Sunday, October 31, 2004
Saturday, October 30, 2004
Steve Chapman on the Valerie Plame case
Chicago Tribune (registration required)
If you witness a crime and are called to testify about it, you have two choices: do it or go to jail. When people in my profession receive that sort of invitation, though, they prefer a third option: telling the prosecutor to go pound sand. ...
The prosecutor has already met a stringent test designed to prevent the abuse of journalists. There are two other reasons that Miller and Cooper should testify: The crime is a serious one, and the public gained nothing from the revelation. If Miller and Cooper know the source of this illegal leak and refuse to tell, they are protecting a criminal who betrayed his country.
Precisely so.
Friday, October 29, 2004
Someone is spoofing Presto Vivace, Inc
Someone is spoofing the Presto Vivace, Inc. corporate email. I just received the following notice-
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_________________________________________
What, if anything, can be done?
Thursday, October 28, 2004
Knowledge Management 2005 Conference and Exhibition
CALL FOR PAPERS
Deadline for Abstract Submission is Tuesday, November 30, 2004.
The FCW Media Group, producers of E-Gov Institute events and Federal Computer Week, is pleased to announce a Call for Papers for the 6th Annual Knowledge Management Conference, to be held April 20-22, 2005 at the Ronald Reagan Building and International Trade Center in Washington, DC. This is your opportunity to participate in the Knowledge Management 2005 Conference as a member of the faculty.
All you need is love
The Love Approach
But there was a third set of communicators who employed a breathtakingly simple and successful procedure that Harvard terms the relationship-raising approach. Before making a request for change from their partner, they merely made mention of their existing relationship. They might say, "You know, we've been together for a while now" or "We're a couple; we share the same goals." Then, they'd deliver their appeal: "So, I'd appreciate it if you could find a way to change your stand on this one." Or, in the most streamlined version of the relationship-raising approach, these individuals simply incorporated the pronouns "we," "our," and "us" into their request.
The outcome? The relationship partners exposed to this technique shifted significantly in the requested direction (Oriña, Wood, and Simpson, 2002).
Tom Biro on marketing to youth
Not long ago Technoflak sent Tom Biro a link to Edelman’s post on marketing to youth, expecting a suitably snarky comment. Instead Biro has written a thoughtful response that is well worth reading.
Monday, October 25, 2004
Tony Byrne of CMS Watch at NCC AIIM
By way of introducing the evening’s speaker, Mark Mandel promised, “If you’ve ever wondered what chunking means, you will learn tonight.” A lady from Computer Associates sitting at my table said, “Oh good, that’s what I came for.”
Tony Byrne began by saying he had joined AIIM five to six years ago and that it had opened his eyes to content management. He announced that CMS Watch’s second report on enterprise search would be coming out soon.
His presentation surveyed the enterprise content management and web content management market place, and product trends and concluded with thoughts and advice on procurement.
“Instead of a layer cake slide, I have a ‘cheese board’,” Byrne said, showing an illustration of content management technologies. He described imaging as the “granddaddy” of content management. He proceeded through a series of technologies concluding with digital rights management. Gesturing at the slide, Byrnes said, “Any of these vendors will call themselves a provider of enterprise content management systems.” All have certain capabilities including versioning, click chart, process management, and business rules. But Byrne said that no one had a truly complete enterprise content management system.
He liked AIIM’s view of enterprise content management as a discipline. Reviewing the industry’s recent history, he described how major enterprise suite vendors had added capabilities by acquiring smaller companies. He said it was very unlikely that you could buy a big suite that will solve your problems.
Content management originated with single source repositories with multichannel publishing (part of what SGML was designed to do). Problems arise when content is pushed out, under goes changes and is sent back to the repository.
Your choice of content management system will be governed by the application at the center of your system. Different kinds of companies will have different kinds of applications at the center of their business. For example, HBO decided that digital asset management would be the center of their system; while professional services firms want collaborative applications at the center of their systems.
Byrne explained that web content management systems take data from data bases, structured documents, unstructured documents, and media and push it out to PDF, publishing out to the web site, wireless, and xml.
Chunking content is breaking it up into components and reassembling it. There is a cost to managing content at a very granular level, when models are too fine grain. IT architecture firms now have consultants who specialize in up-chunking. Byrne apologized for explaining this at dinner.
Content management systems come in three categories, production-oriented (imaging), delivery-oriented (portals and application servers), and full cycle. In some content management systems you must use the same system to manage and deliver content (Microsoft, to no one’s surprise).
Byrne described the range of content management vendors. Enterprise level, that is, large-scale platforms are typically marketed in multidimensional "suites" that span many function points but may be less well-suited for straightforward web content management projects.
Upper tier providers target large departments and corporations, and their products tend to focus more narrowly on web content management.
Mid-Market packages target mid-market firms or enterprise departments and usually trade customizability for ease-of-implementation.
Lower-priced products target relatively straightforward web content management requirements.
Open source (which Byrne described as “free as in speech, free as in beer”) has the functionality of upper tier systems and can be expensive to integrate. CMS Watch uses Mid Gard.
Byrne described all content management systems as underperforming. “The vendors I’m talking about are in the room” (cheerful laughter).
He said there were few big deals for web content management anymore and that it is usually sold as an add-on. Interwoven and Vignette began as web content management companies and bought complementary systems during the boom. Byrne thought the companies they acquired have stronger products.
He said many analysts think the web content management area is in the dumps, but he pointed out that the smaller firms are doing well. The upper tier companies are feasting on the enterprise companies’ accounts and the middle tier is winning on simplicity and rapid implementation. He quoted Warren Buffet, “When the tide goes out we will find out who is wearing a swim suit.” He observed that while doom and gloom have been predicted for years, it never comes.
Buyers think that their content management system should be delivering their web site, but Byrne said the systems are not doing that and probably should not. He said all content should be on the server and behind the firewall; that way if one goes away you still have the data.
He divided systems into bake and fry. In a bake system, pages are created within the content management system and then delivered to the web page. In a fry system, content is served from sources and delivered to the user. Byrne said, “I am a fan of bake.” However, when you need user input to assemble a page and need to dynamically serve content from a data base, a fry system works best.
He described the Microsoft system as moving from development to authoring to staging before being deployed through security to the web. It is expensive because it is licensed per CPU.
Byrne said the “devil is still in the development.” It is crucial to have strong software architecture in the beginning, which he described as really boring and technical. He knew of at least two federal installations that were delayed twelve to sixteen months because of security issues.
There are some good automatic deployment tools. “That is the good side of the story. But usability is still not great.” Content contributors and site visitors are looking for good search tools.
Records management systems are using Outlook. Technoflak asked, “Does that have a security problem?” Byrne asked, “In what respect?”, Technoflak elaborated, “Just that Outlook has an unhappy history.” Byrne answered, “To the extent that Outlook has security problems, anything you do in Outlook will have problems.”
Byrne had nice things to say about Interwoven, observing that it is configurable in XML and is appealing to both power users and passive users.
At one time the industry thought that thick clients were gone, that you can can use a browser for everything. Some web content management providers (OpenText) have brought back thickish clients.
Byrne began to talk about the importance of metadata and taxonomy. Byrne explained how metadata can be taken from a central store of attributes. Multifaceted taxonomy can create multiple hierarchies such as industry, service, geography.
Licensing is all over the map: per CPU, server, domain or contributor and sometimes, combinations of these. Technoflak would observe that pricing that is confusing is poor customer relations. Nowhere is the need for transparency greater than in pricing.
Byrne highlighted the rise of hosted vendors. Many thought that this business model would not succeed, but some are doing well. They can put their money into developing features and functionality rather than supporting a variety of operating systems.
Byrne offered guidance on deciding whether you need a content management system. Does your information need cleaning? Do you have consistent metadata standards? well defined business processes? If you cannot answer yes to these questions, maybe a content management system is not a good idea. You might be better off with a simple workflow system, which would give you templates and versioning. However, there is considerable cost when you have to move from workflow to a full content management system.
XML works better in a baking environment. Byrne explained the difference between reuse (breaking documents down to a very granular level) and repurposing (taking an entire document into a different format for a different purpose). He seemed to think repurposing was more practical.
Byrne advised attendees that they should expect to pay more for services than systems, something like a 7/3 ratio. He advised buyers to ask for narrative cases rather than check boxes. Don’t ask if a system has WYSIWYG or multitasking; ask how a product supports those capabilities. Buyers should form interdisciplinary teams; federal agencies should include a contracting officer early on. (Technoflak is reminded of a presentation at DC SPIN where the presenter said he was going to write a story in which the heroic contracting officer slew the Feature Creep.) Byrne also stressed the importance of testing before buying. “Don’t go to the vendor’s solutions center, test on site.” He concluded by saying, “Don’t postpone deploying a web content management system waiting for enterprise content management nirvana.”
The floor was thrown open for questions, led off by a gentleman from the production side of Federal Computer Week. He pointed out that some objects in print have no business on the web or need to have a different structure. For example, their top 100 vendors feature has a picture of the CEO of each company, but on the web the companies should simply be hyper linked. Byrne agreed that different renditions should handle content differently. In the ideal world you would have an authoritative XML repository, but you would still need both a print management and web content management system.
Byrne said the tricky thing in the federal space is the requirement that web and print content be identical, at least in respect to text. Change must be synchronized so that changes in one are immediately made in the other.
MediaSyndicate - Free News Release Posting Service
Submit your press releases on this site for free.
Technoflak uses the Presto Vivace data base for press releases. Please comment if you have any experience with MediaSyndicate, positive or negative.
Guy Kawasaki on being a panelist
Mike Manual has some great quotes from Guy Kawasaki on being a panelist.
1. Control your introduction. Bring a copy of your bio and hand it to the moderator to introduce you. Don’t depend on what the moderator came up with. And, like in speeches, cut the sales pitch about your organization. To make your organization look good, be an informative panelist not a loudmouth braggart. ...
Technoflak would add cut the company background down to the name of your company and a one sentence description of your business. The audience came to hear about the subject at hand, not your company.
3. Tell the truth—especially when the truth is obvious. Most people expect panelists to lie when they encounter a tough question, so if you don’t lie, you establish credibility for your other answers. ...
Give your audience credit for being both intelligent and fair. They know that you and your company have feet of clay. Admitting this enhances credibility rather than otherwise. Keep in mind the large number of eastern European refugees in our industry. Anything along the lines of “we have exceeded our quota by %500” will seem comically discreditable.
7. Make casual conversation. You’re on stage, but act like you’re not. Simply make conversation with the moderator and other panelists. Don’t pontificate and don’t “make a speech.” Interact with the everyone (even the audience) in a casual way. ...
Technoflak knows from experience that this is easier to do if you look directly at the audience and make eye contact with individuals within the audience.
10. Provide a way to get in touch with you. Most panelists think this is masochistic: Why would I want to provide my contact info to an audience of hundreds of people? The answer is twofold: first, don’t flatter yourself—very few people will actually make contact with you; second, a small number of those who do will be valuable.
You would hardly think this advice necessary, but apparently it is. How can your audience do business with you if they do not know how to get in contact with you? Technoflak saw Kawasaki speak and can attest he practices what he preaches.
Technoflak would advise to have someone specific in mind when you prepare, it could be a prospective customer, a current customer, or anyone specific in your industry. It is easier to write copy or prepare a presentation if you have someone specific in mind. Try to think of what you could say that would put money in that person’s pocket, it might be a way to use technology more securely or more efficiently. It might be a way they could choose a better system, or how to migrate to a better system with as little grief as possible. But you should concentrate on giving your audience something of specific value, that way they will think of your company first when they are looking to solve a problem, or recommend you to a friend.
Sunday, October 24, 2004
The virtual trade show arrives
It was just a question of time before virtual trades shows supplemented live conferences. Public relations was first, now Ziff Davis is launching the first IT virtual conference.
Ziff Davis Media Security Virtual Tradeshow; The Ultimate IT Security Experience
Ziff Davis Media eSeminars division is launching the Security Virtual Tradeshow bringing together the top security experts in the technology industry for a two-day online event focused exclusively on the most pressing IT security issues. Through a series of keynote presentations and interactive panel discussions featuring government officials, IT corporate executives and leading industry analysts, this event promises to educate you on the growing threats facing your IT systems and then supply you with action items to help you safeguard against any future attacks.
This virtual tradeshow will offer registrants an online platform to visit vendor booths and learn more about the latest security technology products and services, as well as provide an interactive forum to personally communicate with vendor representatives as well as the security experts that are participating in the panel discussions.
Registering for the Ziff Davis Media Security Virtual Tradeshow will allow you free and unlimited access to two days worth of programming. Upon successful registration, you will receive a confirmation email with updates and reminders as we approach the date of the tradeshow.
Friday, October 22, 2004
14th Annual Press Freedom Awards Dinner
The Committee to Protect Journalists will honor four journalists—from Belarus, Burma, Burundi, and the United States—with 2004 International Press Freedom Awards in November.
Svetlana Kalinkina is the former editor-in-chief of the popular Minsk business daily Belorusskaya Delovaya Gazeta (BDG), which endured years of legal and bureaucratic harassment from Belarusian authorities because of its critical reporting on various government abuses. Officials filed several civil and criminal lawsuits against the paper, seized print runs, threatened and detained journalists, and conducted politically motivated tax inspections. In early 2004, the post office and national state-run press distributor broke their contracts with the newspaper and refused to distribute it. A journalist from the newspaper also received several death threats via telephone. In addition, the Information Ministry aggressively harassed any printer that worked with BDG, forcing the newspaper to print in neighboring Russia. In January, the Information Ministry issued its third official warning to BDG, leaving the newspaper vulnerable to court-ordered closure. By September, government restrictions had drastically cut the newspaper's circulation, with only a handful of private vendors distributing the daily amid police harassment.
Alexis Sinduhije is the founder and director of Burundi's Radio Publique Africaine (RPA), which has defied government bans and intimidation to become one of war-torn Burundi's most popular radio stations. RPA was launched in early 2001 at a time when Burundi was seeking to end a devastating eight-year conflict between ethnic Hutus and Tutsis. The station has sought to promote peace by hiring both Hutus and Tutsis, including ex-combatants, to work on the editorial team. "I wanted to humanize relations between the ethnic groups in Burundi and set an example of former enemies working together to build peace," says Sinduhije. The station's courageous investigative reporting and grassroots approach to issues affecting ordinary Burundians has earned it the nickname "the People's Radio." RPA has achieved this in a region where many view private radio with suspicion because of the incendiary role that neighboring Rwanda's RTLM radio played in the 1994 genocide there.
In September 2003, authorities closed RPA, along with another private station, for airing an interview with a rebel spokesman. However, private stations announced that they would not broadcast any government news or statements for the duration of the ban, and this solidarity helped get the sanction lifted three days later. RPA's investigative reporting on sensitive issues such as human rights abuses and corruption has endangered Sinduhije and his staff. In February 2003, armed men broke into Sinduhije's house and murdered his security guard, but the journalist believes that the attackers meant to kill him. Despite the difficulties, RPA continues to delve into sensitive issues as it attempts to foster peace and reconciliation in a country racked by ethnic violence.
Aung Pwint, a documentary filmmaker, editor, and poet, and Thaung Tun, an editor, filmmaker, and poet better known by his pen name, Nyein Thit, were arrested separately in Burma in early October 1999 and have been imprisoned ever since. CPJ sources said they were arrested for filming independent video documentaries that portrayed the grim reality of everyday life in Burma, including footage of forced labor and hardship in rural areas. Aung Pwint worked at a private media company that produced videos for tourism and educational purposes, but he also worked with Thaung Tun on documentary-style projects. Their videotapes circulated through underground networks.
The ruling military junta had prohibited Aung Pwint from making videos in 1996 "because they were considered to show too negative a picture of Burmese society and living standards," according to Human Rights Watch. A notable poet, he has also written under the name Maung Aung Pwint.
The same year they were arrested, the two men were tried together, and each was sentenced to eight years in prison. Pwint was convicted of "illegal possession of a fax machine" and of "sending news" to banned Burmese newspapers. CPJ sources say that Pwint still plays an active role in defending press freedom from prison. Pwint's family has been severely impoverished as a result of his imprisonment, and Tun is reportedly suffering from a brain ailment as a result of his confinement.
Paul Klebnikov, an American journalist of Russian descent, was shot eight times by at least one assassin in a passing car when he stepped outside his office on July 9, 2004, in Moscow. He died shortly after arriving at a hospital, becoming the 11th journalist in Russia to be murdered in a contract-style killing since President Vladimir Putin took power in 2000. To date, no one has been brought to justice in any of the cases.
Klebnikov joined Forbes magazine in 1989 and rose to the position of senior editor specializing in Russian and Eastern European politics and economics before leaving the U.S.-based magazine to assume the editorship of Forbes Russia in 2004. Klebnikov launched the magazine in April 2004, believing that reforms were propelling the country toward greater transparency in business and politics. With his fluency in Russian and doctorate from the London School of Economics, Klebnikov was uniquely qualified to investigate Russia's business world. In his first editorial, Klebnikov wrote that Russian business had arrived at a "new, more civilized stage of development" and cited the launch of Forbes' Russian edition as evidence.
Forbes Russia attracted significant attention in May when it published a list of Russia's wealthiest people and reported that Moscow had 33 billionaires, more than any other city in the world. Publication of the list focused attention on Russia's richest people, many of whom are trying to keep a low profile. Klebnikov's book, Godfather of the Kremlin: Boris Berezovsky and the Looting of Russia, was published in August 2001 and outlined the rise of one of the country's most powerful oligarchs.
Thursday, October 21, 2004
Tuesday, October 19, 2004
Analyst web logs
Steve Rubel points to this new blog from Charlene Li of Forrester. She joins Gartner and Jupiter as an analyst blogger.
Monday, October 18, 2004
How to get watched
The CMS Watch “Top 40”
The CMS Watch Product List is a service to prospective CMS buyers. According to Web directory DMOZ, more than 1000 software products call themselves CMS packages. We deliberately limit our tally to 40 packages listed across 7 categories, to help you quickly identify a reasonable "long list" of possible solutions to investigate. ...
Message to vendor applicants: We revise this list 2- to 3-times per year; our next review will occur in late November, 2004. Should you wish to have your package considered, please write to info[@]CMSWatch[.]com, addressing in detail the attributeds bulleted above. Please note that we receive several such submissions a week, and therefore can only reply for more information should your package become a finalist for further consideration. To apply, you should respond in detail to the criteria above and be sure include median product license fees as well as total annual software revenues for your firm. The list will remain limited to 40 packages in any case, so note that any new entrants must "bump" incumbents.
This sort of application should not be made in a hurry. Technoflak would advise interested vendors to wait fot the next edition.
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