November 24, 2009

Ten Requirements for Achieving Collaboration #7: Tracking the Change and Evolution of Information

We are in the midst of a series investigating collaboration. We previously wrote about the two types of collaboration - intentional and accidental.
INTENTIONAL: where we get together to achieve a goal and
ACCIDENTAL: where you interact with something of mine and I am never aware of your interaction
While intentional collaboration is good it is not where the bulk of untapped collaborative potential lies. Accidental collaboration is. But the challenge is to intentionally facilitate accidental collaboration. For the full list of 10 requirements see the original post. Last time I wrote about requirement #6: Data Accessibility for People and Computers. This time we will talk about the importance of keeping track of how the information changes over time.

dynamic-network-abstraction-green.jpgNo information systems are static. Information is continuously being added, removed and changed in the systems. Even records and governance systems that provide "immutable storage" for information assets are not static when considered from the system view. Accessing the system changes it. If nothing else, a new access record is logged. In many ways such feedback intensive systems are intrinsic to the human experience. It is no wonder that these cybernetic characteristics penetrate our information systems. But we still need to take advantage of them.
Consider the simple access log example. We do not merely access the system, we access some information in the system. When we track what item was accessed and graph those accesses over time it changes the information in the context of the system. While the binary information object itself may not be altered, the pattern of access over time yields valuable information. It lets us know that the item is popular, important or unpopular or unimportant.

Continue reading "Ten Requirements for Achieving Collaboration #7: Tracking the Change and Evolution of Information" »

November 23, 2009

Forrester ECM Suites Wave 2009 is OUT NOW

wave1.jpgYou can see the results HERE (PDF)

The trends identified in this report and in Gartner's MQ are interesting both in how they overlap and where they diverge.

Read it for yourself!

November 12, 2009

FREE HOW TO EVENTS! Real Solutions with Oracle Fusion Middleware

FUN2.png Sign up now for these two upcoming free solution events with Oracle ECM and E20


EVENT 1:
How To make your HR documents more secure and accessible with Oracle's content management and imaging solutions.
Personnel Processes Go Paperless - live webcast
Tuesday, Nov. 17th, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET
Register HERE


EVENT 2: How To streamline and manage important order management, accounts payable, and asset management documents and processes scattered throughout your enterprise.
Still haven't found what you're looking for? Live webcast
Wednesday, Nov. 18th, 10 a.m. PT / 1 p.m. ET
Register HERE

See you there!

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November 11, 2009

Managers of Gen X & Gen Y folks Need To Understand This

November 5, 2009

Inference on the Semantic Web

A very informative slideshare on inference and the power of the Semantic Web.
Hat Tip to Brian Dirking for the link to the slideshare on his facebook page.

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November 2, 2009

Ten Requirements for Achieving Collaboration #6:Data Accessibility for People and Computers

TouchSun.jpgThe data contained within information artifacts must be accessible by people and machines. We will cover 3 main advantages that data accessibility for people and computers deliver.
1. High relevance leads to lean systems.
2. People want relevant information, not potentially relevant hits.
3. Context drives relevancy, delivery drives efficiency.

We are in the midst of a series investigating collaboration. We previously wrote about the two types of collaboration - intentional and accidental.
INTENTIONAL: where we get together to achieve a goal and
ACCIDENTAL: where you interact with something of mine and I am never aware of your interaction

While intentional collaboration is good it is not where the bulk of untapped collaborative potential lies. Accidental collaboration is. But the challenge is to intentionally facilitate accidental collaboration. For the full list of 10 requirements see the original post. Last time I wrote about requirement #5: why data must be referencable and portable. This time we will continue on that theme but discuss why the data we made portable and referencable last time must still be accessible to both people as well as computers.

First remember that the data we're talking about is not nicely contained in a row or cell in a traditional relational database. The data we're interested in and that we have been talking about is the data that exists inside documents, web pages, images and other information artifacts. So in one way at least, the information is already human accessible. It is in a document or other information artifact after all. And those are typically created by people for people. Parsed and extracted data that is referencable is still accessible because we do not fundamentally alter the original container (i.e. the document). Any good enterprise information architecture must include a fully-fledged ECM (enterprise content management) system for this reason. There needs to be a place to store the original source documents, images, videos and web pages.

Also, computers and systems should have no problem accessing the data that we derived from the artifacts in the previous posts. This is because after the data is parsed, extracted and marked up in the ways we've previously described, it gets stored in a computer referencable system like a database or an RDF store or a linked combination of similar stores and indexes. Computers and systems can access that data (of course assuming network connections are established and maintained). Indeed, many SOA and Service Bus integration layers have been doing similar things for some time. They are able to access transaction, web service and request data and attach it to the brokered request while bringing along original documents and other unstructured information files as payload.

blueShoes.jpg But did you notice what I just wrote there? The relevant data as well as the containing or supporting unstructured data files are attached to the request and passed around from system to transaction to data store to website. It is the equivalent of carrying around a file cabinet full of stock photos when all I really want is to sort catalog entries on blue shoes. "Blue" is important data that is only accessible by a human looking at a picture. Or, best case, by a computer system that can parse attached metadata assuming that "blue" was entered by a person somewhere further up the line (and not "teal", "aqua", or "navy"). But if a similar SOA request had access to the full complement of parsed and extracted data then it could carry with it only that data that was actually needed rather than the over-full payload it is today.

Continue reading "Ten Requirements for Achieving Collaboration #6:Data Accessibility for People and Computers" »

October 22, 2009

Oracle ECM Partner Events - Learn & Achieve

Oracle ECM has a rich network of very experienced partners. From time to time I will post their education events to help get the word out.

fishbowl-logo.jpgFishbowl Solutions has three ECM education events on the way that can be found here.
These events focus on the follwoing:
Security in Oracle UCM: Single Sign-on and LDAP/AD Integration
Process Automation: Automating Content Review
CollabPoint: Lightweight Collaboration Built on Oracle UCM

If you have an Oracle ECM or E20 event you'd like me to post, drop a line. Comments here and email works well (billy < dot > cripe < at > oracle < dot > com)

October 21, 2009

Good Reads

E20 Reconciliation (no small task and lots of good charts) - Contentation Re-Considered (Stéphane Croisier)

Understanding how we share links - Haystack Blog

Behavioral Targeting on the web - Pretzel Logic

Thoughts on SEO and their bad rap - Search Engine Land

Thoughts on the latest Gartner ECM MQ (with links to the report)- Bex Huff

October 9, 2009

Heading to Oracle Open World

ocom_oowsf09_reg_banner[1].gifHope To See You There!

October 8, 2009

Taxonomy vs Folksonomy

a good analysis

October 5, 2009

Good Reads to Start Your Week

Stéphane Croisier has a good post on Social Collaboration vs Knowledge Networks

while

Sameer Patel writes about E20 and Social Partnership Paradigms

Daniel Tunkelang has a thought-provoking piece about patents and big corps vs small startups

If geeking out is more your style, Stefano's Linotype post on data reconciliation is an insightful series. Microfornats/data vs HTML5 vs RDFa.

Kyle Hatlestad has a practical piece on setting up image watermarking with UCM's Digital Asset Management features and he does it with LOLCATS (ROTFL!)

You should still sign up for the E20 Virtual Conference (link on lower right) that's happening later this week.

And don't forget to comment HERE for a chance to win a piece of personal computing history.

October 1, 2009

Vintage Tech Giveaway - *Now With 8MB of memory!

IMG00092-20091001-1240.jpg That's right, we're giving away a vintage, new in the never-been-opened package, Palm Zire 21 Handheld device (stylus included).

Leave a comment explaining what you're looking forward to from Oracle Open World and win a piece of technology history.

Suitable for framing.

September 30, 2009

Make Your Oracle WCM System Scream

Check out the SlideShare presentation or watch the VIDEO (WMV format) from Bex Huff of Bezzotech on performance tuning your WCM system.

This is full of good tips and best practices for making your system scream. Even if you don't (yet) use Oracle WCM, there is enough good general performance development material to be worth your while.

Nice post Bex.

September 25, 2009

Enterprise 2.0, Evolved

Be Sure to register for the Enterprise 2.0 Virtual Conference to be held Oct 8 (banner link at bottom right)

September 24, 2009

Oracle at ARMA

Oracle continues to be a major sponsor of the ARMA Conference (Orlando, Oct 15th-18th). Both myself,
Shahid Rashid - Oracle Universal Records Management (URM) Product Manager, and Victor Owuor, Director of URM Product Development will be in attendance at the conference. Victor will be presenting in two sessions:


  • Thursday 3:30pm - A Holistic Approach to Enterprise Solutions: How can RIM, IT, and Business Process Work Together to Adopt a Solution?

  • Saturday 8am -Technology in the Spotlight

Earlier in the week, we will be at Oracle OpenWorld (San Francisco, Oct 12th-15th) where records management will be presented in Oracle and customer led sessions, the demogrounds, and executive keynote sessions. Due to constraints around the effort required to support Oracle OpenWorld, we will not have an Oracle product booth in the ARMA Expo Hall. However, Victor and I are taking redeyes to be at ARMA ourselves and are more than happy to meet with you.

Please contact me, Shahid Rashid, if you would like to set up a meeting at ARMA.

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