Mare Nostrum

E-portfolio white paper available

If you're wondering how to fit Xythos technology into an e-portfolio initiative--well, imagine no longer. This white paper walks you through the options with our current products, and discusses what future plans fit many e-portfolio use cases.

Knowledge and forgiveness

David Weinberger at KMWorld makes an excellent point about knowledge in a recent column:

Knowing is not something apart from forgiveness. Forgiveness is not merely something we do, external to knowledge. The knowing that matters requires forgiveness as its condition, just as it requires language and other people. This most obvious of facts sounds odd because we have so thoroughly demeaned knowledge by considering it to be mere content. But if it were only content, how could we distinguish the content that is knowledge and the content that is, say, propaganda or a joke? Knowledge is knowledge because it is embedded in a social system. Social systems are composed of humans. Humans are fallible, even when we happen to be right.

Therefore, there is no knowledge without forgiveness.

That might sound like a paragraph from a book on the philosopy of science, but Weinberger has a point that's important for collaboration, basic content services, and enterprise content management--in other words, the entire spectrum of activity around content, from the informal to the formal, from the free-form to the regulated. Every day, we're caught between the two poles of life that Max Weber (pictured to the right) described in "Politics As A Vocation" and "Science As A Vocation." At times, we have to get things done (politics). However, we also have to understand what we're doing, and share that understanding with others (science).

We face obstacles when we move along both paths. Not everyone wants to participate in a project, or think it's a good idea. Politically, we have to win them over. We also have to convince them that our understanding of the pertinent facts (how well our marketing program is working, what are the obstacles in getting our product manufactured at a lower cost, etc.). That step may require an admission that they were wrong in their cherished beliefs. What Weber says about teachers therefore applies to pretty much everyone in this position:

The primary task of a useful teacher is to teach his students to recognize 'inconvenient' facts--I mean facts that are inconvenient for their party opinions. And for every party opinion there are facts that are extremely inconvenient, for my own opinion no less than for others. I believe the teacher accomplishes more than a mere intellectual task if he compels his audience to accustom itself to the existence of such facts. I would be so immodest as even to apply the expression 'moral achievement,' though perhaps this may sound too grandiose for something that should go without saying.

We have to admit what when we're wrong, too. That principle applies whether we're preparing for an important presentation (collaboration) or preparing pharmaceuticals for clinical trials (enterprise content management). A shorter way of saying the same thing is, That's life. The tools you use can make your life easier, or harder. I hope that the ones we build make both politics and science easier.

The metadata-driven view

Mike Straus, product manager extraordinaire, just published his new project (code sample plus documentation) about a metadata-driven view of content in our system. Why is this interesting?

• It exposes the metadata entered for document classes (our term for categories) in a way that's immediately useful. Anyone looking for a particular piece of content, or interested in what's available generally, can benefit from this view.
• It provides a reason for entering the metadata in the first place. If you don't enter the metadata, your work won't appear in this view. If you do a lousy job of entering it
• Customers and partners have already built views like this one. For example, Time Warner built a much more sophisticated version of this view, but the point is essentially the same: let people browse by the metadata.
• The folder structure is increasingly less important than other views on the content. Everyone knows how to navigate files and folders, but this view of the content doesn't fulfill everyone's needs. Looking at a folder full of documents, I don't know who is their intended audience, what there topics might be (other than what the file name suggests), and whether they're really in good enough shape to use. To answer these questions, you need something like the metadata-driven view.
• Customer use cases often demand a metadata-driven view. That's effectively what the institutional repository solution provides, a metadata-driven way of browsing and searching library content. You can take Mike's code as a starting point for exploring the third option discussed in the institutional repository white paper (building this view of our system, instead of integrating us with a separate institutional repository application).
• We're building metadata-driven views for future versions of our product. We're not necessarily building something that functions in exactly the same way that Mike's project does, but there are plenty of other ways to use metadata (and other types of metadata). For example, you might use a metadata-filtering view, in which you click particular standard or custom metadata to narrow the list of files and folders that fit that profile. (Think of the way iTunes lets you filter music by genre, artist, etc.).

Take a look at Mike's project, and let us know what you think.

The Swiss army knife of content

I carry around a Swiss army knife that was one of the best birthday gifts I've ever received. Where countless sweaters have been entombed in the back of my closet, the Swiss army knife's unparalleled usefulness compels me to take it everywhere. It's such an intrinsic part of my daily routine of stuffing things into my pockets as I leave for work that I have to be extra, extra careful to leave it at home before heading to the airport.

Obviously, I need other knives for many daily functions. I don't cut a steak with my Swiss army knife, and I don't fence with it. (Actually, I don't fence at all, but you get the idea.) I do use the Swiss army knife every day for cutting through packaging, opening bottles, loosening screws, prying open containers, or other challenges to a tool-wielding mammal like me.

Our products, the server ones in particular, are a lot like my Swiss army knife. You won't use it for everything, but you'll use it for a lot of things. That's the "basic" in "basic content services." If you want a templated web site, we'll be glad to point you in the direction of many excellent web content management tools that ably perform that task. If you just want a place to put a static HTML document and publish it to someone across the Internet, don't go yet--we can probably help you.

Here's where I have to make a small confession: our customers concoct uses for our products that we never imagined. That's probably no surprise, since that's the nature of product development. The person who designed the first jeep probably never imagined it to be the family car, but that's exactly what SUVs have become. I've hard of customers using the Xythos server for sharing course materials, processing insurance documents, maintaining a library of digital assets, and publishing file-based reports of row-column information from databases. I could list 17 other use cases, off the top of my head, but that would only be a fraction of the many uses to which customers and partners have employed our technology.

There's one key difference between the Swiss army knife and our server: you can't customize the Swiss army knife. Even the incredible Ginsu knife collection didn't let you build a special knife for a particular job, or replace the handle with one that fit your hand perfectly. On the other hand, you can customize our server; not surprisingly, nearly every customer does.

Being the "Swiss army knife of content" is pretty cool. I'd rather build that sort of tool than something that suffers the same fate as those sweaters in the back of my closet.

Fear-mongering

If you read our compliance-related marketing materials, you'll notice a theme that might not be echoed in the industry at large. As Doug Henschen of Intelligent Enterprise says, most vendors rely on the fear-sell for compliance. Law suits! Audits! Jail time! Angry investors! Godzilla!

OK, we can probably leave out Godzilla. Unfortunately, rampaging radioactive reptiles sound not much worse than the nightmare scenarios about non-compliance.

We strive to be consistent in both our design philosophy and marketing about compliance. You can't discount the risks of non-compliance, but you want to put compliance behind you as quickly as possible. An even larger fear than criminal and civil penalties is the loss of productivity. The motif is less Toho Studios, and more Kafkaesque: no one wants to live in a world where they waste time documenting what work they did today, archiving that documentation, documenting the archiving, responding to feedback about the documenting and the archiving, documenting the response to the feedback, scheduling meetings to review the archiving and documenting and feedback...This is the way the world ends, not with the bang of Godzilla's giant foot, but the whimper of bored, unproductive people.

That's yet another why you can't make compliance a separate application. It has to be embedded in the tools people use, in ways that are (in order of preference) invisible, helpful, or painless. Otherwise, you might as well slap a giant Portal To Hell logo on your "compliance application," because that's how your users are going to treat it.

[I can neither confirm nor deny that the previous post was a threadbare excuse to post a picture of Godzilla on this blog.]

The big, fuzzy picture

Can someone explain the usefulness of this "Big Picture" view of C|Net content? I always want to know about related stories, but the whole "knowledge map" view seems even harder to figure out than just a list of links. I looked at their example, but the crazy-quilt of graphical connections doesn't seem more useful than just a link that says, "Click me to read more stories about Apple."

The What's Hot view seems slightly more useful. On the down side, it's not relevant to what I'm reading now, and it seems like a self-fulfilling prophecy. I'm sure that the headline, "Cyberbullies scare schoolgirls into stripping online," feeds on itself. (Plus, need I say it? Ewwww...)

ECM DOA

Today, I'm at the Gartner Portals, Content, and Collaboration Summit. (Say that three times fast.) Two Gartner analysts, Toby Bell and Kennet Chin, have made a bold statement: ECM is dead.

What does that mean? Well, it's not that there isn't a place for tools to run big, complex web sites, or high-end DM tools. However, enterprise content management has never been able to expand to either involve or control everyone in the organization. In that sense, enterprise content management--CM by and for the enterprise--hasn't succeeded. In fact, it hasn't really ever gotten off the ground.

Well, heck, who am I to argue with that? Basic content services--content management for the masses--doesn't move from the complex to the simple. It moves fromthe very simple to the somewhat more complex. In other words, it's tough for ECM vendors to prine their technology down to become basic content services tools. On the other hand, it's possible to build from the simpler tools--file management, e-mail, chat, etc.--to more complex rules and processes.

I've often half-jokingly called this process "The Stairway to Heaven." (Yes, I am a Zep fan.) The first step is what people do for themselves, or to work easily with their most immediate collaborators. Once you've made people happy with those tools and processes, you can start adding new functionality, restrictions, content, you name it--as long as you don't stray immediately from what people already know and embrace. In other words, you can't go from 0 MPH to ISO 17799 compliance in 6.0 seconds.

There will always be a role for ECM. As a BCS vendor, we still need to co-exist with ECM systems already deployed. However, ECM today looks a lot like ECM several years ago--and that picture isn't likely to change. People still need to manage content--which is why organizations will invest in BCS.

I used to have a pair of model tanks on my desk to make this point. Both were used in WWII; each represented a different design philosophy. The American M4 Sherman was simple and reliable. The German Panzerkampfwagen VI ("Tiger") was powerful, but prone to breakdown, and consumed fuel and spare parts at a furious rate. Which tank would you buy? For most jobs, the Sherman. For a few jobs, the Tiger. That distinction is a lot like the dividing line between BCS and ECM today. (And who won the war?)

Institutional repositories and Xythos

The institutional repository white paper is finally here. (Actually, it's right here.) It's designed to answer the following questions:

• What options exist for using the Xythos server (whatever flavor) and desktop technology in an institutional repository?
• What are the pros and cons of each option?
• Which Xythos features are important for these options?
• Which version of the server--Enterprise Document Manager, Digital Locker, or WebFile Server--best fits each scenario?
• How much customization, if any, might be necessary?

The white paper makes special reference to DSpace, which probably the most popular institutional repository tool. As always, your feedback is cordially invited.

National Science Foundation guidelines

Here's the research note about automating compliance with National Science Foundation (NSF) retention guidelines. I alluded to it in an earlier post; now we have the official version. If you want a file with the import/export XML described in the appendix, click here to download it.

New use case video: human resources

I've just finished the latest "use case" video. This time, we're showing how to use Xythos technology to handle common tasks in human resources.

I added something a little different this time, a few choice words about integration with other IT components. LDAP, storage, portals--there are a lot of quick and easy mechanisms to integrate us in profound ways. Everything I show in this video works out of the box, so we're not discussing any integration that requires coding.

I'm taking a break from recording these videos. Here's a brief recap of what we have so far:

Research support, part I (video, PPT)

• How can the Xythos server and desktop technologies help the pre-grant process move long successfully?
• What are some situations in which you might want the Enterprise Document Manager instead of the Digital Locker?

Research support, part II (video, PPT)

• How can our technologies help manage intellectual property and automate post-grant rules?
• When would you make the step into the new records management features in Xythos Enterprise Document Manager 6.0?

Internal financial controls (video, PPT)

• How can our server and desktop technologies help organizations comply with financial standards like Sarbanes-Oxley?
• When would you make the step into the new records management features in Xythos Enterprise Document Manager 6.0?

Human resources (video, PPT)

• How can our server and desktop technologies help collect, process, and archive personnel documentation?
• What are some of the important points of integration between the Xythos server and other IT components?

If you have suggestions for other use cases you'd like to see, please send them along.

Use case: internal financial controls

Speaking of use cases--and I'll continue to speak of them quite often--internal financial controls have been a concern since, oh, the Sarbanes-Oxley Act. Here's a video (81 MB, about 20 minutes in length) I just recorded, showing how to address this class of compliance requirements with our technology."

The video shows how you might use the Enterprise Document Manager and the Xythos Drive. I might have shown document capture through the Drive, or using the Ricoh or Captiva connectors we developed. I might have shown how you might build a custom integration between our server and an ERP system. Heck, I could have gone on and on...but you'll get the basic idea from the video. The approach shown combines what customers have already done to address these sorts of requirements, using older versions of our products, with the new options available in Enterprise Document Manager 6.0.

KM 2.0 and Web 2.0

David Weinberger has an interesting article in KMWorld about how knowledge management is following a similar path as the Web:

That's why, in my opinion, KM 2.0 is both a useful phrase and fundamentally different from Web 2.0. KM 2.0 points to Web 2.0-ish phenomena gaining prominence in the KM space: bottom-up, participatory, rapid innovation, more mixing up and mashing up of information. These are all good things, or at least good things to try. But they are truly discontinuous from the paradigmatic versions of KM 1.0, which were all about managing and controlling information environments.

Wow, I couldn't agree more. Blogs, Wikis, photo upload sites, other Web 2.0-ish tools made web publication easier than using some big honkin' web content management system. The same tools, plus a few more, like search, have made made more institutional knowledge available, without making it less manageable.

Another institutional repository sneak peek

Before I publish the institutional repository white paper I mentioned a few posts ago, I thought I'd share some examples of how to configure the Xythos Enterprise Document Manager to model the metadata for an institutional repository. Here are two important links:

• Sample institutional repository metadata (short).
• Complete metadata model for DSpace (longer).

These are XML files that include all the custom properties needed, plus the document classes that incorporate these attributes. To use these files in a Xythos instance, here's what you do:

1. Download one of these files.
2. Go to the admin UI for the server.
3. Under Tools, select XML Migration > Import.
4. Fill out the form. Be sure to check the boxes for both importing metadata and document classes.
5. Click Start.
6. Log into the instance as a user who can apply document classes to directories. If you're using the sample data from the evaluation version of 6.0, log in as DemoRMO/xythos.
7. Add the newly-created document class to a directory. Make sure that it's the default document class for that folder.
8. Upload a file to that directory.

You'll now see that the Xythos web UI requests the institutional repository metadata. What do you do with it, once someone has entered it? That all depends on how you integrate the Xythos server with the institutional repository...which the white paper will explain in depth.

Workflow by any other name...

Since I've spent the last several months talking about our 6.0 release, I've learned how important it is to position the information lifecycle management features correctly. They're not exactly a separate feature, but an adjunct to an existing feature, workflow.

That statement is true at the platform level, since both the "approval and routing" (non-records management) and disposition rule (records management) features are built on the same workflow engine. The statement also applies at the user experience level, within the Enterprise Document Manager 6.0 application. An approval and routing workflow of the Would you please take a look at this? variety is much the same as the Can you please archive or delete this record now? workflow. From the user's perspective, they're both to-do items. Therefore, they both appear in the user's My Tasks section of the web UI.

As we build new workflow enhancements into either part of the system, RM or non-RM, we'll continue to keep the "everything in the same to-do list" model that I'm describing.

Storage and collaboration in the sky

The rumble that has started between VMWare and Microsoft is no surprise. What might get missed in the David-versus-Goliath tone of the press coverage, however, is the very different vision that Microsoft has from the rest of the market.

The problem isn't just that Microsoft didn't understand virtualization well enough to get a head start on the competition. It's also that Microsoft doesn't see the world in the same, service-oriented way as people who build and use Web 2.0 applications.

Microsoft Office SharePoint Services (MOSS) provides a peek into the Microsoft worldview. In earlier incarnations, SharePoint was a collaboration platform strictly designed for workgroups and departments. It was not designed to be the platform for, say, the document collaboration equivalent of YouTube or Flickr. Collaboration on an enterprise scale was the opposite of what SharePoint's "let a thousand separate sites bloom" philosophy allowed. Internet-scale collaboration wasn't even in the cards.

With the release of MOSS 2007, SharePoint is still a tool designed for organizations that like lots of little, distinct sites. I know that there are departments and virtual teams impatient enough to set up a MOSS site, just to get moving. However, I know almost no IT managers who embrace the notion of an uncountable number of MOSS sites, sprouting up like toadstools after a spring rain. Once MOSS users try collaborating outside a department or virtual team, they too often get disillusioned over Microsoft's Balkanized view of collaboration.

We now live in a world where people expect to be able to share their pictures with anyone on Flickr, chat with anyone via AIM, and post useful information to the world via Wikipedia. Whether or not Microsoft wins this round with VMWare may depend on whether more people in Redmond understand the real value of virtualization as a service. However, that may not change Microsoft's view of what people do with the content stored in the file system, whether the OS is virtualized or not.

Records management for the masses

Several years ago, if you said that many basic document management features like versioning, custom metadata, and workflow should go mainstream, most people treated you as if you'd been sitting out in the sun too long. (There, there. Sit down, take a deep breath, and relax. Put document management back into its comfortable little mental niche. Feel better?)

Now, it's taken for granted that the average person needs more than just file storage. Whether you're more worried about how to collaborate in cross-organizational teams, or how to meet organizational or regulatory standards for document retention, the file server doesn't give you everything you need. ECM tools are overkill, and in any case, they're generally too expensive and difficult to roll out to a mass audience, even if the average person had the time and inclination to learn a complex document management system.

Gartner pioneered the term "basic content services," which is bleeding into the lexicon of the IT industry at large. (I've heard people in IT departments, the press, and--horrors!--even other analyst firms use the term.) Basic content services are, in a nutshell, "document management for the masses"--something that, several years ago, seemed as plausible as a nuclear-powered can opener.

Records management is merely a sub-species of document management. It's suffering from the same problems that infliced DM: it's treated as a niche application that only a few people really can or should use. Unfortunately, the broader organizational imperative behind RM, "Thou shalt handle important content according to the proper guidelines," has to involve a larger group of people who create, secure, update, and dispose of content.

These assumptions shaped our design of Xythos Enterprise Document Manager 6.0, which is an attempt to create "records management for the masses." People know that we can do "document management for the masses," a.k.a. basic content services. Now, we have an official certification from the people behind the DoD 5015.2 standard that we do records management right, and it's embedded in the normal experience of a Xythos user. We haven't made that person's life more complex; in fact, in at least one important way, we've actually made some regular tasks far easier.

If you don't believe me, you're welcome to join us for the March 1 web seminar about the 6.0 release. Feel free to hurl objections at us, if what we've built doesn't cut the mustard, usability-wise or records management-wise.

Shameless self-promotion corner

I recently published this article in Business Integration Journal. It's a good example of why we Xythinians talk so much about "basic content services." Whatever ECM projects might look good on paper, they still have to face IT realities, such as integration requirements. Since you can easily fill up your to-do list with the integration tasks, you're often compelled to scale back your ambitions to something far less ambitious--which, in the long run, might serve your users' needs better.

Sponsored research support with Xythos technology

At the user group meeting, we showed the latest release of Xythos Enterprise Document Manager 6.0 as a tool for sponsored research. There are a lot of tasks before applying for a grant, and after receiving grant money, where the tools we provide can make life easier for principal investigators and the people who support them. We recorded these demos, which are available at the following links:

• Part I: Pre-grant support
• Part II: Post-grant support

The demos include everything from basic collaboration ("Hey, is this a good idea for a research project?") to tougher records management-like situations ("How long does the National Science Foundation require me to keep these documents?").

The files are large (in the 50-70 MB range), so apologies for the large download. Once I get more proficient with the video capture tool I'm using, I'll squeeze these files down to smaller sizes. All feedback is welcome--just click my name at the bottom of this post to send me an e-mail.