Dan Keldsen's Comments

Media Bullseye - A New Media and Communications Magazine : If Good Content Was Easy, Everyone Would Do It

Wed, 5 Jan 2011 03:26:13 +0000

Wayne - great catching up recently, and as usual, wonderful summary and exposition on subjects we both value - content and innovation. No surprise - we've been swimming in these waters a long time, eh? So much opportunity to do far more on both fronts - and finally, given the impacts of SharePoint and Google - digital content is becoming recognized as the massively powerful business opportunity for companies large and small - not just for e-commerce applications, but for employees, suppliers, partners, and more. Still a lot of maturity to run through for most companies, but Level 1 awareness of the potential is sinking in, and causing people to want to run much faster and farther than I've seen in years. Exciting times for those who are putting in the investment of skills and tech to take advantage of the still fairly early days of digital content. Interesting twist on re-use - The P (Put to other uses) in SCAMPER (a creative problem solving technique, for those who don't use it - deceptively simple, extremely powerful - I know Wayne knows this well, given his DI background) - is one of those areas that people really seem to have a hard time focusing on. It's often that we try to create something from nothing, and waste valuable cycles creating solutions to problems that nobody particularly cares about, when we could much more easily Observe what people are doing/saying, Orient our mindset to meet their (the user/customer) needs head on, Decide on how best to improve/tweak (or if needed, outright overhaul/innovate) to address the need, and then Act (and deliver) the proposed solution, and see what the reaction is. Repeat and refine as needed. I'm describing OODA loops above - fascinating back story for those who are interested (Based on John "40 Second" Boyd http://www.fastcompany.com/magazine/59/pilot.html ). For more on loops, collaboration and re-use at http://www.slideshare.net/dan.keldsen/enterprise-... - apparently that presentation has caught on, with over 10,000 views since I posted it. Of course the realization that content and reader/usage analytics is possible is a major mental barrier to entry, as until the digital age snuck up on us, while some people (smart marketers/advertisers) would test copy and see what behaviors were driven, the vast majority of people who write (not well, to your point), have no idea that writing style is not just a personal choice, but needs to be targeted to the context of those who are going to consume it. But once that alignment is found... and monitored/adjusted over time... it's a tremendous competitive advantage, and hits both the the top-line (revenue) and bottom-line (cost) which is where you start to unleash real, sustainable growth over competitors (rather than the pure cost reduction focus that many take). Great post - keep up the good work! Cheers from the road, Dan

Mind Mapping Software Blog : iThoughtsHD sets the gold standard for mind mapping on the iPad

Wed, 5 Jan 2011 02:52:47 +0000

Paula - thanks for the reply, for some reason was not notified. Have since downloaded Air Display - sadly, given network constraints on client sites and in hotels, have not *yet* been successful in using it. Cheers, Dan

OnlyOnce : Why CEOs Shouldn't Mess with Engineers

Mon, 18 Oct 2010 14:22:18 +0000

Matt - Well-engineered ships seem to come to no good end terribly often, eh? "It's unsinkable!" (bonk) "Whoops!" (glug glug glug) Great post - and whether it's the captain or the CEO, ego and over-riding the team/design can certainly cause disasters... Any bets as to how much of this 300+ year old wisdom is paid attention to these days? Here's to the enlightened CEOs - may we make/find/train/create/clone far more of them... Cheers, Dan

BizTechTalk : BizTechTalk Briefs 06/17/2010

Wed, 23 Jun 2010 21:56:05 +0000

Thanks for the comment - and I saw a few Allyis folks at the E2.0 Conference, but it was always across the room, and wasn't able to locate any of you in time to say hello. Need to check-in - it's been nearly a year since I was out at Allyis HQ, would love to hear how the evolution continues inside the organization.

Best,
Dan

Seek Omega : Yammer - What You Need to Know

Fri, 30 Apr 2010 20:25:46 +0000

Mark - if Yammer is the communication circulatory system of the enterprise, then we're talking a zombie enterprise, in desperate need of strategy dialysis. But you probably sensed that coming, based on our interview, eh? ;) IMHO, Yammer is yet another Enteprise 2.0 silo, and while there is always a need for real-time answers, and Twitter has proven that (although frequently dubious value) vs. the closed silo of mass e-mail, I don't personally (or professionally - this is a space I've covered for years after all) believe Yammer is ramping up fast enough to compete with all of the other E2.0 solutions that provide what they are doing (microblogging), alongside a larger suite of collaboration tools. They are also, from what I can tell, running behind SocialCast, who is their closest direct competitor, and any way you slice it, while I wish them the best, people don't "do" microblogging or (for that matter) Enterprise 2.0 AS their job, they use the capabilities as part of whatever they ACTUALLY do for a job, and no job that I know of requires a single tool in the toolkit. On the integration front - SharePoint 2007 integration is weeks away? My god, MOSS 2007 came out, well, 3 years ago. What's the rush? The swarm around MOSS 2010, unless Yammer has carved out some space with Microsoft directly, is going to be incredibly crowded, right out of the gate. BTW - integration code is almost literally free at this point, license it, or hire an offshore team in Russia, Korea or Taiwan, and you'll have your enterprise connectors in no time. If they are building all of that themselves, that's another major warning sign that they are not going to live much longer. It's high time for convergence, folks. And it's completely in your grasp. Don't confuse easy to deploy and easy to use, with long-term value. I'm all for providing entry points to E2.0 within organizations, but think larger than microblogging - there's no need to limit to such a narrow toolset at this point. Agree that doing nothing is not a good strategy, and neither is "run with a tool that only solves 10% of your collaboration problems." Hit pause for a second, and throw out a handful of the collaboration scenarios you might need and THEN take a look at what would solve those problems. BTW - I described several ways to look at the need for (or lack of need) for real-time collaboration, and how to frame the capabilities to support those needs in a webinar hosted by AIIM and Google a few months ago. See IA Webinar: Real-time Working with Collaboration. In all honesty, when we do consulting work, frequently the answer is not any MORE technology (freemium or not), but the reapplication/deployment of investments a business has already made. No capital expenditures, no new POs, just fix what was broken and get back on to BUSINESS, not chasing a featureset. As a former CTO, and now consultant, I don't care whether you're in IT, or on the business side, focus on the BUSINESS VALUE first, and not the features, or you're only making the problem worse. And in 2010, that shouldn't be good enough. Your business, your employees and your customers deserve more. Think Macro, not Micro. My recent post IA Webinar: Real-time Working with Collaboration

BizTechTalk : Findability - What Solutions Are Missing?

Fri, 5 Feb 2010 17:46:04 +0000

Geoff - great catch, thanks for pointing out Active Navigation. State of the art and state of adoption continue to lead and lag (as expected). What else rounds out your Findability toolkit? What are the business drivers that you're aiming to and successfully solving?

Dan

BizTechTalk : BizTechTalk Briefs 12/24/2009

Sun, 10 Jan 2010 23:03:03 +0000

Chris - always great to hear I've served as inspiration. Fire it up,
and we can keep the pace, mutually. Dan

BizTechTalk : BizTechTalk Briefs 08/21/2009

Wed, 2 Sep 2009 01:35:50 +0000

Kimberly - Aptara, Sitecore, there are many solutions - the BizTechTalk Briefs I post are simply bookmark reminders or pointers to circle back around later, not a definitive list or endorsement. Appreciate the reminder of Sitecore however, it's been a bit since I last checked in with them.

The FASTForward Blog : Who's in Charge of Social Network Information?

Wed, 13 May 2009 18:34:43 +0000

Exactly - let's bump e-mail management up a notch to content management, or information management, or just plain business management. Think of it all as warehouse inventory. Either it's worth something, or it's not - what is your process for storing, finding, destroying, sharing, etc.? Apply to all content types, and you're golden. It's the scale of e-mail (or IM, twitter, etc.) that throws people off into thinking it's something new.

Information Architected : IAM Talking: The Evolution of User Experience

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:53:39 +0000

If that's all you got out of the 15 minutes, then we clearly aren't listening to the same interview. What would constitute fulfilling the premise of the podcast, anonymous one?

The FASTForward Blog : Understanding the role of Enterprise 2.0 and moving towards a Social Business

Mon, 20 Apr 2009 20:03:50 +0000

Jevon - So many angles to touch on... rich food for discussion! An attempt to summarize/expand, if I may. Just as with many "enterprise" concerns, hardly any "enterprise' is entirely on-board the "Enterprise 2.0 train." Aside from phones, payroll, and e-mail, it's exceedingly rare for any enterprise to achieve 100% adoption of any business practice or technology offering. While we shouldn't (collectively) be happy with minimal adoption, we also shouldn't get terribly crazed that "most people don't get this yet" - adoption takes time, and isn't evenly distributed... or insert actual quote from William Gibson :) People who have an obsession of focusing on a single aspect of Enterprise 2.0 don't "sell" the larger/systemic benefits, as they're focused more on features/functions rather than benefits. Classic solution in search of a problem, and 90% of the pain whether you're buying or selling solutions. You don't buy a wiki to make wikis, you buy them to make meetings more efficient, to enable anyone with knowledge to improve the knowledgebase - not just the few licensed seats of a traditional ECM tool, etc.. The somewhat tired metaphor is that people don't want to buy a drill, then want the end result of a hole of the appropriate size, depth of their need. From SLATES and FLATNESSES - what I hope people take away from those frameworks is exactly the nature of your closing remark and the paragraph prior to this. It's the combination of many aspects of technology, culture, process, people that actually sow the seeds of adoption and continuing use. Adding only tagging to every system individually in an organization is only going to add a certain amount of value. Layer the feature of tagging ACROSS (as a meta layer) those systems, and suddenly connections pop out that were hidden in the siloed views. It is certainly far more likely that a solution will "be Enterprise 2.0" if as it's own system it is "SLATES-compliant" - but it's only in the context of the larger picture you'll know if that puppy really does walk the walk. Let's be honest - most of the systems that fall within the purview of Enterprise 2.0 haven't been mature enough to cut across and deliver larger value, as they've been too fragmented or limited to EASILY enable broad emergent capabilities. Now that we're seeing "Enterprise 2.0 suites" - or at least more thoroughly integrated/integrate-able offerings - it's becoming much more likely that the premise of Enterprise 2.0 can actually be delivered and used. As I frequently have to remind the software companies selling solutions, and the IT shops buying/deploying - customers/business users don't want to use a wiki, and the business doesn't get paid by their customers for creating wikis - they get paid because they are delivering goods/products/services to their customers. The best possible "solution" is one that gets out of the way and lets people create value. Less features, more accomplishments.

Information Architected : Q&A: SharePoint Webinar and Whitepaper (Part 5)

Mon, 6 Apr 2009 16:58:31 +0000

Brad - ah, interesting, and not commonly known. The question at that point, however, is whether it actually makes sense to break apart management and storage - what you gain or lose by doing so. Any common scenarios that you (or anyone else reading?) see as far as SharePoint as management layer, and storage elsewhere? Have seen Documentum and Open Text in some scenarios - more from a records standpoint. Nothing else that I've personally seen with our clients. Anyone else? What have you used for this separation of duties? And why?

BizTechTalk : Augmented Reality - Real Meets Virtual

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 14:56:32 +0000

Another augmented reality sighting at http://www.whatisinnovation.com/videos/3d-basebal... - extending card collecting into the virtual. Very interesting.

Information Architected : IAM Alert: ECM Blooms Amidst New England Ice Storm

Thu, 12 Mar 2009 12:39:38 +0000

Laurence - Thanks for the reply, and whew, remember reading your post a year ago on ECM 2.0 (a year ago? How did that happen?). The long promised vision of ECM seems to finally be getting some traction among "the big boys" of ECM. Just in time for mainstream adoption? We'll see, but in general, it's a very good time to be a buyer of ECM, whether big, small, integrated or in parts.

Real Story Group: Content Management, Enterprise Search, and Portal Reports : Trends: Battling ECM and E2.0

Fri, 6 Mar 2009 20:37:48 +0000

Some of the positioning of ECM versus E2.0 is a classic marketing move to slay the old (Goliath) by bringing in the new (David). This is how chasms are crossed and mainstream achieve, after all! There is much the same between the old world (ECM being 1.0 in most minds), and yes, truly "new" concepts in 2.0, such as a trend towards openness, lightweight rather than overbearing "standards" for integration, a heavier move towards collaboration and social features rather than individual or a purely managerial focus, etc.. In the end, I would hope that "it's all important" as Billy says, and with the appropriate structure in place, there's no reason that organizations should have to jump through entirely new hoops when they embrace some new form of media (whether that is the e-mail of yesterday, the wiki of today, or the twitter of tomorrow).

BizTechTalk : Augmented Reality - Real Meets Virtual

Fri, 6 Mar 2009 18:55:47 +0000

And thanks to @inkedmn for the initial sighting of this.

MindTouch, Inc. Blog : Guest Blogger: Skinning with Fiesta

Fri, 6 Mar 2009 16:22:16 +0000

I haven't (yet) had a chance to look at Mindtouch in detail in the last 6 months or so, but wikis in general can be awfully painful to customize via skins, stylesheets, etc.. Partly that's because CSS itself is so difficult to do well. Good to see major strides have been made.

MindTouch, Inc. Blog : Three Decades Later. Revolt Or Die.

Fri, 6 Mar 2009 16:18:30 +0000

Agree with this - most of the functionality of MS Office or similar suites is totally unnecessary. Less is more, and I'd rather solution providers spend time helping get 80% of the normal daily work done. The baffling inconsistencies of Microsoft's editing experience (such as applying a bullet style to one line style suddenly bullets several unrelated and non-highlighted paragraphs), I'm not sure I'd recommend that anyone hold up their interface as the gold standard. Tarnished bronze perhaps? :)

BizTechTalk : Who are the Process Players (BPM/Workflow)?

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 19:01:35 +0000

Thanks piping up Gerardo - and how goes the world of Vignette?

The FASTForward Blog : New White House Blog Published First Post

Thu, 22 Jan 2009 22:35:00 +0000

Hear hear! We'll see how it all unfolds, witness the complete shutoff of Camp Obama twittering after Election Day, but assuming the premise holds true, it will interesting to see if "trickle down" works in weaving new media/social media/2.0 into the government. Having the appropriate tools to engage us common folk in "the democracy" as a whole, well, I don't think we're quite there yet. Threaded comments don't really scale well for discourse and debate when comments explode beyond tens to low hundreds.