Persuasive Content

The perennial "what is a CMS" debate broke out this week, with a fairly innocuous tweet from Dirk Shaw, "I am sorry but wordpress is hardly a web content management system." that many of our CMS community waded into and included this post on CMS Myth arguing in favour and just about everyone arguing against... and crikey I might  not be standing next to my on-line friends on this - now Dirk knows what he's talking about, as a Vignette alumnus and blogger, maybe the key to the phrase he used is the word 'hardly' - could I suggest we should say 'barely''? [ read more ]

I think we can safely say that the last two week have been quite lively for Alterian Content Manager, as after an incubation with partners, customers and analysts we took our product strategy and roadmap to the social web. I've tweeted, interviewed, commented, posted and now (finally) blogged our message to the CMS community – I say “we took” but @janusboye certainly had a hand in igniting it. [ read more ]

It was recently reported in New Media Age, picked up by the Hubspot blog that Coca-Cola were moving their campaign sites from "traditional" websites to social media platforms and they are not alone, Pepsi recently created a stir as they announced a move from big budget Super Bowl ads to investing in their social media community. So what does this mean for "traditional" web content management? [ read more ]

I'm going to kick off 2010 with a blog post about Web Content Management, enough for now of my wittering on about my place in the social web or even web engagement. Content is still king and as I catch up with three weeks or so of my RSS reader, it seems that at the end of last year - the decade - that there was a new CMS blogging trend and it's for talking about trends, the CMS blogosphere was alive with predictions. All worthy of comment and I thought maybe I can chuck in some thoughts of my own. [ read more ]

Last week I attended the Gilbane Conference in Boston and have finally found a few minutes to blog about it, we exhibited and I was invited to speak in a couple of sessions and as I'd been contributing to the 'back channel' through Twitter (#gilbaneboston) I thought I'd expand on some of the those thoughts. First observation is a personal one - this was the first event  that I'd been to where there were a lot of people that know me through this blog or twitter - and initially it was slightly unnerving having people leap straight into conversation with me and thank you to everyone that did. Then there was the flip side - of scanning the room (or the bar!) feeling that "I'm sure I know that guy/girl" and then trying to spot who was who from their twitter avatars, scrolling through hundreds of Twitter profiles on my Blackberry (and of colleagues joining in). The place was packed with people I follow and that follow me, Tweetdeck had sprung to life. I'm not naturally a stroll up to everyone and say "Hi" kind of chap - so I didn't speak to all of them - but it was a pleasure to meet the ones I finally did. [ read more ]

As part of preparation for a presentation he gave yesterday at Jboye '09 - a few days ago Jon Marks set a challenge to his Twitter community; to give him examples of where Web Content Management fails. I admit I am not at the JBoye event, so I have missed seeing Jon in action - but as a blogger on this sort of thing, let alone as a WCM vendor it would be rude to ignore the wealth of great points this process threw up. As Jon crowd sourced his presentation content, seemingly every element of a CMS procurement and project got a mention. [ read more ]

Today we embarked on an interesting social media challenge, a few folks that I've started to hang out with virtually (and more recently in the pub) agreed to meet at a designated time in a Google Wave and set about writing a blog post - in an hour. There was no pre-determined title, no prep, just a blank bit of virtual paper and half a dozen scribblers… [ read more ]

I admit I am a big Google advocate, I have spent a fair amount of time at their cool European HQ In London, at partner events and I even coded the first shipped iteration of our Google Search Appliance Connector (thankfully now looked after by proper developers!). Also, I admit I've only spent a few hours with Google's latest offerings, SideWiki and Wave, but I have the feeling of being in a privileged walled garden, rather than on the crest of a mainstream wave. Why does is it feel like that? [ read more ]

Recently I was fortunate enough to meet with David Pullinger from the UK governments Central Office of Information (COI), who are driving our government’s citizen engagement strategy  and mandating the policy around which government must adhere to. It was an incredibly absorbing meeting as we took a fast ride around all elements of where a citizen touches the government, (each of which I would love to have explored for longer than we had) and an interesting mix of mandatory policy, education and technical enablement that his department are driving. [ read more ]

I smiled at this the other day -"Software Developers: The New Rock Stars of Marketing" - it comes from the article  'Out of the Box' published a few weeks ago in the UK Financial Times, that talks about the role of technology in marketing in the new media age. The smile is because this is pinned up on the kitchen noticeboard in our Bristol office and that phrase is highlighted (can someone explain why developers always sit nearest the kitchen?). So has the geek inherited the earth? Well, marketing anyway... [ read more ]