SDL Innovate 2012. So Much Content!

I miss going to conferences. I helped host a college-bound high school conference ages ago. I've attended  SharePoint and Gartner conferences as a prospective or existing customer. This was my first conference as an employee of the hosting organization. I attended mainly the WCM portions of SDL Innovate 2012 and am glad to:

• Hear CMS is more important than ever
• Confirm platforms matter
• Earn the nickname "Bloggy"

I could make several posts on all the content from the Innovate conference. I'll spare you and just highlight some things that left an impression on me.

CMS is Important

CMS is important. Ian Truscott, the North America VP of Products for SDL WCMS , explained CMS is essential to CXM (Content eXperience Management). He suggests the following equation:

Relevance + Variance  = Content Explosion

For example, anyone familiar with state-specific content, just adding a few categories to the 50 states (plus Washington DC) can easily get you hundreds to thousands of variants. I still have chills for the all-state, all-specialty updates I had to manually make in at least 255 individual XML configuration files.

The also means the page paradigm is dated, as Nuno Linhares, Principal Consultant with SDL WCMS, explains on his blog, "your content model must evolve from being page-centric to being customer-centric."

Does Platform Matter?

Forecast? Data. Lots of data!

Open APIs, connectors, and other software that makes integrations easier will continue to be important. Component-based content models will help, but organizations still need to classify content appropriately.

Chris Summers asked how does the CXM affect groups managing this in the Online Engagement Workshop. I wasn't quick enough to answer right then, but thinking about the question, I would have said something like this.

I've seen it depends on the organization, but also the individual content team. There isn't just one taxonomy for all content. A Website may be owned by multiple groups (Customer Service, Marketing, Account Management, etc). You may have an overall taxonomy, but each business unit should have its own understanding of metadata.

Another question was, "Considering the need to classify content, does the right system matter?"

Yes, but the choice between "best of breed" and "enterprise platform" isn't an either/or. Different organizational divisions will have their own interests, their own focus, and their own resources looking at "IT-light" solutions. Vendors will address social media in different ways. If you have a choice, consider solutions that rely on open standards and formats. Enterprise proprietary systems might not be open source, but will likely offer the data formats and/or services your organization is familiar with (.NET, Java, XML, web services, etc).

Tip: if you can, opt for extensibility over customization for any software platform or solution. Also don't confuse open source with free, and in general, unless you're contributing back to the project you don't necessarily need open source. You need to be able to develop or use the software.

Jeremy Coleman, Director of Technology and Innovation of SapientNitro presented on The Future of Global Customer Engagement. Platform is key, but a platform consists of people, processes, and organizational structure, in addition to technology. Governance is important and must be balanced against your business needs.

I. Bloggy.

Strange effect of participating in the Tridion technical community: name recognition. Though I didn't recognize her company, Ranked One, I knew Michelle Chance from her Linked-In answers. And yes, Lucas, I missed your tool. I'm looking forward to that video, source code, or approach; do share. I have some tips from my software purchasing days if you're interested.

I've accepted (and enjoy) my reputation as "that guy that blogs about Tridion." So much so, that when Snow White's crew came up during post-conference dinner, my peers agreed I'd make a great "Bloggy."