Conquer Information Chaos

I wish I was at Spring Training...

A couple of items catching up with everyone...

First, those of you who get these blog updates via email may have noticed that you got a composite of several posts from the past yesterday. I am not sure exactly why this happened -- it appears to be a Feedburner problem, which is the service that distributes the emails. I have an inquiry in with them to determine why the email was triggered. I am also looking at another service that might distribute updates less frequently -- I know how conscious everyone is of the volume of email these days.

Also, in the category of the quickest response to a blog post EVER, hats off to Angela Torres of the Las Vegas Monorail Company re my post about the unusual pricing on the Monorail:

Hi John -

Thank you for choosing to ride the Las Vegas Monorail during your conference and for including us in your blog. You are correct in your blog when you stated that we offer a $9 Day Pass (promotional fare) and a $40 3-Day Pass from our ticket vending machine.

I just want to let you know that the $9 Day Pass is a limited time promotional discount from the $15 regular fare and a 3-Day Pass for $40 is a regular fare; due to space limitations on the ticket vending machines we couldn’t fit the phrase “special fare” on the $9 Day Pass selection button. The promotional offers are explained in all advertising and collateral, and on our website, www.lvmonorail.com. We offer different promotional discounts throughout the year and the $9 Day pass and $20 6-Ride ticket are our current promotions.

Again, we completely understand the confusion; hope this explanation clears it up.

Angela Torres
Director of Marketing
Las Vegas Monorail Company

I stand corrected.

I've spent the past few weeks not at Spring Training but at some partner conferences in which the word “simple” was a core part of the messages delivered. Simple and Document Management used in the same sentence? Really.

I think the focus by presenters at these two conferences on simplicity reflects something very new about the document management marketplace – and is a reflection of the movement of our industry into the mainstream. After all, the very words “Enterprise Content Management” do not normally exactly conjure up an image of simplicity.

At both conferences, there was a great emphasis on simplifying and “democratizing” the capture process. At the Visioneer conference, this meant a focus not only on their trademark “One Touch” scanning but on extending the “One Touch” concept into integration with applications.

At the DocuWare conference, great emphasis on the copier dealer/distributor channel and on the use of these devices as capture on-ramps. We are clearly moving from a world in which capture was defined by the needs and competencies of workers for whom capture was a major part of their jobs to one in which capture will be defined by the simplicity demanded by those for whom scanning is mostly an ad hoc complement to their “real” job. The DocuWare presentations also focused on out-of-the box automation of the core business processes that are the bane of mid-sized organizations: areas like accounting, HR, manufacturing, and sales. Many of these processes have in fact have gotten more paper-clogged in the past years as a result of the deployment of technology.

(More on the theme of the re-emergence of paper in some future posts...)

Leaving Las Vegas

I'm on the way home from the last of a series of partner conferences.  I'll have some observations on them in the next few posts, but for now, let me just catch up a bit on a couple of things.

As you can tell from the picture, the last one was in Las Vegas.  If you look at the far right of this actual screen shot from the Las Vegas monorail, you will see math that can only exist in Vegas.

Let's see ... I can get a one day unlimited pass on the monorail for $9.  Or ... I can get a THREE day pass for $40.  Hmmmmm.  I knew you could lose at slots and blackjack and roulette in Vegas, but I had no idea that the Monorail Machines were also programmed so that the HOUSE wins!  What a town.

There are a couple of catch-up things I wanted to mention to blog readers...

First, I've used some videos in recent presentations that people seemed to like.  So here are the links for anyone who might be interested...

Conference call -- http://aiim.typepad.com/VideoConference.mov
Tequila -- http://aiim.typepad.com/Tequila.mov

Second, I wanted to remind everyone that we have our annual State of the Industry survey in circulation for the last few days.  The terms of engagement are the usual ones:

• Those participating will get an advance copy of the results to use in your internal benchmarking.
• The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete.
• We will make a contribution to Habitat for Humanity to thank you for your time (http://www.habitat.org/)
• Your involvement will help improve the overall level of understanding of the issues and concerns facing end users and potential end users of document, content, and records technologies.
• I will discuss the major findings during my keynote presentation at the AIIM On Demand Show in March.

Here’s the link — please take a few minutes to complete.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB227FW7SW65Z

And lastly, we are in the process of launching our new training course on Enterprise 2.0 technologies. 

The new training program provides you with a good understanding of social networking capabilities to capture unstructured tacit knowledge to improve knowledge management and collaboration across the enterprise. All attendees get access to supporting online courses and exam, and you will be awarded the Enterprise 2.0 Practitioner designation after passing the online exam.

1 day intensive AIIM Enterprise 2.0 (E2.0) Practitioner Program -- Learn best practices for using Web 2.0 technologies to improve collaboration across the enterprise

• Defining Enterprise 2.0
• Business drivers for Enterprise 2.0
• Differentiating Enterprise 2.0 from “traditional” information systems
• The relationship of Enterprise 2.0 to Web 2.0 and Knowledge Management
• Balancing transparency with Security
• Searching for people and resources
• Authoring incl. Wikis and Blogs
• Tagging and folksonomies
• Extensions and recommendations
• Rating, ranking and reviews
• Signals & RSS

We'll be doing the course as a special one-day pre-con at the AIIM International Exposition and Conference.  For details, go to the web site. 

We also have three public courses scheduled: 

• San Francisco, CA - April 8-9, 2008
• Dallas, TX - May 6-7, 2008
• Washington DC, May 20-21, 2008

For more information: http://www.aiim.org/education/e20-content.asp

Document, Records, and Content Management Annual Survey

I wanted to personally invite blog readers to participate in this year’s "State of the ECM Industry" research.

The terms of engagement are the usual ones:

• Those participating will get an advance copy of the results to use in your internal benchmarking.
• The survey will take about 10 minutes to complete.
• We will make a contribution to Habitat for Humanity to thank you for your time (http://www.habitat.org/)
• Your involvement will help improve the overall level of understanding of the issues and concerns facing end users and potential end users of document, content, and records technologies.
• I will discuss the major findings during my keynote presentation at the AIIM On Demand Show in March.

Here’s the link — please take a few minutes to complete.

http://www.zoomerang.com/survey.zgi?p=WEB227FW7SW65Z

If you have any problems, please try pasting the link into your browser.

Thank you so much for your assistance.