Volume 1

Issue 3

September 2004

In the News New Content Management Community of Practice, Industry Conferences, Online References and more Scott Abel The Content Wrangler abelsp@netdirect.net This month is an exciting one for those involved in content management. Most newsworthy, a group of thirty content experts from around the world have announced the formation of CM Professionals, an international community of content management practitioners whose purpose is to further proven best practices based on shared experiences of experts and peers. Content Management Professionals: New "community of practice" offers services, information, education CM Professionals will offer a members-only mailing list, a collaborative website, discussion forums, issue-oriented group blogs, knowledge wikis, syndicated web services, a job board, a professional directory, and a calendar of face-to-face meeting opportunities. CM Pros President Bob Boiko, author of the Content Management Bible and Director of the University of Washington iSchool CMS Evaluation Lab, says, "As a group of CM practitioners, CM Pros seeks to create a membership organization that will enable sharing of information, practices, and strategies. This type of organization is needed to help move the discipline of content management forward, helping practitioners avoid the pitfalls and costly mistakes made by others." "We also envision a variety of members-only services, including a newsletter, professional discounts, and summit-type gatherings devoid of marketing hype," says CMSWatch Editor and CM Pros Treasurer, Tony Byrne. "CM Pros will raise awareness of content management as an essential discipline that builds value, both financial and human, for companies and organizations, says author of Managing Enterprise Content: A Unified Content Strategy and CM Pros Secretary, Ann Rockley. CM Professionals will hold its first CM Summit, in conjunction with The Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies, Tuesday, November 30, 2004 in Boston, Mass. As the organization grows, Boiko says, "We will work closely with other organizations that share many of our goals. We will coordinate our thinking about recommended standards for best practices with these organizations, and we hope to work closely with graduate schools that are training the next generation of information professionals." To learn more about CM Professionals, visit www.cmprofessionals.org/. For information on the Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies visit www.gilbane.com/CM_conference_Boston_04.html. Online CM Product Finder: Locating information about content management tools If you're looking for information on content management tools, look to ContentManager.net. The site offers a "product finder" feature that helps you locate products to meet your needs in three easy steps. The system walks you through each step, prompting you for information required to complete your search. Step one involves selecting the tool category (e.g. content management system, enterprise content management system, open source content management system). Step two asks you to further define your needs by providing selection criteria (e.g. XML support, workflow, automated publishing, content reuse, multilingual support, localization). Step three displays the results of your search. Of course, you'll need to know what you need (what's required of your project) before you locate meaningful product data. There's no online help or instructional text available to help guide you toward selecting the appropriate criteria for your search. The site could be improved in the future by adding definitions of each category as well as some instructional text designed to better define a search. The database from which product finder recommendations are derived is not a complete inventory of what's available from all vendors (many of the big name CM software players are not included in the database), but it's a great starting place for those searching for CMS software that meets specific business needs. As the database grows, it will become even more useful. Graphically pleasing and easy to use, ContentManager.net is available in both English and Dutch, and offers a product comparison feature (a central repository for CMS vendor information), access to a content management glossary of terms, a resource library, job board, newsletter, online magazine, and more. It's a worthwhile resource for any content management professional. To learn more, visit www.contentmanager.net. Open Source Content Management: OSCOM 4 Annual International Conference Wednesday, September 29th - Friday, October 1st, 2004 Zürich, Switzerland The Fourth International Open Source Content Management Conference will feature open source product presentations, case studies, technology presentations, and a track dedicated to Apache projects. Some topics include: Content and Interface Accessibility for your CMS Seamless Content Management with XUL and XAML Interpersonal Content Management Drupal - gluing people and code together To learn more, visit www.oscom.org/events/oscom4. The Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies Wednesday, November 30 - Friday, December 2nd, 2004 Boston, Massachusetts, USA According to conference organizers, The Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies provides "everything a project team needs to know, but also offers a look ahead at upcoming technologies, `new' best practices, and a broader look at the technologies necessary to supplement core content management applications." Leaders from the analyst, consultant, integrator, vendor, and enterprise communities will chart the course of the content technology markets, and provide advice, techniques, best practices, and case studies to help businesses understand and successfully implement the most critical content technologies. Some topics include: Enterprise content management eForms XML Authoring tools Multichannel delivery Content security Multi-lingual content management Web content management Taxonomies, categorization & search Topic maps Information architecture and modeling Brand management Syndication Digital rights management and rules management Metadata development and management Integration with other enterprise systems Enterprise content architectures Open source CMS, databases, and tools Security Standards technologies and their effect on content strategies The newly formed Content Management Professionals (CM Pros) organization will hold a special one-day "summit" on November 30, in conjunction with the conference. To learn more, visit home.lighthouseseminars.com/lighthouse/ccmt.html. Content Management Professionals "Summit" 2004 Wednesday, November 30, 2004 Boston, Massachusetts, USA Content Management Professionals (CM Pros), a group of content management professionals from around the world, will hold its first "summit" in conjunction with The Gilbane Conference on Content Management Technologies, Tuesday, November 30, 2004 in Boston, Mass. (US) The CM Summit is a peer-to-peer meeting. Sessions will take the form of participatory discussions-no "talking heads" reading slide shows-facilitated by some of the world's top CM experts: Bob Boiko, Ann Rockley, Tony Byrne, Frank Gilbane, Erik Hartman, Mary-Lee Kennedy, Brendan Quinn, and many others. Some topics include: Aligning content strategy to business strategy Making the business case for content management Assembling a content management project team Auditing content "Birds-of-a-feather" sessions (informal gatherings of people with common interests) are planned for lunch at the Summit and for dinner at a Boston-area restaurant. Summit sessions will be videotaped and made available online to members who cannot travel to Boston. To learn more, visit: www.cmprofessionals.org/summit/program.html.