A meeting of the great ECM minds – the #ECMJam

Posted on July 28, 2011 by markjowen

Today the second ECM tweetjam was held. The topic:

the connection between ECM and SocBiz

Organised by Bryant Duhon, the list of participants looked like a veritable “Who’s who” of the giants in the world of AIIM and ECM.

As mentioned – this was the second ECM tweet jam. You can read Bryant’s initial explanation of what it is here:

(http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/ECMjam-Part-Deux-Enter-the-Social)

And…here is Bryant’s report on the first ECM Tweet Jam:

(http://www.aiim.org/community/blogs/expert/ECMjam-ECM-Sexiness-and-Microsoft-Isnt-the-Devil)

Bryant will be writing a report of today’s ECMJAM. It will be worth waiting for.

If you want to read the raw tweets though, check out the tweet stream

Laurence Harts post on the ECMJam

Oh – the humility. Dilbert on Twitter

Posted on July 28, 2011 by markjowen

How many people have ever felt like this?…

What secret agents can teach us about Project Teams

Posted on July 28, 2011 by markjowen

I’m a fan of “secret/special agent” TV programmes.

For years. my wife and I have bought the American TV series “NCIS” on DVD, and when winter draws in, we catch up on what the NCIS team are up to.

More recently, I’ve been watching the British tv series “Spooks“, on DVD, and have just finished the first four series.

Both are enjoyable programmes. NCIS (Naval Criminal Investigative Service) is about a team of special agents led by the seemingly passive aggressive Gibbs. In his team (initially) are Caitlin, and Anthony.

Spooks is about the MI5 and deals with the trials and tribulations of being an agent of Her Majesty’s Government. There are 3 main characters – Tom Quinn, the Head of the Counter Terrorist unit in MI5, along with Zoey, and Danny, two junior case operators.

While watching these, one thing became really obvious to me. A good project team does not rely on its stars. In NCIS they started with three main characters. And at the end of the second series, one of these 3 gets killed. Does that mean the end of the show? No – they hired someone else to become a main (totally different) character.

And Spooks goes even further, In the second episode, one of the “regular” characters gets killed. Then, at the end of the 2nd series, Quinn gets killed off. Bam! The lead character. And then before the third series has finished, the other two get killed off as well. And the series just kept going. New characters were introduced – each bringing something different to the mix.

A good team is like this. It shouldn’t rely on its stars. The people making up the team each add value, but should never be irreplaceable.

Working with Global Teams: Pesky Time Zones

Posted on July 27, 2011 by markjowen

This is part of the Working with Global Teams series

Previous Post: Working with Global Teams: e-mail confirmation

This post touches again on different time zones.

Often, especially when members of the team are in different countries, it is easy to “forget” what the local time is of the other team members.

Added to that, unless you have a good understanding of the geographical location of a particular place, the Time Zone Abbreviation may not mean a thing. For example…knowing that Kuressaar is in Estonia is one thing. However, knowing that the time zone abbreviation for Estonia is EET is another. Unless you happen to live in Eastern Europe, you might have to keep work out what EET actually means.

Even once you have worked out that EET is Eastern Europe Time, you then have to work out what that actually means to you. And have they started their summer time/daylight saving yet? It can all get very confusing, and leads to meetings being scheduled at times that are either late in the evening, or very, very early in the morning.

What is handy is to have something that is “in your face” that shows the current time of that other location. You can have clocks on the wall, but if these are analogue, then there is still the question – “is it morning, or evening there?” A better idea is having digital clocks that use the 24 hour style for reporting time (this is used a lot in Europe – 06:00 is different from 18:00). But then, if you aren’t used to the 24hr style, even that can be confusing.

There are a number of other ways that this can be done. The main point is: Have something that is visible at a glance. Something that constantly reminds of the difference in the times of you and the other people in your global team. So you don’t even have to stop and think….”now what time was it there?”

If you have any suggestions, please feel free to leave a comment below.

AIIM’s CMIS Product Guide!!!

Posted on July 23, 2011 by markjowen

Wow – call me Happy and knock me to the ground.

AIIM have just released their standards based Product Guide focused on CMIS. Being an AIIM Professional Member I was quick to download a copy.

For those of you unfamiliar with CMIS (Content Management Interoperable Services), one of my earlier posts “Small Brain Notes on CMIS” explains it more in detail.

About 9 months ago I started writing a blog post that would give an overview on the CMIS market at that stage. A lot of Vendors had recognised the real benefit of CMIS and were all making plans to implement it one way, or another.

My post did have some promise. (Click here if you’d like to view it in it’s unfinished glory). However I was not happy with the incompleteness of it, and decided, at the stage not to publish it.

The AIIM document is not comprehensive (which AIIM states clearly in the Introduction). It covers 13 vendors, and describes the CMIS enabled product of each of them along with more detailed information on the use of the product as well as (where possible) the CMIS capability support of the product.

Products covered in AIIM’s Report:

Alfresco Web Quick Start
Alfresco Activiti
CMIS Export for Kodak Capture
Content View
Documentum Content Management Interoperable Service
Fresh Docs
IBM Connections 3.0.1
IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition 8.4.3
IBM FileNet Content Manager 5.0
IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5
Nuxeo Document Management
Open Text ECM Suite 1.0
SharePoint 2010
WeWebU Open Workdesk

The authors hope that later versions of the guide will contain more vendors.

In the start of the Guide there is a very good introduction, and an article by David Choy (chair, OASIS CMIS Technical Committee). David Choy has also recorded a brilliant video, awhile ago, in which he explains CMIS. This was a great tool when I was trying to understand what CMIS was all about. (You can view the video here.)

After the vendor review, there are a couple of articles by Laurance Hart (@piewords) and Stephan Waldhauser (@WeWebU).

Following the articles, there is an excellent list of CMIS Resources, which I am going to look through when I get some time.

Taking into account that (at AIIM’s own admission) the Guide is not comprehensive, it is still a very handy document to give a better understanding of the CMIS landscape.

My only criticism is: Guys – when you are creating a PDF – do it properly. Get each section properly bookmarked, as well as the TOC hyperlinked to the corresponding page. It’s not hard to do; it makes the Guide a lot more usable (when viewing on screen).

Click on CMIS for my other CMIS posts.

CMIS one year on – soon in public review
Getting Started with CMIS
CMIS 1.1 is now an approved spec; Here’s a recap of what’s new

AIIM's CMIS Product Guide!!!

Posted on July 23, 2011 by markjowen

Wow – call me Happy and knock me to the ground.

AIIM have just released their standards based Product Guide focused on CMIS. Being an AIIM Professional Member I was quick to download a copy.

For those of you unfamiliar with CMIS (Content Management Interoperable Services), one of my earlier posts “Small Brain Notes on CMIS” explains it more in detail.

My post did have some promise. (Click here if you’d like to view it in it’s unfinished glory). However I was not happy with the incompleteness of it, and decided, at the stage not to publish it.

Products covered in AIIM’s Report:

Alfresco Web Quick Start
Alfresco Activiti
CMIS Export for Kodak Capture
Content View
Documentum Content Management Interoperable Service
Fresh Docs
IBM Connections 3.0.1
IBM Content Manager Enterprise Edition 8.4.3
IBM FileNet Content Manager 5.0
IBM Lotus Quickr 8.5
Nuxeo Document Management
Open Text ECM Suite 1.0
SharePoint 2010
WeWebU Open Workdesk

The authors hope that later versions of the guide will contain more vendors.

After the vendor review, there are a couple of articles by Laurance Hart (@piewords) and Stephan Waldhauser (@WeWebU).

Following the articles, there is an excellent list of CMIS Resources, which I am going to look through when I get some time.

Taking into account that (at AIIM’s own admission) the Guide is not comprehensive, it is still a very handy document to give a better understanding of the CMIS landscape.

Click on CMIS for my other CMIS posts.

CMIS: Nearly a reality in ECM software
CMIS one year on – soon in public review
Getting Started with CMIS
CMIS 1.1 is now an approved spec; Here’s a recap of what’s new

CMIS is here … but where?

Posted on July 23, 2011 by markjowen

Note – this post is in a draft format. It was written in June 2010 and was never published. The information in this post is not complete.
I have released it now as part of my AIIM CMIS Product Guide post.

CMIS 1.0 was ratified in the beginning of May 2010. This is the standard that will allow interoperability between the various content management systems that are currently on the market. For more information on CMIS, refer my Small Brain Notes on CMIS. Go and read it now, and when you are finished, click on the back button. I’ll be waiting…

Ok – now that you understand a bit of what CMIS will offer, let’s ask the question – when will it be available in these disparate content electronic content management systems?

Let’s look at the list of companies that were associated with the creation on CMIS 1.0

And…who is ready for CMIS?

Founders

ECM – EMC have stated that Documentum 6.7 is CMIS complant. This is due out in 2011.
Microsoft,k
IBM
- Have released a servlet that sits on Websphere. This allows CMIS clients to access IBM FileNet and IBM Content Manager repositories. (http://www.ibm.com/developerworks/data/downloads/cmistechpreview/index.html).
- IBM are also

These three were there in the beginning, and developed the initial draft.

Reviewers

The following companies also played a part in the moulding and shaping of the CMIS standard:

Alfresco – Version 3.3 (available now)
Open Text,
Oracle,
SAP

Others Adapting their systems to be CMIS compliant:

ASG Software Solutions
Content Technologies ApS
Day Software
Ektron
ESoCE-NET
Exalead, Inc.
FatWire
Flatiron Solutions Corporation
Greenbytes GmbH
Harris Corporation
Nuxeo
Saperion AG
Sun Microsystems
Vignette Corporatio

Here is a list of the vendors with regards CMIS compliance.

Vendor	Product	CMIS Support Timeline
Alfresco	Alfresco 3.2	Available for testing
EMC	Documentum	First half of 2010
IBM	Content Manager	Second First half of 2010
IBM	FileNet P8	Second First half of 2010
KnowledgeTree	KnowledgeTree 3.7	Available for testing
Microsoft	SharePoint Server 2010	First half of 2010
Nuxeo	Nuxeo DMS 5.3	Available for testing
Open Text	Enterprise Library Services (ELS-Beta)	CMIS connector available now
Open Text	Open Text ECM 10	Mid 2010
Oracle	Oracle Universal Content Management	Not known
SAP	SAP DMS	Not known
Sense/Net	Sense/Net 6.0	Available for testing

AIIM’s CMIS Product Guide!!! (markjowen.com)

SPX Series – SharePoint eXperience – (aka SPX) – Series Introduction

Posted on July 21, 2011 by markjowen

This is part of the SPX Series

Hands up those of you who know what SPX is an acronym for. (Hint – the answer is in the title of this post.)

SPX is the technology that CSC have that allows users, from a SharePoint interface, to interact with documents in a FirstDoc-Documentum system. (And, if you didn’t know – FirstDoc is a CSC’s Life Sciences compliance layer that sits on top of Documentum.) The technology consists of specially constructed web parts and a back-end Docway web server that acts as a “translator” for communication between the web parts and the Documentum server.

In fact, if you look at Andrew Chapman’s list of Reference Models, the SPX web parts would be the 3rd model listed.

Now – I have been working with SharePoint eXperience (SPX) technology for a while now – ever since the first version. I’ve been involved on a technical level as a customer. (That is, someone who has actually had to use the technology in a real-business environment to meet real-world requirements.)

As such, I thought it might be a good idea to start a series of posts on what the technology can do, along with some best practices. Here is a list of the things I will cover:

Overview – what SPX is, etc.
Best Practices – what are some of the best ways to configure/use SPX
Some of the issues that I have had to deal with
Anything else that I can think of.

Feedback from Readers is always great to receive, so if you feel that you have a question, or a suggestion, and I can answer it, I’ll certainly do my best.

Next post: SPX Series – A little bit of history

Learning how to use Google+ uses (or “I’m new here – 2”)

Posted on July 20, 2011 by markjowen

As I mentioned in my previous post, I didn’t really “get” Google+. (Having never actually having used Facebook).

Just after writing that post, I found this article, by Matt Heinz, in which he said:

You can drive yourself nuts and waste loads of time chasing after every new technology, gadget, productivity tool, social network or other flavor of the week.

And if you insist on being the first to try everything and position yourself on the bleeding edge, knock yourself out.

In the article was also a link to another useful article in which Chris Brogan lists 50 useful things to do with Google+.

The Google+ 50

I’m going to read through this.

Maybe this social media troglodyte will learn something…

I’m new here

Posted on July 20, 2011 by markjowen

Ok – so I got myself a Google+ account.

…

Now I have to get used to using it. I’ve never done Facebook (and was damn proud of it), so this side of the online social media world is new to me.

What I mean, is that I had gotten used to checking my Twitter stream regularly, and kept an eye on Delicious’ “Recent” bookmarks (to see if anyone else had found anything interesting), but Google+ … well that was new for me.

So – I caught myself smiling when I saw a post on Google+ by someone that I had inadvertently “invited” when I had included him in one of my “Circles”. His comment was:

Ok, here we go…another social obligation. I wonder what the chance of me maintaining G+ as well as my Blog, Twitter, Facebook, etc.

I felt exactly the same way (with the exception of Facebook).

At the same time, I was hitting the Random button on the xkcd site, and came across this:

Note: I never waste my time with social media at work

What Are Companies Saying About Social Media In The Workplace? [Infographic]
Young people ‘bored’ with social media
Which Social Media Channel is Best for Finding Answers?
Who Will Stay and Who Will Go?
20 Social Media Infographics – From Celeb Twitter Trees to Facebook Page Celebrations (TrendHunter.com)
The Top 3 Social Media Apps You Should Be Using

MarkJOwen

Thinking Business Analysis; Thinking Information Management; Looking at UX

Monthly Archives: July 2011

What secret agents can teach us about Project Teams

Working with Global Teams: Pesky Time Zones

This is part of the Working with Global Teams series

AIIM’s CMIS Product Guide!!!

AIIM's CMIS Product Guide!!!