So my wife had decided to blog about her interest in arts and crafts, particularly card making by setting her self a challenge to create one card a day, and post the photos on her new blog at:
http://myyearlongcardchallenge.blogspot.com/
So if you know anyone interested in that sort of thing - point them in her direction :-)
Friday, 30 October 2009
Tuesday, 27 October 2009
AIIM day in Toronto
Today I attended the AIIM "From Collaboration to Process Control: Whats the ideal information management strategy for your organization" (phew, bit of a mouthful) day at the Toronto metro convention centre - and a jolly good day it was too !
The first "October AIIM event" I attended in Toronto was 3 years ago, before I was even living here (we were on our trip to get 'landed' status) and they get better and better.
John Mancini, President of AIIM kicked the day off with a great opening session. He noted some updates on the ever growing mountain of digital content and the ever increasing speed of growth, but also noted that Moore's Law for raw computing power (CPU power) has been surpassed by improvements in communications technologies (providing ever greater bandwidth) and storage technologies (how much you can cram on a disk plater.) John suggested we are rapidly approaching a tipping point with respect to content volumes and content management technologies. In the great tradition of AIIM "8 things about" lists, John presented 8 key points:
The interesting point from the Autonomy presentation was the "management in place" of records in SharePoint installations using their 'ControlPoint" product, not one I knew much about previously.
After a quick hello to Ross, Doug, Kim and John from the Royal Bank of Canada's ECM centre of excellence (I see them here once a year !), it was off to the elective sessions:
Hyland Software did their normal 'transactional content management' pitch for OnBase. It's an effective and slick presentation of the message, and I have seen it a couple of times before. I have seen OnBase in use in the insurance industry when I was consulting and I can see its strengths in these transactional scenarios.
As the next session was all scanning / imaging / capture in both rooms, I disappeared back into the boothes of the small 'show hall' for a lovely chat with the ladies from Oracle. My current employer is a big Oracle user on the database front, but I have always liked the product formerly known as Stellant, which is of course now Universal Content Management within Oracles Fusion middleware portfolio ! The shock on Michelle's face when we told her you could not access Hulu from Canada...... :-)
The next session was AllStream who had some interesting case studies around combining Unified Communications with portals, which is close to our heart as we are a SharePoint shop and we are about to go live with MS Unified Communications soon.
For the final break out session I broke my promise to go and support Oracle UCM and attended the Microsoft "ECM for the masses, how to deliver on the promise" session. This was a good session by a Product Manager who had obviously honed his skills at the 'big party' in Las Vegas last week. It was not a full on SharePoint 2010 product pitch, but more a generic examination of the issues characterised as the tension between: Control and Compliance on one hand, and Freedom and Flexibility on the other.
Personally I chose to receive part of the message on SharePoint governance issues as "SharePoint proliferation, well thats your fault....." (mmmm' nothing to do with Microsofts marketing machine then?). Having said that our presenter then focused on moving forward, and that a major aim for SP2010 is the 'democratization of ECM', in other words it does not have to be control and compliance versus freedom and flexibility, but rather it should be a balance with contextual equalibrium being sought for each particular project or implementation.
We all went back to the main hall for a presentation from HP on Universal Records Management (URM, a bit too close to UCM ?) in other words the product formerly known as Tower's TRIM.
Then it was time for a quick chat with the marvellous Cheryl McKinnon, the new CMO for Nuxeo
the open source ECM platform. Cheryl forecast a tipping point of her own, that finally within the next two years the open source vendors will be taken seriously. With Nuxeo, MindTouch and Alfresco on the plot, I would agree with her. Strangely enough, for a massive Canadian company, Cheryl's old employer OpenText had not decided to grace the event with its presence.
Finally, John Mancini closed us out, with a final keynote that was as entertaining and as informative as his introductory one. John noted that the latest AIIM "8 reasons" paper (8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information - before its too late) is available as PDF, Kindle eBook, Sony eBook and formats I have never heard of, plus you can even download an audio book version from iTunes !!
The first "October AIIM event" I attended in Toronto was 3 years ago, before I was even living here (we were on our trip to get 'landed' status) and they get better and better.
John Mancini, President of AIIM kicked the day off with a great opening session. He noted some updates on the ever growing mountain of digital content and the ever increasing speed of growth, but also noted that Moore's Law for raw computing power (CPU power) has been surpassed by improvements in communications technologies (providing ever greater bandwidth) and storage technologies (how much you can cram on a disk plater.) John suggested we are rapidly approaching a tipping point with respect to content volumes and content management technologies. In the great tradition of AIIM "8 things about" lists, John presented 8 key points:
- You can't dodge the content tidal wave
- Ubiqitous computing has an impact on both creation and consumption of content
- Green issues - the new selling point for ECM - get rid of all that paper !
- You simply can't do everything manually anymore (ref: business processes)
- "Social everything" - humans are social animals, go figure......
- Collaboration needs governance - I certainly agree with this one
- We are moving into an era of simplicity - if records management is perceived as a nusiance by 95% of your users, then your solution better be simple
- Mismanagement risks are rising - and not only in the highly litigous U.S. of A !
The interesting point from the Autonomy presentation was the "management in place" of records in SharePoint installations using their 'ControlPoint" product, not one I knew much about previously.
After a quick hello to Ross, Doug, Kim and John from the Royal Bank of Canada's ECM centre of excellence (I see them here once a year !), it was off to the elective sessions:
Hyland Software did their normal 'transactional content management' pitch for OnBase. It's an effective and slick presentation of the message, and I have seen it a couple of times before. I have seen OnBase in use in the insurance industry when I was consulting and I can see its strengths in these transactional scenarios.
As the next session was all scanning / imaging / capture in both rooms, I disappeared back into the boothes of the small 'show hall' for a lovely chat with the ladies from Oracle. My current employer is a big Oracle user on the database front, but I have always liked the product formerly known as Stellant, which is of course now Universal Content Management within Oracles Fusion middleware portfolio ! The shock on Michelle's face when we told her you could not access Hulu from Canada...... :-)
The next session was AllStream who had some interesting case studies around combining Unified Communications with portals, which is close to our heart as we are a SharePoint shop and we are about to go live with MS Unified Communications soon.
For the final break out session I broke my promise to go and support Oracle UCM and attended the Microsoft "ECM for the masses, how to deliver on the promise" session. This was a good session by a Product Manager who had obviously honed his skills at the 'big party' in Las Vegas last week. It was not a full on SharePoint 2010 product pitch, but more a generic examination of the issues characterised as the tension between: Control and Compliance on one hand, and Freedom and Flexibility on the other.
Personally I chose to receive part of the message on SharePoint governance issues as "SharePoint proliferation, well thats your fault....." (mmmm' nothing to do with Microsofts marketing machine then?). Having said that our presenter then focused on moving forward, and that a major aim for SP2010 is the 'democratization of ECM', in other words it does not have to be control and compliance versus freedom and flexibility, but rather it should be a balance with contextual equalibrium being sought for each particular project or implementation.
We all went back to the main hall for a presentation from HP on Universal Records Management (URM, a bit too close to UCM ?) in other words the product formerly known as Tower's TRIM.
Then it was time for a quick chat with the marvellous Cheryl McKinnon, the new CMO for Nuxeo
the open source ECM platform. Cheryl forecast a tipping point of her own, that finally within the next two years the open source vendors will be taken seriously. With Nuxeo, MindTouch and Alfresco on the plot, I would agree with her. Strangely enough, for a massive Canadian company, Cheryl's old employer OpenText had not decided to grace the event with its presence.
Finally, John Mancini closed us out, with a final keynote that was as entertaining and as informative as his introductory one. John noted that the latest AIIM "8 reasons" paper (8 reasons you need a strategy for managing information - before its too late) is available as PDF, Kindle eBook, Sony eBook and formats I have never heard of, plus you can even download an audio book version from iTunes !!
Thursday, 15 October 2009
An Information Charter
I count my self lucky to be an acquitance, colleague and even friend of Martin White (of Intranet Focus Ltd) who has been in 'the business' a lot longer than I.
He has recently posted on his blog an 'information charter' which is condensed into six easy "bullet points". It is superb in its simplicity, its only short, but I won't copy and paste it here, I want you to click on the link and go to Martin's site to read it.
John Mancini of AIIM has already blogged on it and notes that IT Strategies should not be 100 page documents - well I am not sure I agree with that, but being able to distill that 100 page strategy into a 6 point charter is really going to make you think hard about it.
I know one thing, we certainly could not paste Martin's charter on our intranet in good faith at the moment, personally I reckon we are a 70 to 80% fail on five of the six points !
He has recently posted on his blog an 'information charter' which is condensed into six easy "bullet points". It is superb in its simplicity, its only short, but I won't copy and paste it here, I want you to click on the link and go to Martin's site to read it.
John Mancini of AIIM has already blogged on it and notes that IT Strategies should not be 100 page documents - well I am not sure I agree with that, but being able to distill that 100 page strategy into a 6 point charter is really going to make you think hard about it.
I know one thing, we certainly could not paste Martin's charter on our intranet in good faith at the moment, personally I reckon we are a 70 to 80% fail on five of the six points !
Tuesday, 13 October 2009
I have the Google Wave Beta !
Thanks to one of my readers (I have readers !) I now have a Google Wave account so I can actually play with it. As my current job title is "Senior SharePoint Specialist" you can see where my initial compare and contrast is going to be coming from......
Thanks Mark for the invite :-)
Thanks Mark for the invite :-)
Tuesday, 6 October 2009
Is Google Wave really targeted at SharePoint & Office Online ?
Come on people, show some imagination !
For all those who keep churning out the fact that Google Wave has no compelling improvement of email and IM, those who constantly suggest its a social networking platform aimed at taking on Twitter and FaceBook, or stating that its gonna flop because its unfinished crud;
Jeez, stop and breath and takd a minute to think about it !
Wave is a protocol (XMPP based), not just Google's current server platform and client app. There are already independent open source implementations of servers for the protocol. Yes the Google front end is unfinished - for all those who moan about how distracting it is to seen what the other person is typing; well even in the original Google I/O conference video they point out that that there will be a private 'draft' mode that will prevent this, so you can write in peace..........
Yes the released (and hyped it) early, because they want 'community' input - so no, its not finished or polished, but come on its just gone from private Alpha to invitation only Beta, its a long way from finished product(s) and no one is saying otherwise.
However all this "social networking / email killer" stuff is just distraction. The Wave protocol is about content centric collaboration - its a collaborative document creation / editing paradigm. So before pontificating on how it will never replace Twitter, think about how it might become competition for SharePoint 2010 and the online versions of the Office apps.
Think: Private cloud + Google Wave + Google Voice + Google Apps + = enterprise content collaboration platform. Is somebody going to write a CMIS API for this stack, I think they should !
Stephen Arnold has been saying for some time that people should be paying attentions to Googles moves in new database technology, so add that to all of the above.
Personally I would like to see appliances / software / VM's to more of this stuff inside the corporate firewall (you can build your own Wave servers, and buy Google Search Appliances).
I look at this from an enterprise viewpoint, and there are plenty of others who are doing so:
The only valid criticism I have heard of Wave so far is that is 're-inventing the wheel' a bit where it comes to the XML format it uses.
I am not on the invite list for the beta, and I doubt anyone at Google will read this, so I am not angling for one, in fact I think its going to be a couple of years before Google really builds up its 'wave front' - but thisl an open standards based protocol - stop thinking of Wave just as its seen in the flashy demo video or the sandbox developer account you managed to scrounge that you can't do much with.
Bottom line - stop thinking 'new fangled email crossed with IM and social networking' and think powerful content centric collaboration and document editing.
For all those who keep churning out the fact that Google Wave has no compelling improvement of email and IM, those who constantly suggest its a social networking platform aimed at taking on Twitter and FaceBook, or stating that its gonna flop because its unfinished crud;
Jeez, stop and breath and takd a minute to think about it !
Wave is a protocol (XMPP based), not just Google's current server platform and client app. There are already independent open source implementations of servers for the protocol. Yes the Google front end is unfinished - for all those who moan about how distracting it is to seen what the other person is typing; well even in the original Google I/O conference video they point out that that there will be a private 'draft' mode that will prevent this, so you can write in peace..........
Yes the released (and hyped it) early, because they want 'community' input - so no, its not finished or polished, but come on its just gone from private Alpha to invitation only Beta, its a long way from finished product(s) and no one is saying otherwise.
However all this "social networking / email killer" stuff is just distraction. The Wave protocol is about content centric collaboration - its a collaborative document creation / editing paradigm. So before pontificating on how it will never replace Twitter, think about how it might become competition for SharePoint 2010 and the online versions of the Office apps.
Think: Private cloud + Google Wave + Google Voice + Google Apps +
Stephen Arnold has been saying for some time that people should be paying attentions to Googles moves in new database technology, so add that to all of the above.
Personally I would like to see appliances / software / VM's to more of this stuff inside the corporate firewall (you can build your own Wave servers, and buy Google Search Appliances).
I look at this from an enterprise viewpoint, and there are plenty of others who are doing so:
- Ribbit tele-conferencing gadget
- 6rounds vidoe conferencing gadget
- SAP Gravity - collaborative business process modelling
- SalesForce.com
The only valid criticism I have heard of Wave so far is that is 're-inventing the wheel' a bit where it comes to the XML format it uses.
I am not on the invite list for the beta, and I doubt anyone at Google will read this, so I am not angling for one, in fact I think its going to be a couple of years before Google really builds up its 'wave front' - but thisl an open standards based protocol - stop thinking of Wave just as its seen in the flashy demo video or the sandbox developer account you managed to scrounge that you can't do much with.
Bottom line - stop thinking 'new fangled email crossed with IM and social networking' and think powerful content centric collaboration and document editing.
Monday, 5 October 2009
MindTouch - open source version of SharePoint ?
Or in fact is it more ?
Let me elaborate; I am a big fan of Leo Laporte's TWiT.tv (This Week in Tech) netcast network, I download a whole raft of podcasts to listen on my commute, including This Week in Google, This Week in Windows, MacBreak Weekly and FLOSS Weekly. Now Leo is happy to admit he does not really cover enterprise computing, but FLOSS Weekly quite often does cover software projects that have an enterprise element, and the latest episode covers MindTouch with the guest speaker being Aron Fulkerson (co-founder and CEO) You can download the MP3 and listen to it yourself here: http://www.twit.tv/floss89
I only discovered MindTouch a couple of months ago, and so the timing of this particular FLOSS Weekly eposide was quite appropriate.
Aron describes MindTouch as being an open source corrolary to SharePoint on a number of occassions and even states that SharePoint is their biggest competitor (is it not everyones biggest competitor ?). However MindTouch is a fully web services oriented platform that is only 3 years old, and as such it is not burdened with some of the architectural "issues" of MOSS. Of course it is also open source and standards based, which can be advantages. However don't let the mention of open source put you off if your a MS shop, the underlying business logic layers of MindTouch are built using C# on Mono (the open source version of the .Net framework). Having said that because it is a fully REST-ful web services platform, you can use PHP or Java for example for front end work, so your not limited to C# either. Basically Aron is saying that the MindTouch is way ahead of SharePoint 2010 before it even see's the light of day (well, he would though wouldn't he !). Of course because its open source, you can download the core of the product and run it yourself, for free, and see if it fits with your requirements.
Originally a fork of MediaWiki it appears that MindTouch has become much more, listen to the MP3 to get Aron's description, but it appears that it can be considered as an enterprise mashup platform - a product which can be layered over legacy ERP / CRM / etc..... systems to provide a web based, collaborative, "Enterprise 2.0" gloss layer for these legacy apps. (I love the bit when Aron mentions "Enterprise 2.0" and Jono Bacon says: "eeugh, you just made me sick in my mouth" - you probably have to be British to find the funny......).
So, MindTouch has a good gallery of videos you can go take a look at to learn more about the product, see: http://www.mindtouch.com/Resources/Demo_Gallery
I will complete this post with my standard caveat when it comes to products; there is no one tool to rule them all, make sure you have your strategy sorted out and a truly know and understand your requirements before you move into solution design with any tool !
Let me elaborate; I am a big fan of Leo Laporte's TWiT.tv (This Week in Tech) netcast network, I download a whole raft of podcasts to listen on my commute, including This Week in Google, This Week in Windows, MacBreak Weekly and FLOSS Weekly. Now Leo is happy to admit he does not really cover enterprise computing, but FLOSS Weekly quite often does cover software projects that have an enterprise element, and the latest episode covers MindTouch with the guest speaker being Aron Fulkerson (co-founder and CEO) You can download the MP3 and listen to it yourself here: http://www.twit.tv/floss89
I only discovered MindTouch a couple of months ago, and so the timing of this particular FLOSS Weekly eposide was quite appropriate.
Aron describes MindTouch as being an open source corrolary to SharePoint on a number of occassions and even states that SharePoint is their biggest competitor (is it not everyones biggest competitor ?). However MindTouch is a fully web services oriented platform that is only 3 years old, and as such it is not burdened with some of the architectural "issues" of MOSS. Of course it is also open source and standards based, which can be advantages. However don't let the mention of open source put you off if your a MS shop, the underlying business logic layers of MindTouch are built using C# on Mono (the open source version of the .Net framework). Having said that because it is a fully REST-ful web services platform, you can use PHP or Java for example for front end work, so your not limited to C# either. Basically Aron is saying that the MindTouch is way ahead of SharePoint 2010 before it even see's the light of day (well, he would though wouldn't he !). Of course because its open source, you can download the core of the product and run it yourself, for free, and see if it fits with your requirements.
Originally a fork of MediaWiki it appears that MindTouch has become much more, listen to the MP3 to get Aron's description, but it appears that it can be considered as an enterprise mashup platform - a product which can be layered over legacy ERP / CRM / etc..... systems to provide a web based, collaborative, "Enterprise 2.0" gloss layer for these legacy apps. (I love the bit when Aron mentions "Enterprise 2.0" and Jono Bacon says: "eeugh, you just made me sick in my mouth" - you probably have to be British to find the funny......).
So, MindTouch has a good gallery of videos you can go take a look at to learn more about the product, see: http://www.mindtouch.com/Resources/Demo_Gallery
I will complete this post with my standard caveat when it comes to products; there is no one tool to rule them all, make sure you have your strategy sorted out and a truly know and understand your requirements before you move into solution design with any tool !
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