Google Enterprise - Atmosphere on Tour - Toronto 2012

Yesterday I attended the "Google Atmopshere on Tour" event in Toronto - and a very well spent afternoon it was too !

The event is a showcase of "Google Apps for the Enterprise" and provided us with a number of speakers, and an opportunity at the end of the afternoon to interact with Googlers, their partners and to play with kit like Chromebooks. You can find details and see if the tour is visiting your city, or one near you by clicking here: http://www.atmosphereontour.com/en/ 

The opening Keynote was Toronto local Don trapscott, who was both thought provoking and humerous; a good way to start any event. Thanks to Don and Google for providing all attendees with a hardback copy of Macrowikinomics too !

We then had a Michael Lock - VP of Enteprise Sales who did an entertaining session with a focus on the consumerisation of enterprise IT; even using his children as example use cases. I think by now, we all understand the old "I have better IT at home than I have in the office...." arguments, but it was a good session.

We then had an amazing demo session by a very very high energy and highly enthusiastic Googler who's name I did not write down (for which I apologize) but it touched on Gmail, Drive, Docs, Vault, Sites, Big Query, App platform, etc - in a very well structured and easy to digest format. A very good demo of capabilities indeed.

The best part though, for me, was to get to discuss my proposition for enterprise IT with a Google exec (at last.....!). So we had a quick chat about my proposition that putting Google App's in a rack mount appliance like the GSA would be a good idea for those organizations (like mine) that are not ready to leap to the cloud. He suggested that while it might actually bring in short term profit for Google, in the long run it would run against their philosphical proposition that the "cloud" is secure enough, private enough, and basically good enough for all classes of organizations.

I did not get the chance to ask why we can't have Google Voice in Canada (yes, Harper Government and Rogers-Bell duopoly - we are looking at you !).

Bottom line, I actually don't think Google is "enterprise" enough - their implementation partners range from Sheepdog to Accenture to be sure, but I think their real sweet spot remains the SMB sector - and that is not an endictment of the cloud per se. SalesForce are way more "enterprise" than Google because that has been their focus.  Google remains an consumer web company that can apply it's tech and resources to "enterprise" IT problems, but that does not make them the "go to guys" for the CIO's of very big organizations (although of course, they do have some such customers !).

All in all, a great, interesting and useful event - thanks Google :-)

Open Text Content Day Toronto 2012

Yesterday was this years 'Content Day' Open Text mini-conference in Toronto - and it was as good or better than last years !

We had an excellent set of keynotes, with OT's new CEO Mark Barrenechea opening things up, adding his own personality and vision to the corporate vision.  The key messaging was that your content needs to be doing something for you to be adding value - summed up as 'content in motion'. If its just sat in repositories, then it's just costing you money to hold it, while not adding value to your processes.

I thought Mark did a good job of putting across his message, plus he left us hanging with teases that there would be some key releases coming very soon ! I actually had a personal meeting with Mark, which went over it's allotted time largely because he appears passionate about his subject matter. He is certainly very knowledgeable, and even though he is only 90 days into his new role, he definitely knows where he wants to take things - and no, before you ask, I can't give you any more details - I would just say there is plenty of potential for them to execute a winning vision, so just keep an eye on their website !

Bio's for Mark and the other keynote speakers are available here:
http://www.opentext.com/2/global/events-contentdays-toronto-keynotes.htm

Next up was Eugene Roman, CTO. Another good session, obviously enough with more focus on the technology across the various solutions spaces.  There was a brief sales pitch for Tempo, the secure on premises answer to cloud solutions for sharing content with both employees and other stakeholders (e.g. contractors or consultants) - Eugene managed to pass across his enthusiasm without turning into a sales presentation.

                                           Eugene Roman, CTO Open Text on stage

To be honest I did not stay for the third keynote; no offense to Lubor Ptacek who is a great speaker, but his focus was on how Open Text work together with Microsoft, and personally I thought I would gain more be chatting to the Open Text staff manning the booth's and signing up for my Tempo demo and downloading the Tempo Android app to my Acer Iconia Tablet.

The afternoon breakout sessions were more detailed presentations, but not necessarily on Open Text product - I was very impressed by Corinne Scmid's (@itzcorinne) session on Gamification - a subject I am highly skeptical about ! However she has an excellent way of presenting the benefits, not just on external sites for interfacing with customers, but also in the internal, enterprise context:

Please excuse the fairly awful photo - but Corinne's slide was showing the "Leader Board" for the internal Open Text system they use for gamification - they are awarded badges for such things as having completed the training on understanding Export rules !

In summary

An excellent "mini-conference" for those who can't attend the main event each year (now renamed as Open Text EnterpriseWorld - this year its Orlando in November). Knowledgeable staff on hand to discuss your questions, good keynotes and breakout sessions.

Obviously the highlight for me personally was my chat with the new CEO. An impressive man, with a vision for where he wants to take Open Text by closely integrating the acquisitions such as Global 360, Nstein etc, in order to get that added value from content that is in useful motion, rather than sat idling in an archive.

Good day, great vision, exciting times ahead for Open Text customers :-)

Intranet Trends Survey

I just thought I would pass on this message directly from Jane McConnell with the links for this years Annual Intranet survey. 


Jane's survey is an excellent tool to use. If you submit a response on behalf of your organization, you get a copy of the results, which I simply can't recommend enough - it is an incredibly useful document, and Jane does excellent analysis on the results to provide insights.


So see the links below and join in the intranet fun !

The 6th annual Intranet-Digital Workplace Trends survey has just opened and you are invited to participate. All participants receive a free copy of "Digital Workplace Trends 2012" (published at the end of October). The topics we focus on this year are: - Mobile Strategies & Approaches - Collaborative & Social Aspects - Search - Governance & Management - Business Value - Future Scenarios There are also baseline questions we have been using for several years which gives us a longer term perspective on maturity as well as trends. The survey takes about 40 minutes to complete, and you can do it in several sessions. If you're interested, send an email to "info@digital-workplace-trends.com" with the information requested here:http://www.digital-workplace-trends.com/sign-up-for-the-2011-12-intranet-trends-survey/join-the-survey  You can also read reviews of last year's report from practitioners and NetJMC's peers:http://www.digital-workplace-trends.com/reviews-of-2010-report/reviews-by-intranet-managers  Thank you in advance, and please get in touch directly if you have any questions or comments. Best regards, Jane

New online Persona building tool - UsersBox

I have just received my invite to the beta of the new online persona building tool called UsersBox.

I have not had a lot of chance to play with it yet, but as they have a nice introductory video that explains the tool, and of course it has embed code, I thought I might just as well embed it here for you to see:


Usersbox Introduction Video from Usersbox on Vimeo.


I will let you know more when I have play with it, but head over to http://www.usersbox.com/ to take a look for your self.

Google Chrome Subscriptions - I told you so.......

So on the way to work this morning I was listening to this weeks edition of the TWiT networks "This Week In Google" podcast, which of course was covering the Google IO announcements.

I was surprised to hear the glitterati of the show still doing the whole "I don't get the need for Chrome, why wouldn't you do Android....." stuff, again........

I have already given my take on Chrome for Enterprise in a number of postings, but try out this one:
Google Chrome OS - think Enterprise

So reading the coverage of IO on Engadget, it appears I was on the right track ! Google is offering 3 year contracts or "subscriptions" for the new Samsung and Acer "Chromebooks" for as low as $28 a month. This is exactly where I always thought this was heading.

Check out the Engadget article here: "Editorial: Google clarifies Chromebook subscriptions, might just have changed the industry"

We will see where this goes and how successful it might be, but for now, smug smile from me :-)

On the move again....

Today was my last day as "Knowledge Manager" for a global division of a major professional services network. On Monday I start a new role as Senior Strategy Consultant (Enterprise Content Management) for one of North Americas biggest banks.

So unless they have a social media policy that says I can't blog, which I somehow doubt, as I am going "back to my roots" in ECM, I should actually have more to blog about !

Wish me luck .......

JBoye Philadelphia 3rd to 5th of May - sign up now !

If you have not yet signed up for the JBoye 2011 conference in Philadelphia next month, do so now !

Why do I so fervently suggest you do such a thing ? Simply because Janus and his crew throw an absolutely superb practitioner focused event. You cannot possibly attend without learning something useful and connecting with fellow professionals.

So head directly over to the site immediate to check out the program so you can justify to the budget holders and get signed up now: http://jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia11/

Unfortunately I will not be attending, as my employer let me go to AIIM in D.C. last month (even then only because it is my "professional body" and I was a speaker !), but believe me, if you only attend one industry conference this year, then JBoye 2011 should be it.

The conference program is expanded into 8 tracks this year, so there is bound to be something useful and interesting to you: http://jboye.com/conferences/philadelphia11/program/

Even better, some of the speakers are doing promo videos !


So, once again I really cannot recommend this event enough, no vendor hard sell, just learning from your peers.

This excellent video of testimonials was taken at the inaugural  JBoye 2009 conference by my good friend Line Berg (@superline)