[Sigia-l] Content Management Implementations

[Nuno Lopes]

Hi everyone.

I've been working and doing CM solutions for over 10 years now and I
would like to share some thoughts that you might find interesting. This
text is long so please bear with me.

The CM field and solutions has evolved mostly as the Internet as evolved
IMO. Within this focus of CM until recently (2-4 years ago) has been to
help organizations to stream line the editorial process of web content.
As more vendors came to the market and the need to enlarge the customer
base to sustain growth, a generic and unified view of content management
came to the market (although the subject has been discussed under
curtains for a long time).  Then, the CM market factorized the concept
between CM and WCM where the first include the second. The first is the
generic concept and the second the web oriented concept. 

So far I'm not saying anything new to most of us. But this change had a
disruptive impact on the perception of the problem domain that CM was
supposed to encompass. That is, suddenly streamlining the editorial
process was not the core focus anymore in the generic CM (although we
are learning this in the hard way). In fact within the CM field there is
still discussion about what processes CM solutions should be able to
automate apart of the editorial process. Without this effective ROI
analysis is for sure a mirage quite often. 

Within this search for identity and new customer bases, CM expanded its
focus by integrating Personalization (for WCM), some portal features,
publication of content to multiple devices, advanced web application
development features and so on. This change was so dramatic that some of
us (on the CM) started questioning the importance of a workflow (witch
was central to the editorial process for the web) and the use of HTML.
The run for a more generic system (in order to grab more market share
and expand the nich market of the new media to more traditional ones)
led to all sorts of confusion and some companies simply lost their focus
for CM.

This lead the CM field to be a rich field of ideas and experiences in
one side, but in the other side the market got really confused.
Companies needing anything but CM have bought these solutions just
because access to information was to be made through a web browser,
others just because they thought that the concept of web publishing is
quite similar to making their information available on a web browser.
This reality blurred the questions that should be present when adopting
a CM solution: 

1) Do I actually need to manage Content? 
2) Do I have the need to streamline any editorial process within my
company in a controlled manner? 
3) Does the content need really to be reusable automatically?
3.1) Do I really need to publish the same information automatically to
multiple devices?

The order is important here because as the start of the art is now to
have 3) efficiently, you need 2) and to have 2) you need 1) IMO. If a
company does not need 1) then IMO it should not attempt to have 3) with
a CM solution at the moment. This of course IMO, but I'm ready to change
anytime.

Although I have my own justifications, the question I ask to the list
is:

Why are these questions not asked in the first place?

A lot of people have a sense of the problem as far as I interpret
statements such as:

"Lack of client strategy" - "Undefined problem statements" - "Constant
moving objectives" etc etc.

The problem in my view is not at all only due to this. This is simply a
reflection of confusing marketing messages as I've seen so many.

"Content is the currency of the e-business" - Immediately leads to the
conclusion that it needs to be managed.

Etc etc.

I've read so many PowerPoints of so many vendors (I had to, I was the
CTO of a small company) and consultants where this kind of message was
present that ... well. Brochures, whitepaper and so on.

At some point on the CMS list I've put a teaser question - What is
Content? After all, if you say that one needs to manage content you
better have a pretty idea about what it is.

Someone that I respect as professional posted the following has an
answer - "it is whatever the client say it is". 

This statement is quite inline with the people that auto proclaim
themselves user/client defenders (bla, blab la) like if no one else had
them in mind (although some "geeks" don't), but IMO this has some
fundamental problems. 

This although I understand the answer is hardly a good one if you want
to build and use reusable software components and CM patterns, and
finally build flexible reusable solutions. In my view this sole notion
lead to the fact that most CMS sold as solutions are low level
frameworks (in PHP, TCL, Java, whatever) were complexity is disguised
with some fancy interfaces that quickly become unuseful for fast
customization to cope with "complex" problems in a real day to day
practice.

I asked a common non technical person that I respect so much (my dad) a
different question (content was too abtract) than the one above. Apart
from the regular custom made software applications that he uses to
perform is day to day practices I asked:

"What is the artifact that you use the most to state and distribute
information within your company (The biggest bank in Portugal) in a
formal manner?"

He said quite clearly (not really he gave me a lot of samples) -
"I write documents and distribute them between my peers and sometimes I
send them to clients."

I asked: "What do you understand as content in that scope"

He replied  - "It is whatever is inside the document."

Then I asked - "What about, if the document is composed of one page?" Is
the page content? 

His perception changes - "Well then is whatever is inside the page".

By all means, I'm not saying that this small sample (if it can be called
that way) can be considered of huge relevance to most people but never
the less I've found that interesting. Specially when compared with all
things that I've read, wrote and discussed around the subject of CM.

A lot of books for instance, extend the concept of content to software
components, templates etc etc (as I have). IMO this is all very
interesting and useful especially when you are within CM for some time
or work with web technologies, and is fully inline the concept of
content being something that is contained (search the disctionary). But
I could not stop having a bitter mouth after this experience. This
particularly, when one cross references his perception with "Content is
the currency of e-business".

Then I asked my father - "do you think you need to manage your content?"

The answer was - "??"

I explained the concept further, he thought it was interesting but too
complex to put in practice in is day to day business practice. Yes he
wanted to publish information on the web (intranet) and even collaborate
electronically, but not manage the content that was inside a document.
Yes but (I told him) if you do that the same content can be published in
a PDA, WEB etc (like if it was that simple). He told me "Yes, that is
nice but I still don't need to manage what is inside the document in my
every day practice". Then he proceed with something like this - "If you
tell me that to do that I need to manage what is inside the document I
honestly prefer not to deal with the publication to multiple devices
most of the times".

Then I gave him a presentation of a well know vendor that used "Content
is the currency of e-business" (they all used :) in a quite elaborate
and coherent speech. He thought that was really good. After that I asked
him - so don't you think that content needs to be managed if you agree
to some point that content is so important in e-business? Yes, but look
son .... (I knew I was in trouble)

This tale, almost non fictional is to expose the difficulties that CM as
reaching the common user of a company outside new media, or certain
editorial niches within a company while not some massive sales pitches.
This alone exposes the fact that CM is at the moment far to be able of
being deployed universally within a company (to manage content within
the intranet?) in a transparent manner to the user.

The question that I make now to this list is "What does CM needs to
achieve that?"

It is my opinion that CM at its core is quite there, but the problems
are the tentacles reaching common users. These tentacles are in my view
the Word Editors, Wordperfects etc etc that need to evolve so that
companies can take the most out of CM efforts. These editors will have
the responsibility to shield the user from the complexities of
semi-structured content (that is in my view paramount to achieve 3 and
3.1) and in part the construction of meta-data much the same way that
they had shielded the user from the complexities of Postscript, LaTex,
RTF etc.

In terms of technology (products), CM as evolved in ways much faster to
cope with the new reality of the web where mainstream editors simply
stalled. Some CMS vendors offer clumsy editors (I think that in one way
or another HTML editors are clumsy for professional every day practice)
while others offer integration artifacts that do not operate 95%. Less
of 95% percent effectiveness in this aspect is critical in my view. In
fact the cut & paste practice so often mentioned on this list and others
just exposed this reality. The reasons why the shift is so difficult and
web bases editors are not efficient is simply because we are now
competing in an area were individual productivity is paramount, the desk
of the user.

This is why I have such big hopes for tools such as Word 11 and others,
within the scope of an universal enterprise wide (blab la bla) CM
solution. Most users don't want tools that make it easy to write XML or
HTML, heck, they want tools that let them perform their job better with
minimal disruption.

When people claim after deploying and using a CM for quite awhile they
still have to make some updates manually this is as far as I see it, an
all different problem but nevertheless complementary.

We have to know what kind of updates they are talking about. A web site
is a complex beast, at one side it can be viewed as a digital book full
of inline cross references, but in the other side it is a robust
software application mixed with application level user/session context
to cope with user interaction that span from simple contextual browsing
to field based queries or full text search and submitting all sorts of
content in multiple functional contexts (forum, messaging, notes, etc).
This, while not mentioning navigational aspects such as the ones so
talked about on this list.

As a conclusion I hope this helps people to understand how easy it is
for someone to buy something that in the end he/she does not need, or
simply missing something that he/she does not. 

Furthermore I fundamentally believe that the word Content in CM is for
the common user perceived as what is inside a document (film , book),
and in fact that was the central technical point (were content is
concerned) in the beginning of the web and CM (The web page was in all
similar to a document, and HTML was in all a document format). Now
things are different, but nevertheless we need to recapture that
essence, turn it as simple as it was and hope that the mainstream
editors evolve fast as the core CM evolved. IMO we actually don't have
to hope it is already here, we just need to stop saying that web
interfaces are the near/medium future for editing content and integrate
common productivity tools into the process.

I would be glad to receive comments so that we can start talking
positively about things within different perspective from political or
the perspective of "look I'm better then you". This is not to say that
the last two perspectives are not important, but so is my dad.

I'm eager to learn and share experiences with you all, please make some
comments. Rip this post apart do whatever, but please help me to learn
don't try to teach me or simply point out my errors or reasoning without
further justification besides pocket-book/parrot practice. If so,
provide info and reasoning, and help me making this text better.

If you have read until here thanks for your time hope we can exchange
ideas.

Best regards,

Nuno Lopes

PS: Sorry for this long post, but I did not have the time to write it
shorter and still useful.