on software, licenses, servers, maintenance etc etc, you might well look for simpler alternatives. Another benefit, as he said, is that new functionality can be turned on at any time, for all of your users, removing the nasty business of upgrade paths every three years. And features can be hidden or otherwise according to role, so users are not lumbered with a whole heap of functionality that is neither relevant or useful.
Now, I'm no SaaS evangelist, but it will be interesting to see if any of the big content management vendors take a leaf out of Stortext's book and start to roll-out on-demand versions of their products.

SharePoint splits the field

It's a truth universally acknowledged that Microsoft SharePoint has really shaken up the content management market since it burst onto the scene a few years ago. Well, according to the latest piece of research by independent analyst firm CMS Watch, the arch disruptor is really going at it in the enterprise portals space.
SharePoint has made the huge impact it has thanks to a few factors, according to CMS Watch founder Tony Byrne. Microsoft has done a great job of evangelising the product, so that the vast network of developers and consultancies under its wing, for right or wrong, think that SharePoint can basically solve all of their problems. The truth, of course, is slightly more mundane - it can't. In addition, the commonly-held perception that SharePoint is free may have helped to drive its popularity, Byrne suggested. The reality, yet again, is somewhat different - although the underlying service comes at no cost, the pounds can quickly mount up as extra functionality is piled on top.
CMS Watch's Enterprise Portals 2009 report which was released last week notes that SharePoint's rivals are desperately trying to claw back their share of the market by adding high-end functionality that Microsoft cannot currently provide, in a bid to differentiate. Specifically, deep integration with heavyweight, and more importantly, non-.Net based CRM, ERP and other systems is one area where Oracle, IBM and the rest have a chance, because Microsoft's offering is widely regarded to be too lightweight in this area. Web 2.0-type functionlity was also mentioned in the report as one area where the high end portal vendors are looking to capitalise on areas SharePoint has traditionally been weak in.
But that strategy may turn out to be a tad problematic for them, because you can be pretty sure that this hasn't gone unnoticed in Redmond. As Byrne commented, it's only a matter of time before Microsoft improves what it's doing in the social software space, perhaps with the release of Office 14 in a couple of years. And it will also be working SharePoint's ability to integrate with non-.Net enterprise systems - it can technically be done via BizTalk, says Byrne, but it's still not ideal.
One other interesting trend to note from the report that make Microsoft ever so slightly worried though - the open source firms seem to have SharePoint firmly in their sights for "simpler scenarios", with Apache, eXo, Liferay, and uPortal all recently undergoing major upgrades and rapid expansion.