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Oct 23, 2012

Is it Comeback Time for Movable Type?

Movable Type celebrated its 11th birthday on October 8. But with the milestone came a challenge: how to regain its standing in North America, a position that has declined since 2010, when the Web CMS and web publishing software provider moved to Japan following acquisition by Six Apart.

While Movable Type continued to provide the backend for some substantial websites, questions on the future of the platform persisted in North America. The community that remained found themselves overwhelmed with demands for support and understaffed to keep up with the demand.

While the community struggled in North America, development work continued in Japan, but due to language barriers, the advancements literally and figuratively did not translate overseas. Following the release of Movable Type 5.2 in September, the release of 42 new plugins to the North American market at a community meeting on October 18, a promise to follow up with more solutions from the Japanese community and some other interesting developments, Movable Type looks to be taking the first steps towards what will be a challenging comeback.

The Plugins

The plugins range from complex to simple solutions, all of which work towards a goal of making the platform more user friendly. They include solutions built by 601am and After6 Services, two U.S. based companies, as well as 37 from the Japanese MT developer community.

Both Aaron Bailey, 601AM principal and Dave Aiello, CEO of After6 Services were on hand to demonstrate their plugins. Aaron Bailey presented first, introducing the Navigation plugin, which allows the technically challenged to edit navigation within a WYSIWYG interface, removing the need to enter such changes directly into the templates. This will be a boon for sites that update their content regularly, but don't have the dedicated developers to keep up with changes.

A CloudAssets plugin enables users to push files to both Rackspace and AWS environments, creating separate urls for local and cloud assets.

The SuperAssets trio of plugins by After6 allow simple and seamless integration of YouTube, Flickr and SoundCloud assets into Movable Type posts. Instead of needing to embed in the source code, the assets fall under the rubric of the MT asset manager, allowing a clear view of all media assets in one place.

Next Steps

Following the presentation of the After6 plugins, Dave Aiello made an impassioned call to action to the North American Movable Type community. Saying that it was time to change the way the community worked, he challenged the four North American development firms present to form a consortium of sorts, a Movable Type partner community to share resources and common knowledge to speed the creation of solutions and to avoid recreating work.

If this plan goes through, it could spell a boon to the development community and to Movable Type end users, in speeding solutions to the public and in solving problems with the combined knowledge and experience of the group.

Takeshi Osanai, product manager of Movable Type, had earlier in the day shared the following goals:

English translations of all available Japanese plugins
English translation of Japanese documents relating to MT
A renovated plugin directory
Share knowledge on github wiki with English speaking MT community.

Robert Minton, vice president of sales and marketing in North America, is tasked with seeing these goals come to fruition. Hired this past June, Minton knows the challenges ahead and is aware of mistakes made in the past. He is also aware of the level of competition that exists in today's market as opposed to when Movable Type was the only game in town. Minton acknowledged that design and customer service are two areas where Movable Type needs to step up its game in North America.

Will all of this add up to Movable Type regaining market share in North America? Only time will tell for sure, but if the company and the community deliver on all of the plans they have for the future, it might just have a chance.

Source : cmswire[dot]com

Sep 6, 2012

SharePoint and Yammer May Eventually Make a Good Pair; Too Bad Google is Going For a Straight Flush

About this time last year many of my articles focused on the weak competitive position of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) vendors. The rapidly shifting marketplace was predicted to force some to evolve and some to die through the introduction of strong products of cloud based offerings of Jive, Drupal, Salesforce, Google+ and eventually Facebook. When the cards fell, this introduction would eventually raise the stakes of the employee-experience/intranet space to spur a reinvention of the intranet from the ground up.

Since then…

Since the Prediction…

Drupal has developed more momentum around predictable cost models without proprietary license fees. A mix of professional services and PaaS offerings from the newly formed Wunderkraut and Drupal Gardens/Acquia combined with a strong pipeline of development staff make a good pair and an Ace kicker.

Salesforce has significantly increased its mobile capabilities this year. Combined with a strong marketing foothold into sales and IT and a high level of brand awareness, Salesforce looks very well positioned with an above average three of kind and is showing signs of going all-in as it tries to be the prime driver for the most relevant player in defining the future of cloud services for businesses.

Microsoft recently released SharePoint 2013 and is in the process of integrating its not-too surprising acquisition of Yammer. Microsoft is busy preparing its long term strategic offering roadmap that integrates the social, search, messaging and collaboration offerings from Yammer, Bing, Outlook.com and its crown jewels SharePoint and Office. Microsoft's oft cited atomistic approach through agglomeration will help them go forward with a flush. One of the most interesting messages out of Microsoft is its recent positioning from the SharePoint team. The articulation that SharePoint 2013 has been designed to not need customizations to its interface is a ridiculously clever product strategy message. From a product differentiation perspective what this means is:

Microsoft has decided that the PaaS/SaaS model is not only acceptable, it is desirable.
The argument that SharePoint is highly difficult to customize visually and behaviorally is moot.
Microsoft believes there is limited to no value in marketing its product as "fully configurable".

It remains to be seen if Microsoft has created an experience that can transcend individual corporate nuances. What is clear, is that Microsoft believes that there are other competitors who have potentially bigger hands than they are holding.

In late 2011 Jive made the ultimate statement in the confidence of their hand and went public. JiveWorld12 is rapidly approaching and we will begin to see how they frame their value proposition and advance their product set.

Facebook seems to be holding pat with a full-house combining its elite social network status with what has been a demographic defying and highly successful drive for consumer adoption. While the house may be full, the cards are not that valuable (let's say 7s over queens), at least not to stockholders given their recent stumblings.

Google's Bold Play

Google has upped the ante and the stakes significantly with its opening up the Google+ product to enterprises. Google now has rounded out a serious suite of enterprise products and can continue to leverage its ace of spades in the hole. No matter how many research engagements for intranet users I lead, see or participate in, the number one request is to "make search work like Google". A powerful and simple search engine would magnify and capitalize on the over-reliance on governance that has encumbered every other product. Whether Google can capitalize on this within a closed intranet environment is unclear, but given that the experience searching in Outlook is both slower and more painful than Gmail, I'm not going to be the one who expresses doubt in their cards.

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Source : cmswire[dot]com

Aug 13, 2012

Scott Stratten's Tips For Becoming A Presentation Sensation

How to please your organizer, your audience, your wallet, even the A/V guys.

Speaking at events is a great way to generate potential business and position yourself as an expert in your field. However, problems usually occur when somebody speaks for free and needs to make money by selling from the stage. Those talks end up being a commercial, simply not valuing the audience’s time or providing any real content.

If you’re already a speaker, or thinking of getting into it, I have put together a collection of 18 tips that may help things go more smoothly for you on stage.

Be You

When you try to be someone else on stage, it makes you even more nervous. I dress like me, I talk like me, and I say what I think. I tell stories. That may not be your style. People will try to knock that out of you. Just in the past two days, one person said I should have better ‘‘hygiene’’ and wear a tie (I wear a black shirt and have facial hair). Another person said I was ‘‘over the top’’ with how I speak. What you don’t hear is the silent majority who like you being you and who are relieved that it isn’t another stuffed-up suit and tie on stage; and for some of us, ‘‘over the top’’ means really freaking passionate about what we say. I ain’t changing that for anybody. And neither should you.

But Remember, It's Not About You

Every time you take the stage in front of an audience, you need to be thinking about them. What are they looking for? Where are they in terms of how much they know and understand about your topic? I give a very different talk to a crowd who throws up no hands when I ask, ‘‘Who has a Twitter account?’’ than to a social media club. To make it great for every audience, you need to make it about your audience.

Don't Be A "Speaker," Be An Expert Who Speaks

Speakers are a ‘‘nice to have,’’ but experts are a necessity. There is a high demand for people who can both provide content and deliver it effectively from the stage. Some can do one of the two, most don’t do either, and a select few do both. Aim to be great.

Have Passion For What You’re Saying

If you don’t, your audience won’t, either. You are up on that stage for a reason.

Ask For The Conference Organizer's Mobile Number

Text them when you get in safely. A less stressed meeting planner/client means a happier one, too. This goes double if you’re the opening keynote the next day.

Make Your Organizers Feel Special

Record a video shout out to the conference’s potential attendees and let them get to know you. It can be only a minute or two long—just enough to allow the client to use the clip on its blog/site to help generate buzz for the event.

Change Your Presentation Every Time You Give It

Update stats; bring new examples. Own the content; don’t repeat it. This is especially true in a field like social media, where what ‘‘we know’’ is changing so quickly. You really need to be on top of things. Setting up a Google Alert on different topics will ensure you know about current related news stories and events. If you’ve given a certain presentation numerous times and feel it’s routine, either change it up or trash it. It may be the 20th time you’ve told a story, but it’s the first time that audience has heard it.

Do Some Pre-talk Connecting

If the conference has a #hashtag on Twitter, start finding people who are going to be there by searching with it. Talk to them, build relationships, and then track them down at the event to say hi. It’ll be like you already know them, because you do.

Do Some Pre-talk Research

Watch Twitter for mentions of your talk and let people know you appreciate them spreading your word. Post helpful tips that have to do with your content by using the same hashtag for the conference. It’s a great way to connect with your audience and also find out what kind of things they are looking for in your talk.

Arrive Early And End Your Presentation Early

It is always great to leave time for questions and/or feedback from the audience. You don’t want to have to rush off stage. Getting to know the audience beforehand and talking to them afterward to answer questions is a forgotten thing that brings the highest value.

The Power Is Not The Point

Slides are there as navigation points, not to be the content. If everything you say is on your slides, you’ve rendered yourself useless. Speak; don’t read. You should also be prepared to present without slides in case something goes wrong.
And then do it on purpose. Speakers are at their best during Q&A because they’re not handcuffed to a slide. Think about that.

Don’t Sell From The Stage

If you start every point with ‘‘In my book ...,’’ you’re doing a commercial, not a seminar. The best way to sell is to teach. I’m not saying ignore that you have a book, just simmer down a bit; we heard you the first five times.

Be More Interesting Than Angry Birds

You’re not their parent. Don’t tell them to put phones away; just ask as a courtesy to put the ringer on silent. I don’t understand speakers who tell audiences they can’t text or tweet during a talk. Make your content so good that people feel they have to tell others right away but great enough that they don’t want to miss a word.

Source : fastcompany[dot]com