Recap of #GartnerPCC

Attended
the Gartner
Portals, Content & Collaboration Summit
in Baltimore this week, a conference specifically
targeting  information professionals who need to guide
their businesses on the whole spectrum of content management -
collaboration, information governance, social media, portals and web.

The
tough part? Trying to choose between great sessions scheduled in the
same time slot.  Solid content by some great presenters….

Here
are a few of the highlights:

• Open
  source ECM is on the upswing.  While it still represents a
  small percentage of the overall market, numerous sessions called it
  out as something organizations need to consider as part of their
  overall decision making process. It's growing in popularity, being
  asked about more frequently, and analysts are absolutely paying
  attention to their customer interest.   

• 2012
  seems to be targeted as the 'break out' year for cloud content
  applications.  A session called "Is a Content Appliance in
  Your Future: Content Management Architectures Evolve to Meet
  Evolving User Demands" was led by 
Karen
  Shegda. She
  had some great stats on the kinds of workplace applications that
  were early cloud successes – outsourced document capture, e-mail,
  web conferencing, and instant messaging all have important traction
  today, but new content apps were anticipated to hit critical mass by
  2012: vertical/horizontal applications for specific industries or
  specialized business processes – example of invoice processing. Was
  good to see this as 
Nuxeo
  continues to invest in and build cloud editions of our key
  applications.

• Attended
  2 really compelling sessions by Toby
  Bell.
  The first I attended while wearing my "newbie CMO" hat.
   Titled "
Web
  Content Management: Engaging Through Web Channel Strategies,
  Marketing", was great and sometimes provocative  discussion
  of how to use a corporate web site/web presence to really drive
  business.  Took copious notes, as we internally at Nuxeo strive
  to continue to improve our web site and evolve it into an important
  source of lead and demand generation.  A work in progress, but
  one that we are committed to.

• The
  second Bell session I attended was packed with interesting
  observations, trends and identification of some potentially
  subversive and destructive forces at play in the ECM market.
   "What's in Store for Enterprise Content Management Beyond
  2010?.  Great analysis of the evolution of the space from its
  definition in 2005 to current state. We appear to be in the midst of
  early stage transition from ECM as all purpose infrastructure to
  more pressure from business to find content management platforms
  upon which to build content applications. By 2012 the "Composite
  Content Applications" focus will begin dominate the buying
  decisions.  (Note – CCA is the next evolution of the solution
  category once called CEVA "Content Enabled Vertical
  Application").  ECM is a complex technology space – and the
  session highlighted what made it so complex. The inevitable yin-yang
  polar pulls of Risk vs. Reward, Fixed vs. Dynamic Content, 'Blue
  collar" transactional content vs. "professional grade"
  knowledge creation were all called out as the forces shaping content
  management applications and use cases. Another external validation
  of the direction Nuxeo has anticipated and bodes well for our
  ability to deliver a content app platform to meet evolving market
  needs.

• Video
  is the next hot thing…. a fun and highly entertaining session led
  by 
Whit
  Andrews
.
  Honestly? I attended because of the title.  But stayed for the
  compelling story-telling approach to a really interesting and
  important area that we see increasingly important to our Nuxeo DAM
  and Nuxeo EP evolution. "
I
  Was a Teenage YouTube Star: Strategic, Tactical and Calamitous
  Futures of Video, Inside and Outside the Enterprise" had
  some fascinating stats on video adoption – the commoditization of
  the means of production – phones, pocket video recorders, digital
  cameras are all easily affordable consumer products that have been
  used to fuel the explosion of digital recording. Companies not
  managing it today will quickly find themselves in a storage,
  ediscovery, corporate memory preservation dilemma if this wildly
  growing content type isn't thought about soon.

• But
  no surprise that perhaps the best was saved for last. The final
  workshop I attended on Thursday morning was co-led by Debra
  Logan and Carol
  Rozwell. The session title was “Social Software Meets
  Information Governance”. My two favourite topics in one place! I
  came in a bit late, after the room had broken into discussion
  groups, so tried to hide at the back of the room with some other
  late stragglers. Glad I did… had a fascinating discussion with
  someone in a consumer goods company who was struggling to find the
  right balance for her company's social media needs. IT had shut down
  access to most social networks, but her business needed to get more
  proactive in reaching out to their consumers who loved their
  product. Glad our scenario fueled some discussion and debate on the
  topic. A big group for a workshop, but feedback seemed
  overwhelmingly positive and session was valuable…and clearly
  timely.  

Great to have a chance to speak in person with several analysts, learn about some cool new companies, and get a chance to say 'hi' to some wonderful old ECM-world colleagues.  Until next year!