Confessions of an eBiz Junkie

Social Software and CMS

It's been hard to catch up with all of the blogs, tweets, emails, etc that piled up as I traversed the US and made my way to the Golden State. Of course, even when things are 'normal' I find it challenging to keep up with the plethora of nuggets coming from friend and Sr. Forrester Analyst Jeremiah.

Earlier this week, Jeremiah posted an interesting blog around CMS vendors and the opportunities afforded through social software. Thanks for starting this timely and relevant conversation, JO.

As you'd imagine, we've been discussing this topic for some time now (For context, EMC's Documentum Family of products is all about managing enterprise content). We use Documentum to manage hundreds of thousands  of web assets in over 50 locales across our web properties. Information life cycle capabilities ensure information is stored on the most appropriate storage tier, workflows allow information to flow seamlessly both inside and outside the enterprise, object model standards ensure the right information is delivered to the right audience at the right time, content versioning and protection ensures we adhere to regulatory compliance, etc;.

Suffice it to say the information across our web platforms is well managed.

On the other hand, we also have several instances of community offerings running throughout the company. Some part of a centralized effort, others having evolved through organic evolution. In virtually all cases, the data is unstructured. No capabilities to assign information policies, immature workflow capabilities when they do exist, etc;.

As social computing continues to establish footprint within the enterprise, it's become crystal clear that the same opportunities and capabilities afforded through traditional CMS systems are needed within the social landscape.

I look forward to the day when a product team can collaborate on messaging in a Wiki document; engage the community as appropriate through the creation process; once near complete, fire off multi-tiered workflow that runs the asset(s) through necessary review before taking it outside the enterprise for translation; and finally return to complete final review; then automatically be dropped in the most relevant spot online... Oh right, then to set off automated life-cycle policies some time later to re-engage the community to ensure the information is still relevant. The very notion makes me giddy.

I've seen products where 'total integration' means the vendor offers a handful of out of the box plugins. Beyond that, good luck recruiting a small army of IT folks to completely customize your environment to realize integration. I've yet to see the right solution where this is all brought together in a seamless offering.

But, now that I'm here in CA., I've had a chance to work a bit more closely with our Content Management and Archiving team. It's evident to me that these folks have been thinking about this.. a lot. The day I look forward to is much closer than one might think... Count EMC in on your show and tell event, Jeremiah. And again, thanks for starting this conversation.

Twitter in the Enterprise

Me - "Hi. My name is Len and I have a problem.

The Crowd (in unison) - "Hi Len..."

I think I might be on the road to becoming a Twitterholic.

I have to admit, when I first signed up to Tweet, I saw it as a bit of a novelty. My first impression, and many early Tweets supported the thinking, was centered around point in time activity (I'm having eggs for breakfast or Man do I hate shiny things..." ). Not sure if I just didn't see it then or if the Twitter crowd has helped evolve the overall behavior of the community.

It's since become a critical part of my day-to-day activity. I use it to gather business intelligence, ask questions to a wide variety of subject matter experts and expand my overall network.

IMO, the opportunities afforded by Twitter to the enterprise are huge.

EMC World Bloggers Unite!

It looks like I'll be attending EMC World this year - along with fellow EMC bloggers Mark Twomey, Barry Burke, Bill Petro and Steve Todd.

I thought we'd try something a bit different this time... I'd like to round up all of the attendees who will be blogging, Twittering, Flickr'ing, Utter'ing or (insert your favorite trendy tool here) their way through the event...

I want to gauge interest from the community and will work out logistics based on how many folks sign up... If two of you sign up, Storagezilla and I will be hanging out in the parking lot of the Manadalay Bay with a six-pack of Schlitz for a meet & greet and a game of kick-the-can. Any more than that and we'll find a formal venue where we can get together and have some fun...

I've put together a Wiki for sign-ups. If you'll be @ World and want to get together for a blogger meet & greet - please sign up here (The password to update is community). We'll use this Wiki as main point of information sharing as we try to pull something together.

There's also the EMC World community for attendees. If you haven't already signed up - check it out. There's a cool 'people finder' like app that let you find peers with similar interests and get together for a chat. Discussion forums are also available to help you interact with the minds behind the event and other attendees to help shape the breakouts and talk about what you'd like to see @ the event.

Looking forward to seeing you there!

Edit - One more thing, Twiiter users, be sure to follow Twitter.com/EMCWorld for real time news & info during the conference...

More EMC'ers enter the Sphere

I'm happy to see two new EMC'ers in the blogsphere...

Over the weekend, I came across Polly Pearson's blog. Polly is the VP of Employment Brand and Strategy Engagement at EMC... Among her responsibilities - showing the world what a cool place EMC is to build a career.

Also, long time friend and fellow ex-DG'r Peter Quirk has established his little piece o' real-estate in blog land. A technologist with an HR hat on - Peter is an innovator with a passion for technology. He's been doing a lot with virtual worlds of late, (recruiting events and such) and will be sharing his experiences with you through his blog.

Polly & Peter - Welcome to the conversation!

Blogs Abound

EMC has had a presence in the blogosphere for well over a year now. We'd originally started out with a small handful of key voices, and the experience to date has been quite positive.

This week, we've extended our presence considerably by adding several new employee blogs. In the interest of full disclosure, most of these folks aren't new to blogging. Like myself, the majority have been doing it for some time. For others, our internal Social Media platform was a great way to test drive blogging and hone their voice before going public.

So what?

What's Your Digital Footprint?

My therapist has really helped me bury the anxiety from the last leg of the .COM project. Enough so that I'm finally able to start talking about the project again. If you've poked around the site, you already know there are some cool things like EMC's Innovation Timeline and the Worldwide Information Growth ticker.

A new gadget was posted up today. Something I thought you might like. It's a widget that allows you to measure / track your Digital Footprint.

Mine's 11.7MB... What's yours?