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 :-)