How did you become a content management professional? I became interested in content management after becoming frustrated with the error-prone and inefficient processes most businesses use to create content. In my previous role as a technical communication consultant, I worked with big, successful organizations, that took great pains to streamline and automate the manufacturing of the products they created. They were able to do amazing things like harness the power of robotics to automatically assemble consumer products, make prescription drugs, and manufacture automobiles. And yet, these same companies, were unable to do the most simple things -- like find the information they needed, when they needed it, describe the products they create using consistent language, or reuse content in one document in another. They wasted significant time and huge amounts of money reinventing the wheel, never quite realizing that the same processes and ideas they used on the plant floor could be employed to streamline and improve the way they create, manage and deliver content. I did. And I discovered the world of content management and shortly thereafer morphed myself into a content management strategy consultant.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I am a Founding Member of CM Pros. We formed the group because there was a need for an organization that acknowledges "content management is essential to organizations of every type."
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I am all of those things. I create content for clients -- white papers, technical manuals, website content, and training materials -- but increasingly I play a more strategic role, providing direction and advice designed to help my clients streamline their content creation processes and better understand the content management technology landscape. I manage content on the CM Pros website and on my own blog, TheContentWrangler.com, where I also serve as publisher. The advent of web-based content management tools and blogging software have made it possible -- even preferable -- to create, edit, maintain and deliver content with nothing but a web-browser. And, these tools have made it possible for anyone with something to say to become a pubisher. It's an exciting time to be a content professional.
What is your educational and career background? I am a journalist by education. I spent a great part of my adult life working in dance clubs as a disc jockey and bartender. My music career intersected with my writing career in the 90s when I discovered technical communication. Ironically, the same priniciples technical writers use to create single-sourced publications have long been employed by popular dance music producer/djs whose job it is to craft new music products (remixes) from a single source of individual musical tracks. My experience as a dj and remix producer -- mastering the skills of beatmatching and harmonic mixing -- made the jump to content reuse and multi-channel publishing quite natural.
What kind of organization do you work for? I am the president of TheContentWrangler.com, an online destination and monthly subscription-only newsletter that features interviews, case studies, useful resources, articles, jobs, white papers, and valuable tips and techniques of interest to content professionals. It's a virtual organization that allows me the freedom to work from home, the airport, or the nearest Starbucks.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? My biggest personal challenge is to break free of inefficient outdated ways of working. I'm working diligently to both find the right tool for the job at hand and to disconnect from the desktop. I, like many folks, were taught to make use of the tools we had on our desktops, even if they were not designed to perform the functions we used them for.
For example, email is a terribly inefficient collaboration tool. It also is inappropriate for managing a project milestones and "to do" lists or for organizing meetings. And yet many of us continue to try to make email work for these tasks (and others) and continue to waste yet more time. Switching from email to a web-based task and time management tool like BaseCamp has allowed me to reclaim several hours each day that I used to waste chasing down email. Similarly, I have adopted web-based tools to help me manage client billing, schedule meetings, publish my corporate newsletter, and manage and maintain my website.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM Pros can help me by continuing to push for the development and adoption of good practices and common sense approaches to managing content. I am particularly interested in seeing CM Pros offer educational programs designed to help others understand concept of "content as a business asset, worthy of being managed". This is still not widely understood.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? CM Pros can help me become a better content professional by offering in-person and virtual educational oportunities that will teach me new skills and help me become a more efficient manager of both my clients and my own content.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? Yes, I am working on the Structured Blogging initiative and am very interested in the development of structured information standards like the Darwin Information Typing Architecture (DITA) and the possibilities that XML syndication may afford us in the Web 2.0 world we are building today. I am a frequent speaker at technology industry conferences and an active member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC).
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I am an accomplished dance club dj and music remixer. My favorite activity is mixing music seemlessly for hours at a time -- aka as continuous mixing -- and have done so for audiences as large as 5,000 with the help of two trusty Technics turntables and a mixing board. Making a perfect mix -- and watching the crowd react -- is one of the best feelings in the world.
Interview with Rana Allam, Content Manager, LinkDotNet
How did you become a content management professional? Originally I was a journalist, then I was head-hunted to work as a Senior Editor in LinkDotNet, one the largest ISP companies in the Middle East that has a business line of online products (11 websites of various natures). In six months' time, I was promoted to be the Content Manager for LinkDotNet's websites.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I joined CM Pros in January 2005. The reason I joined is that this industry (content management) is very new in Egypt and knowledge resources are minimal. I needed guidance and information, so I turned to the professionals.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I am the content manager. As mentioned before, I manage 11 sites with their content creators and publishers.
What is your educational and career background? I am a university graduate. I studied English Literature and worked as a journalist for most of my life. I have also worked as a proofreader for some time, and as a Human Resources manager.
What kind of organization do you work for? It is primarily an Internet solutions and service provider company, one of the largest in the region, with various other business lines (www.link.net). For example, LinkDotNet has a development arm (Linkdev), as well as online products (Link Online) owning and operating portals such as MSN Arabia and many others.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? The biggest challenge is handling technical aspects of the job, having to understand and learn the technical world behind content and using it for progress and development.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM Pros can offer solutions, resources and guidelines for the job. The community can also help in marketing content managers.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I am willing to help with anything related to CM Pros website (content, design or usability).
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? I am currently head of the Portals Development Committee (in the same company). This committee's role is to come up with research, best practices and case studies, as well as standards and development recommendations to make the best out of our sites. It is worth mentioning that we run different types of websites, from horizontal portals (MSN Arabia, Masrawy) to vertical B2B sites like BSolutions, B2C sites like Arab Finance, e-commerce sites like Otlob), entertainment sites like Yallabina and Mazika. This diversity called for the formation of a committee consisting of representatives from every website to align strategies and keep focus on our business targets using collective knowledge.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. Professionally, all my work was Interesting to me. I started off as a reporter, a local news reporter running around the country trying to get news from the ground. I was a young girl back then, that was a blast of challenges. Since then, every job in every place presented even bigger challenges, feeding my thirst for more.
Personally, I am known to be the risk taker who went diving many times although my swimming skills can get me killed in two minutes. The first time I went camping, I did it alone. My life's dream travel destinations are Kenya, Cuba and India. I have achieved going to Kenya so far and it was everything I thought it would be. For relaxation, I make candles!
Interview with Rahel Bailie, President, Intentional Design
How did you become a content management professional? The quest for ways of producing and publishing content more efficiently--more mind work, less rote work--drove my interest to look for technologies to support this effort. In 1989, I began working for a multinational where we produced documentation in nine languages, and the content production method was costing the corporation a huge amount of money that could have been redirected to value-adds rather than the vast amount of repetitive and manual content manipulation. After a couple of years, I put forward a proposal to move to modular documentation, but thought there must be a better way to single-source content. So when I saw my first demonstration of a content management, I had a Blink moment--my eyes were opened and I was hooked on the concept.
By 1999, I was working In another multinational where the technical documentation group was the only group tracking most of their work manually, with a high level of redundant manipulation and rote tasks. The Director of the local client department introduced UML with its related documentation process, and I tried to automate as much as I could for the documentation department, which continued to use manual processes for much of the manipulation of its content and records. Eventually, the director and I designed the interface to a system that would automate and publish information, and his team built it. Once I left wage-slavery for the life of an itinerant consultant, it was a logical move to combine the type of work I love with being a content management evangelist.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? Networking is what makes the world go round, and given that Vancouver, BC has no local educational programs where I can further my knowledge of content management, I rely on informal opportunities: my peers, webinars, and the like. I heard about CM Pros a few months after the association was formed, and immediately signed up.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? On some contracts, I may create content, but mostly I restructure existing documentation to chunk the content so it is better suited for re-use in a content management system. More often, I analyze content to be able to categorize it or break it down into its conceptual pieces. It's an important step to prepare content for delivery, particular on Web content management projects, where you want the system to present the appropriate type of content at the right time.
What is your educational and career background? Because I entered the workforce at quite a young age, I already have over 30 years of work experience, almost all in business-to-business environments. I've seen the inner workings of the art world, the justice system, customs brokerages, freight forwarding services, clothing manufacturing, and retail before deciding that the two things I loved to work with were words and technology. I went back to school, graduated with Distinction from an English program in Creative Writing, and haven't looked back. I love to learn, so I must admit I'm a professional development addict. I'm always taking courses and attending presentations, and finding ways to integrate what I've learned from other disciplines into the work that I do.
What kind of organization do you work for? I started Intentional Design in 2002, and have grown the business to what it is today: a network of skilled consultants and contractors who share a vision of delivering high-quality services to clients. The company focuses on three related competency areas--content management, content development, and user experience (usability/information architecture). One of my contractors taught me not to try to "outgeek the geeks" so we don’t typically get involved in the technical side other than to work with the developers to ensure that the implementation stays faithful to the identified requirements.
Recently, I've put together a joint venture consultancy called Strategy A that brings together the five "legs" needed to provide a rounded set of services, particularly on larger projects: content management, project management, human performance management, content development, and communications.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? The biggest challenge I've faced is convincing companies to follow a sound methodology when implementing a content management system. Too often, there has been a cursory tallying of requirements by IT followed by the purchase of the wrong kind of content management system. I've spoken to practitioners who have been trying to publish heavy-duty technical documentation with Web content management systems or even document management systems, and after tearing out their hair trying to make it work for them, they've given up. By the time they talk to me, the IT departments have shifted the blame to the practitioners for not using the system, and the practitioners think that content management is nothing more than a gimmick. Getting people receptive enough to understand the benefits that content management can bring is pretty tough. They just want to get on with their work and not try any more experiments.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? First, CM Pros has introduced me to a wonderful range of practitioners, vendors, and consultants, both locally and internationally, that I feel I can call on with questions I may have. Second, when I am able to contribute to the collective knowledge, it makes me realize how much I've learned over the past several years about the topic (and how much more there is to learn!). Third, I'm a big believer in the power of community, and this is a professional community that creates a common vision, common vocabulary, and helps me find my place in the professional world.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? Giving back to the community is part of who I am, so I participate on the listservs whenever I have something to contribute, and I do a lot of cross-pollination of ideas between local associations. I am one of the founders of the first CM Pros chapters, Canada West, where we're trying to strengthen the local CM community. I've also taken on the role of Marketing Director at the international level for the 2006-2007 term, and hope I can build on the excellent work done by Scott Abel, who filled the role last year.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? Combining the knowledge of varied disciplines is a way of rounding out the knowledge I apply to my projects. Some of the associations I connect with:
Society for Technical Communication -- I've belonged to the world's largest association for technical communicators for about 15 years now, and was just made an Associate Fellow. They have a Single Sourcing special interest group that sometimes discusses content management.
Usability Professionals' Association -- Usability is so much a part of everything we do (or should be) that this association's work is self-explanatory.
VanUE -- User experience professionals in the Vancouver, BC area meet to share their knowledge and experiences.
Wired Woman -- This Canadian association encourages women to learn about technology and provides networking, education, and mentorship opportunities for women in technology.
International Institute of Business Analysis -- This association develops and maintains standards for the practice of business analysis, a critical piece of content management consulting.
Knowledge Management Community of Practice -- The presentations I've attended have expanded my understanding of knowledge transfer.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I'm a long-time Scrabble fiend, and am not satisfied unless my score is above 300 points. I also play a mean djembe, having studied with a Nigerian drum master for several years.
How did you become a content management professional? I was working at (not for) Microsoft in the late 80's when Windows 3.0 came out. I helped create one of the first online user's guides in WinHelp 3.0. It hit me like a ton of bricks that information would never be the same. I followed my nose through Lan information systems, into CD-ROMS and onto the Web. My nose is getting itchy, so I'm thinking the Web is not the last act of this show.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? CM Pro's was actually hatched on a phone call for my now defunct CMS Evaluation Lab (the only thing left of that effort is a Yahoo! Group that I can’t manage to delete). A bunch of us old folks were lamenting that our so called discipline lacked any sort of coherence. When Bob Doyle stepped in with the energy to put our idle words into action, CM Pros began.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? Well, I've done just about all of those things. What I like to do most at the moment is to climb up a level and help people figure out why they might need to manage content in the first place.
What is your educational and career background? I have undergraduate degrees in Physics and Oceanography and a Masters in Human Communication (I considered that masters, the yin to my science yang). I've run three companies. The first and third small and successful; the second was big and a flop. I taught and made curriculum at the University of Washington iSchool for 4 years. I developed a three course CM set there as well as taught management and information systems. Right now, I am running my third business (Metatorial Services, Inc.) and getting myself more educated on language and the brain.
What kind of organization do you work for? All sorts really, I cut my teeth at Microsoft were I did or presided over literally hundreds of information projects. My big company went on to work for all sorts of high tech and Fortune types. I've managed to maneuver my little company more towards non-profit and NGO orgs, so now they add a great balance to the corporate and government clients.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Without a doubt my biggest challenge is to get people to do what they know they should do: manage less information, manage only important information, and plan before you buy.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? By making my profession a profession. I do information. And as you all well know that makes me a strange bird on the organizational flock. CM Pros can make is so that all of us can do information without a daily dose of blank stares.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I could definitely do more than I have to make that happen. However, that will always be true I suppose. I love to tell people who need to know that there is a community out there for them. For the right kind of person it's exactly what they have been missing.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? I've sat on boards and that sort of stuff, but when you subtract out CM related activities (consulting, speaking, running the business, and writing), academic activities (teaching and learning) and family activities (keeping up with my wife and two teenage boys), there is just about enough time to squeeze in a random ski day or tennis hour in my life.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. Well, let's see. Did you know that I spent 3 months in the Bearing Sea working on a Russian Fishing boat in the late 80's? In fact that is where I met my wife (not a Russian), and why I now live in Seattle. I'll tell you all about it at a face-to-face some day.
Learn more about Bob Boiko.
Interview with Janus Boye, CM consultant in Denmark and founder of Content Management Forum
How did you become a content management professional? My first role as CM Pro was as sales engineer for Open Market (now FatWire) from 1999-2002. After years on the vendor (sell) side of the table, I then formed a consulting company in 2003, where I've been busy ever since, now focusing exclusively on the other side of the table (the buy-side).
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? In the past I have learned so much from others' experiences, and this is something I really believe in, so signing up was a very natural thing for me to do. I signed up only a few days after CM Pros was formally launched.
What is your current title and role? I am now a consultant. I'm very happy in my current role, because it enables me to be in touch with the many different disciplines involved in CM.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Too many projects are failing, and this is really my biggest challenge as a consultant. To help my customers' projects to be among the few that do not fail.
What other professional activities are you involved in? In 2004 I founded a Danish organization called Content Management Forum, which brings together users (not vendors and consultants).
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? Sharing professional experiences and lessons learned.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I think it would make sense to align (the Danish) CM Forum and CM Pros. I have already set a
F2F meeting at the CM Forum annual event
in November. I have also mentioned CM Pros in several of my articles (both in English and Danish).
I hope to meet many other CM Pros in Denmark in November! Tony Byrne, Erik Hartman, Martin White, and James Robertson have already signed up. Hopefully many more will join!
How did you become a content management professional? In a previous career I was a editor and publisher, so when I gravitated to application development, content management caught my interest. As a developer at a systems integrator in the 1990s I had the misfortune to implement early versions of several commercial and open-source web content management packages.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I was part of a small team of people who helped persuade several dozen other people to help launch the organization. We just thought it was needed.
What is your current title and role? I am a technology analyst. I try to understand how the software is actually employed in real-life settings, and which tools work best for which scenarios.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Personally, it's organizing the content on CMSWatch.com in a way that is more easily consumable. We're working on that... Professionally, I just hope to be able to help organizations sort out the wide variety of technology options they have.
What other professional activities are you involved in? I'm active in AIIM, which is a very important trade association for our industry. I try to participate in various conferences and publications.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? It has been great to meet practitioners, either personally or even "virtually," or best of all, both! (BTW, I'd really welcome hearing from project mgrs and developers about their experience with specific tools.) In any case, my wish has always been that practitioners take over the CM Pros agenda. I think that is slowly happening.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I try to advocate for CM Pros in various communities where it may not be well known (e.g., in the U.S. public sector, in the portal and search worlds, etc.), and promote CM Pros events. I'd like to participate in best-practice development.
Interview with Yair Debinsky, Knowledge Management Director, Byon-IT Solutions
How did you become a content management professional? While working in the management of a government organization nine years ago, I was given a task of checking "this business of preserving knowledge and publishing it…" I built a steering committee and we started to study the issue, when we realized that there is a new discipline called Knowledge Management (KM) which deals with the same problems that generated our need. We have launched a very intensive KM initiative, in which the main activity was the design, development and implementation of a unique network-centric light Enterprise Content Management (ECM) system, which has been in production since the end of 2000, and is constantly growing.
In September I was appointed as the Chief Knowledge Officer of Rafael, a large company in the defense industry in Israel, where I launched one of the largest and most successful KM initiatives in Israel, including a number of CM solutions, some home grown (including a patent-pending network centric light ECM), and some based on a commercial CMS ("The knowledge server" of Scepia, an Israeli software company). The concept behind all the systems is the concept of Network-Centric Content Management. Recently I established a KM consultancy within Byon-IT Solutions, and we started to work for various customers. Some of the projects include designing and implementing CM solutions.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I joined CM Pros after last year's KMWorld, where I met the CM Pros organizers. I wanted to find a group of people to share my thoughts with, to be of help to peers that face the same problems I faced in the past, and to get to know people that deal with the same issues I am dealing with.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I am a Knowledge Management consultant.
What is your educational and career background? I have M.S. in Computer Sciences and B.S. in Mathematics, but I am mainly a very experienced manager and Chief Knowledge Officer.
What kind of organization do you work for? I work for a small consultancy, Byon-IT Solutions, as a partner and the KM director. We carry out different types of KM projects, for different types of customers.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? The biggest challenge is internal politics, and possible confrontation with the IT department, especially when we succeed to create a CM solution which becomes part of a core process. Once you do that (and I did) you tread on a foreign territory - the IT land -- and It Is considered as a justified cause for World War 3.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM pros Is the first place I turn to if I have a professional question which I have no answer to.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I am very willing to give my advice to anyone who might need it, and at times I am very active in the discussion groups. In the future I might volunteer to take a role.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? I am active in all the scope of KM, including Community of Practices, lesson learning processes, know-how management, etc…
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I am a masters' swimmer, I volunteered in various orgnizations, but first and foremost I am a husband (to Sarah) and a father (to Omer, Lital, and Matan) - the four most wonderful people in the world.
Interview with Paola Di Maio, Content-Wire Research
How did you become a content management professional? I was working in England as a freelancer for the publishing industry during the late nineties. I had just finished a Masters degree in information systems, and had learned all about knowledge engineering and management, object orientation, expert systems and rule based systems.
I was asked by a company to manage an online publishing project, but soon realized that the way they expected editors to publish their content on the site was primitive, time consuming and inefficient. There was a lot of html talk at the time, and that was about it.
I dreamed of a system that would let me publish online content straight from the browser. I fantasized about how such a tool could take thoughts straight from the mind into a written form, to actually lead all real life processes from there. I found out that such systems existed, but that they were being designed. I knew that I wanted one built exactly to my specification, and I have been working at designing an 'ideal' CMS since. Ideal means that it does everything that is required at the budget available. I am still working at it.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? In 2001 I started content-wire.com the first website dedicated to content management news. I had exchanged a lot of emails with the only newsgroup at the time, the Filsa list. There I exchanged with Frank Gilbane, Bob Boiko, and Bob Doyle, who gave me a call once, to chat a little and invited me to join him and a few others to form CM Pros. I am a founding member.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? Definitely some combination. I think I am a 'user' and as a user I carry out different functions, I have to face different user tasks every day, depending on what is the job at hand.
What is your educational and career background? Worked in Milan in the travel industry (Tourism Association) and then music publishing and intellectual property administration at Warner Music in my twenties. There I learned how to write a contract and file a lawsuit, which came in very handy later in life, although I never completed my university studies. I then worked as a freelance journalist both in Milan and London. After moving to England, and while doing part time jobs in the publishing industry, I completed a BA Hons in London, I felt that although I was in my late twenties I could only benefit from an international degree that required me to write regular papers in 3 different european languages (actually try to complete the degree this time). It was a useful exercise, although some of the lecturers were really boring. During those years I spent a semster working at attending the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (UNAM), and then another semester in Germany. I loved both countries in equal measure, for different reasons. I started working as a 'science and technology' freelance correspondent for Sole 24 Ore, a main newspaper with 'European' ambitions. That's when I realized I needed a better grasp of technology and finally managed to find a conversion degree from business to Information Technology. I struggled a lot that year. But I think I found my true vocation. Knowledge systems. Yes. Everybody needs one. After that I realized that I wanted to work for global audiences, and started publishing only for english speaking clients.
I have worked as an analyst, consultant, and lecturer since. I travel a lot and work on several research projects in my spare time.
What kind of organization do you work for? I am self employed, and work for different organizations. The ideal organization for me is open, adaptive, intelligent, distributed, flexible, creative, innovative, does good, operates all processes virtually but it has worldwide quarters with comfortable hot desks where I can work from just by booking myself in - I am still looking for an organization like that.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Finding a CMS that suits my requirement at the budget that I have available, and that can evolve as my requirements evolve.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? By helping me connect with reliable and outstanding very honest professionals who can help me implement and manage my projects. At the moment I am looking for a Drupal wizard who can work very fast.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? By sharing creativity, knowledge and experience.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? A few. Mainly in the non-profit online collaboration space, at various levels. See Weblogs, Online Information and Collaboration Thailand for example of my work.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. Wow. In the content management category, I don't think people know that I design 'first' content management features that are very advanced and highly innovative. By integrating process, publishing and systems design expertise, I am a pioner and a leader in this type of applications and I influence a lot of what is done and said in this space.
How did you become a content management professional? I have been doing content management since I was a writer and editor for my college newspaper in the 1950's, the Brown Daily Herald. In 1984 I created the first desktop publishing program, MacPublisher, the year before PageMaker, so I am very interested in computer-assisted content management and web publishing.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I did not exactly join CM Pros - I created it. It came out of an Open Source Content Management (OSCOM) conference I helped organize at Harvard in 2003. Frank Gilbane attended and I asked Frank about a wider community to embrace both proprietary and open source content management systems. Frank suggested I talk to other professionals and I hosted a lunch at the IA Summit in Austin, TX, in February 2004. Bob Boiko, Tony Byrne, Ann Rockley, Peter Morville, Lou Rosenfeld, and several others attended. Boiko asked if I would take the lead in forming a new association and I did, with some conditions like hiring staff to handle many of the tasks I did initially (and still do much of the time).
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? Certainly all of those plus a developer of community information management software, which includes a CMS along with member management, ecommerce, blogging, events management, online presentation tools for webinars, mailing list management, and many other tools CM Pros might use someday.
What is your educational and career background? I got my Ph.D Astrophysics from Harvard, 1968 and ran the Collaborative Observing Program for NASA SkyLab working with 250 observatories around the world to synchronize their observations with the astronauts.
I have started companies, earned a few patents, and licensed technology to large companies. I founded Super8Sound In 1973, to bring professional cinematography techniques to the comsumer film format, invented several electronic games, including Merlin from Parker Brothers in 1978, developed the first desktop publishing program, MacPublisher, in 1984, and was for several years the Digital Video Editor of NewMedia magazine in the 1990's. I now am a contributing editor of EContent Magazine and Editor-in-chief of CMS Review.
I am editor of a project to define a markup language for CMS called CMSML, working jointly with OSCOM and the University of Washington iSchool CMS Evaluation Lab, which is now a CM Pros initiative. I have joined the C19 Terminology committee of AIIM.
What kind of organization do you work for? skyBuilders.com is me and my son Derek, our cheif programmer, Jesse Burjhardt, a network/IT technician, and occasional consulting from my older son Rob, who helped me write MacPublisher. We run a reasonably large ISP in my house/lab (150 websites, mostly for non-profits around Boston).
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? The biggest problem is that web content managers do not want to learn anything new. They want entering content to be as easy as writing in Microsoft Word. Yet they want the result to be a sophisticated web page. So they need XHTML and CSS. Some think they need only XML.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? We are approaching 1000 members. I hope we will develop a critical mass large enough to include many volunteers who will take over the ownership of content on the CM Pros website. I have trained many members to be content owners, but the turnover has been high. Volunteers burn out. Some day I hope there will be enough to support one another so I am not the principal tech support. That would be a great benefit to me. And the long-term viability of CM Pros will be a great thing for my career.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? Anything that is needed - and wanted by the membership. I love to make things happen technically that have not been possible (or not very easy) before.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? Yes, I am a member of CPsquare, a community of practice (CoP) for communities of practices. CM Pros is a study for me of what goes right and wrong with communities of practice. I am on the Operations Committeee of Interaction Design Association and I am also providing tools and content for the Information Architecture Institute. All three of these CoPs have fascinating management problems - both content management and people management, the latter being the tougher nut to crack.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. . I was invited to Tokyo recently to speak on the content management industry. Peter Morville was invited to talk about information architecture. It gave me the chance to work on learning Japanese, my eleventh language. I am hoping the CM Pros site will do a good job of globalization/localization, with me initially entering all the needed language strings.
I had the privilege of assisting with the very first podcast - an interview by National Public Radio host Christopher Lydon of Dave Winer, who developed RSS and added the media envelope to RSS to carry audio and video. I recount the story on EContent. You can learn more about podcasting -- how it works, what you need, tips and techniques -- at BlogAudio.corg.
How did you become a content management professional? I've been in the technical communications business since the early 1980s as a technical writer, teacher (both university and corporate), consultant, manager, and business owner. I've created and managed the development and delivery of different types of technical content: technical publications, course materials (both stand-up and e-Learning), marketing collateral, and Web content.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I joined in the Fall of 2005 to network with others who create and manage content. It sounded like a great networking opportunity and source of current information and technology trends.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? All of the above. I've created content (wrote and published books through Wiley publishing), product manuals, and courses. I've also managed content developers and their projects deliverables.
What is your educational and career background? I have over 20 years experience in technical communications as a manager, writer, and teacher: 10 years at Fortune 100 computer company, and 13 years at PUBSNET, a technical communications company I founded in 1993.
For over 15 years I was the senior instructor in the Technical Communications Certificate Program at the University of Massachusetts-Lowell.
Since 1995 I’ve focused much of my energy on training and writing about Web authoring tools and e-Learning. I’ve taught courses and presented many sessions at national conferences. I am a Macromedia certified Dreamweaver MX developer and instructor. Over the past couple of years, I published two books through Wiley Publishing on Macromedia Dreamweaver: Dreamweaver MX e-Learning Toolkit and Maximum Dreamweaver. I have an M.S. in Applied Management.
What kind of organization do you work for? I work for PUBSNET, a company I've founded in 1993, that provides training, staffing, and project deliverable solutions mainly to high-tech organizations.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Keeping current with the trends and technologies so I know how to advise PUBSNET customers.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? Networking, networking, networking. As with any complex area, there are always other professionals that can give you tips, advice, and insight, and I know there are many others in the field that have traveled paths I want to travel.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I attended the Fall 2005 CM Pros Summit and participated in a working group. I'd be happy to help wherever I can.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. Professionally, I think the most interesting aspect of my career is that I started and built a company from scratch. Hobby-wise, I'm very interested in communications and printing history.
Interview with Dan Dube, Managing Director, US Operations, DocZone.com
How did you become a content management professional? The year was 1986, and I was a freshly hired technical writer at Digital Equipment Corp. At the time, two exciting new trends were emerging...the advent of PostScript as a printer definition language, and a new structured markup standard called SGML. I was one of the more technical members of the staff, so I was tasked with researching these standards and the tools that support them. Eventually, this led to tools for managing content during the editorial and production cycle, and I became enamored with Xyvision's then-groundbreaking SGML content management system and went to work for them. I've been in it as an integrator and/or vendor ever since.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I'm primarily here to learn from other professionals with different experiences with content management, as well as to provide them with information about DocZone.com, a new company that I co-own.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I currently manage the US operations for DocZone.com, which is a relatively new entrant into the XML content management space. In this capacity, I wear many hats, but I have been concentrating most of my efforts on marketing and sales so far.
What is your educational and career background? I graduated from Bentley College (Waltham, MA) in 1986 with a dual degree in Computer Information Systems and Business Management. Since then I have worked for Digital Equipment Corp (7 years), Xyvision (5 years), Innodata Isogen (two separate times, for a total of 6 years), and I co-owned an XML systems integration company called Lighthouse Solutions for 3 years. Since the beginning of this year, I am one of the principals of DocZone.com.
What kind of organization do you work for? DocZone.com is an innovative new entrant in the XML content management arena. We offer a hosted solution that provides XML/DITA authoring, content management, workflow, server-based translation memory, and single-source publishing to multiple output formats...all available through a browser with no capital investment...just a monthly concurrent user license fee. We are staffed with seasoned veterans...everyone in the company has a minimum of 10 years of experience working with XML and SGML-based applications across multiple industries. It's a very exciting place to be.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? I would prefer to rephrase the question to: what do we see as the biggest content management challenges facing the industry. In our experience, there have been many companies that have seen the potential benefits to be gained by moving to an XML-based environment for content reuse, ability to single-source publish to multiple outputs, and to reduce translation costs. However, there have been two major barriers that have prevented the majority of these companies from investing in these solutions:
The amount of money required to fully deploy a production environment.
By the time you add up license costs for authoring tools, CMS applications, publishing tools, maintenance on all three products, analysis and integration services (often including significant customization), and training, the investment is often in the USD$1-2MM range for a typical 10-20 user technical writing department. This usually requires approval from the very highest levels of the organization and can take a year or more to obtain.
The amount of time to implement a production-ready environment.
Even when the approval process is successful, it often takes 12-18 months to fully implement a live production environment with trained users working with “real” content. This is due to long periods of analysis (and the usually delayed review/approval cycle), installation and staging at the customer site, customization, testing, and data conversion.
We started DocZone.com with a goal to eliminate these two issues: by making XML content management affordable through a hosted platform, and by creating an implementation methodology designed to get our clients into production in 30 days.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? We welcome the opportunity to network with CM Pros members, both to get their feedback and constructive criticism on our product offering, as well as to educate them about the differences that we bring to the market.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? In addition to financial contribution, we intend to have our senior staff members contribute information and lessons learned based on their extensive experience in implementing XML-based environments. We have a specialized set of knowledge around multilingual content management and automated localization tools which may be of particular interest to the CM Pros community.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? I'm afraid that most of my time these days revolves around spreading the word about DocZone.com and raising my two children as a single dad. (and I wouldn't have it any other way.)
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. In the 80s and early 90s, I used to supplement my income by playing guitar and singing with a touring cover band. Including the spiky mullet haircut!
Interview with Seth Earley, Earley & Associates, Inc.
How did you become a content management professional? I have over 20 years experience in the technology. Around 1993 or 1994 I heard about this miraculous new technology called Lotus Notes. I started doing some work in that area - at first training business users, then teaching application development (which was pretty simple in the early days… ) Whenever we built Notes applications, we had to think about metadata, taxonomies and workflow so I have been working with these concepts since that time.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I am a big believer in Communities of Practice so I thought this would be a good organization. Some of my colleagues were involved so I thought it made sense to be a part of it.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I help organizations develop content strategies but have created and organized content for my own company and for clients.
What is your educational and career background? My undergraduate is in Chemistry of all things. I went to graduate school for business administration.
What kind of organization do you work for? My company, Earley & Associates, Inc., has 6 people plus various contract resources. We work with organizations in the areas of content management strategy, knowledge management strategy and taxonomy development. We also act as senior advisors on content projects, acting as a sounding board for management and helping to gain alignment between various constituencies in large organizations.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Governance processes in global organizations. We are working with a number of global organizations that are struggling with organizational design - roles and responsibilities around authority, accountability, ownership, funding, metrics, training, and new capability development and rollout. In large decentralized multi-unit operations, having the right balance of "federal control" versus "states rights" is a tough balance. Creating the correct linkages between the business owner and those responsible for web properties is sometimes very difficult. It is the challenge of "why should I care"? Often times this is more difficult than it should be.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? Just being able to connect with the larger community of expertise and find resources when needed is the major benefit of CM Pros for our organization.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I would be willing to speak at and/or moderate educational conference calls. These can be done fairly inexpensively.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? No, I have no life…
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I perform stand up comedy. Or at least I have in the past - not much time to hang out and waste my time in bars these days trying to get stage time… which is why many of you who attend my workshops have to endure the same jokes. I also can't use some of my better material in a professional setting. Additionally, I have a black belt in Shotokan karate - so no heckling!
How did you become a content management professional? I have taken various twists and turns in my career. I started down the technical communication path, providing FrameMaker and FrameMaker+SGML solutions to organizations attempting to produce multiple outputs for multiple audiences. This early single source content management approach evolved to providing XML solutions and consulting services to clients looking for structured authoring as a way to get a handle on the content they produce. Of course, producing structured content has its own challenges, and soon my clients began requesting assistance with tool selection, content strategy, DTD development. I found myself well positioned to become a content management consultant with a focus on publishing and content delivery solutions.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I joined CM Pros because there are so few professional organizations that really provide enough focus on issues authors are really facing. Single sourcing, re-use, re-purposing, and content management can't be a "SIG" or a side interest and really pull in the knowledge and distribute it properly. CM Pros was the only organization dedicated to focusing on issues writers and CM professionals face daily.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I am a consultant with a "solution provider", as well as a content creator and publisher. Part of my role is to work with clients to assess their situations and provide recommendations, allowing them to set a course for the future. Internally, I write and manipulate our own content and publish documents; some using internal structures, some using DITA, and others without structure.
What is your educational and career background? I have a BS from Duquesne University, Pittsburgh PA, 1996. Of course, like so many CM Pros members, I am continuing my education via technology classes and conferences and educating myself via books, webinars, internet, interviews, and life in general.
What kind of organization do you work for? Bright Path Solutions is a publishing solutions provider. We provide training and consulting services, primarily. Our solutions are weighted to provide what each organization needs…whether they just need a little help now and then and want to develop internal knowledge resources, or if they want us to act as their publishing team until they are able to obtain sufficient internal talent. We prefer to teach our clients to improve the way the create, manage, and deliver technical content, so they aren't dependent on us."
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Getting organizations to spend money for process improvements. Period. They know they need them; they don't want to fund them. Showing someone they can do better is easy. Getting them to recognize the return on investment (ROI) is hard; especially when the ROI is departmental, rather than across the entire enterprise.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM pros can help its members by developing some resources that will help us make the case for content management. CM Pros can also help members understand the true costs associated with the adoption of content management tools, perhaps by opening up some dialogue with software vendors.
Providing case studies from member organizations would be a big plus, as would the development of guidelines for implementing CM solutions. Any data on return on inverstment that member companies will share would be good to have on the CM Pros public-facing website so "bean counters" and unit managers can access it. If they read it on the web…they may then feel they are not putting their butts on the line -- or their company's financial stability -- to make what be perceived as a risky move to CM.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I am happy to help onsite at events and to help organize events and get the word out about them. I'd also like to present at a CM Pros conference. And, of course, I plan to add the CM Pros logo to our website announcing to the world that we are members of CM Pros and let others know it is an organization worth joining.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? I have been a long-time member of STC, but have little faith in their ability to continue serving the needs of those of us moving to content management.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I have three kids, ranging in age from 21 to 5. My two youngest childeren and I study Tang Soo Do, a Korean martial art, as well as the Korean language (written and spoken). In 2005, I published my first language book, Learning Korean: Martial Arts Terminology, the first product from my new company, Above and Beyond Language Learning, Inc.. With the help of with two subject matter experts from the martial arts community, we used Adobe FrameMaker to single source the entire project, augmented with SVG (scaleable vector graphics) technology.
How did you become a content management professional? I came into Content Management via several related but unrelated jobs. While In the US Navy, I wrote regulations and training courses for several commands and held positions as Training Standardizations Supervisor as well as Facility Watch Supervisor. After I left the Navy I helped write ISO 9000 manuals for another organization and ultimately found my way to Vasont.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I joined the organization to network with my peers. I think many of us have great ideas separately, and when we begin to put our heads together, we can really make a difference in the way the world does business.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I work for Vasont Systems, a content management vendor. I have worn many hats during my time here including sales, pre-sales, project lead, training, marketing, shoe-shine boy etc… I also run a blog called CMS Rockstar which focuses on all aspects of the industry.
What is your educational and career background? I spent 13 years in the US Navy as an Air Traffic Controller. While in the Navy, I worked with various technologies. After leaving the Navy, I joined an information services company where again, I wore a lot of hats. I eventually landed in a sales role in the magazine publishing services division. I headed the New York office for a couple of years and then moved to a direct marketing firm. From there I began discussions with Vasont and here I am. I have been at Vasont since April 2000.
What kind of organization do you work for? Vasont Systems is a provider of content management software and data services backed by more than 55 years of experience in the information management and publishing industry.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? From my point of view, the biggest challenge is helping people understand what content management is and how they can benefit. I think the lines of our industry are not only blurred with definition, but even more Importantly, there Is a gap between the problems that can be solved with software applications and the problems that can be solved with XML. My focus then, is education. Speaking for the industry as a whole, if we would spend more time creating educated buyers, we wouldn't see so many organizations struggling with the wrong solutions.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM Pros has already provided me with many new colleagues and friends. The collective knowledge of the CM Pros members is invaluable to me as one who lives and works in the CMS industry.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I have just started working with Rahel Bailie on the marketing efforts for the organization and I hope that my ideas and effort will continue to promote the reputation of CM Pros.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? Umm… Do frequent flyer programs count as "Professional activities"? Actually, I keep pretty busy between Vasont, CMSRockstar, my family and my other business, I have very little time left to devote to much else.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. My wife Lisa and I own a small jewelry company called Lisbre. We design and create all of the jewlery and have a kiosk in the local mall and are working on a boutique in the art district in downtown York, PA. I also run triathlons when I have time to devote to regular training.
Interview with Nilou Glosson, Precise Term Software
How did you become a content management professional? Three years ago my husband, John and I, thought that there had to be a better way. I had done plenty of technical and policy writing for a governmental agency. John was a localization senior manager at multinational firm. We quit our day jobs and decided to give our peers something that was sorely missing in this space. So we cleared up our kitchen table and got to work.
We came at this from different sides. I am a writer and he is a hopeless geek. If anyone knows of a 12 step program for geeks, let us know. My passion was to create something to give authors a tool, a portable tool that would actually help them escape the maze of redundant, avoidable, mind-numbing, wasteful work. In my humble opinion, for an author, there are three cardinal forms of torture.
Torture number one: Re-typing: Why in the world do I have to re-type, 3-methylcholanthrea or tetrabromobishphenol over and over again? Why can't it be re-used easily, automatically while saving keystrokes and assuring correct spelling? I charged my husband to come up with something that would auto-suggest after a few letters. I also wanted the authors to be able to choose a category, whether it was chemicals or finance they were writing about.
Torture number two: Imprisoned Style Guides - In addition to some plain English suggestions the system could make, I wanted a system that would put at my fingertips in real-time (not in some dusty book or database somewhere) the company's style guide. If the company was now calling its super-drug, wonder-drug, I wanted as soon as I typed the old name, for a style guide to pop up and tell me that we are now using wonder-drug. I wanted everyone to be able to access this.
Torture number 3: Stuck under heavy hardware. I wanted something light that installed in minutes and would work with any application. I wanted this web-based and accessible from any Peets coffee shop.
John's addition to my requirements was to patent a new language which allows the user to categorize each word by part of speech, meaning and language. This allows for re-use of precise multilingual terminology. No other translation management system is doing this. This language (which on the outside looks just like English) disambiguates sense and can still be used in any file format.
Shameless plug: The company is called Precise Term Software.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? We joined last year because the members are passionate about these issues. Even our needy family dog runs and hides when he hears the word, 're-use', but CM members listen. It is a dream come true!
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? We have done all of the above in the past.
What is your educational and career background? I have a masters degree in Environmental Public Policy and used to work In a grey cubicle re-writing stuff all day long and when I had to run my writing by another supervisor, there would be different set of style guides to abide by. This was enough to send me to the break room to look for leftover cake. John is an astro-physicist by training (this was not just a pick up line 13 years ago). When he was last in a grey cubicle, it was as a senior manager of a localization group.
What kind of organization do you work for? We founded Precise Term software. It is an auto-complete and terminology management system.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Unfortunately it is not often the users but someone higher up who makes the decision of what big bulky system to purchase. It is also not the best product but the best situated one, with the glitziest marketing and sales team that wins. If there is no buy-in from the authors and if it is not immediately helpful to them, the authors will go around the new expensive toy. The mucky-mucks upstairs wonder what happened. The cycle repeats.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? The exchange of ideas and networking is invaluable. I have met so many talented and dedicated consultants and writers. We hope to partner up with those who specialize more in selling of software. So if there are any rainmakers out there, call us. We are open to suggestions of all kinds.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I tell everyone about the organization and about members who have given us feedback and help without asking for anything in return. I am honestly impressed and touched. As I get to know the organization more, I would be happy to help.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? STC and a few others but, honestly, we just write the checks and get the journals. Getting the business off the ground has been a job, hobby and volunteer work, rolled into one.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. John and I were in the Peace Corps in West Africa. For two years, I lived in a mud hut in a small village and helped raise fish for food and John lived in a relatively big city and taught physics to high school kids. Now, we have three kids under the age of 8 who demand to eat daily. We hope to avoid the grey cubicle scene and feed our kids at the same time. No reasonable offer refused.
Interview with JoAnn Hackos, President, Comtech Services
How did you become a content management professional? I started Comtech in 1978, focusing on information management and design. In 1992, we began to be interested in content management. We were aware of the early development of what became Chrystal at Xerox's Palo Alto Research Center and met with Documentum in its first year to describe the requirements of technical information development. Chrystal (now Astoria) was the most innovative way of handling small modules of information and assembling them into larger systems.
We were involved in the early days of GML at IBM, which became SGML. I wrote the first instructions for creating style sheets for GML at IBM. In the mid-90s, I began to introduce single-source concepts, giving the first presentation at an STC conference on this topic. As an information designer and manager and a consulting to the industry for my entire 30-year career, I find that content management is just one more tool in our kit bag to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of information delivered to customers.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I was one of the founding members when Bob Boiko began to expand the original advisory group beyond the University of Washington. Since I also founded the single source SIG in STC, it was an appropriate extension of that work.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I am a consultant to content creators, managers, and publishers. With others in my company, Comtech Services, Inc., we help diverse organizations understand how to add value to the information they deliver to their customers at the same time that they reduce internal costs and schedules by managing content more creatively and efficiently.
What is your educational and career background? I have a PhD in English language and literature, following undergraduate work in Chemistry. I taught English literature, writing, and publishing for many years at the university level. In the mid 80s, I was the founder of the MS in Technical Communication at the University of Colorado. I began Comtech Services in 1978. In 1998, I started the Center for Information-Development Management (CIDM) as executive director. CIDM is the leading organization for managers of information development.
What kind of organization do you work for? Comtech Services, Inc. is my consultancy. We have a small, energetic, and extremely productive staff, operating three international conferences each year, delivering workshops on myriad topics, and working with companies to improve their information.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? The greatest challenge is encouraging people to make decisions that improve the value of their information. Too often, they want an easy way out, adding tools to the mix that provide little value. The selection of appropriate content management systems is badly done in most cases. The wrong people make the decisions, often without understanding the requirements of the people who will be using the technology. The politics of system acquisition interfere with sound strategy development.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM Pros is a useful community that helps me keep in touch with what others are interested in learning.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I have volunteered to work on projects, and I hope that more members will take part in the activities of the organization. I also offer an opportunity for CM Pros members to meet at the CMS Strategies annual conference and to attend at a special membership rate. In 2006, the conference will be held in San Francisco from April 3 through 5. CM Pros members are welcome to attend and to participate in a face-to-face get-together at the conference.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? I'm most seriously involved with the development of the CIDM, developing conferences, workshops, and services to members. I continue to be involved in STC activities, having served as international president in 1992. I've also helped to found the DITA Technical Committee at OASIS and serve on the committee. I'm the editor in chief of the new dita.xml.org community wiki website.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I'm an avid birder, with a life list in North America of nearly 600 (a critical number for aficionados in this field). My husband, Bill, and I travel internationally on birding excursions. We're probably close to 1000 for international birds. It's lots of fun and gets us to beautiful places.
Interview with Rob Hanna, Director of Professional Services, SiberLogic
How did you become a content management professional? I began writing technical publications in 1990 after graduating college with an engineering technology diploma. In 1997, I moved into software docs for airborne computer systems with a Canadian military contractor. It involved several large databases tracing requirements and design of the systems along with 10s of 1000s of discrete topics and artifacts. Over the course of several years, I ported the content from a mainframe to a file-based HTML repository and their information products from print to CHM. Their software development lifecycle was very well defined and coupled software code with its related documentation throughout the process.
This experience set the stage for me to pursue best practices for managing and delivering content in subsequent engagements as a technical writer. I was extremely fortunate to have had the exposure to a system that worked very well where I had had a hand in moving it closer to what we would confidently call a full content management solution. Other environments where I worked suffered from far less-defined processes with much less emphasis placed on the importance of technical documentation. I spent a great deal of effort trying to deconstruct their processes and rebuild them to improve on accuracy, usability, and effective deployment of their technical content.
Now, I use my hands-on experience in technical writing and content management as Director of Professional Services at SiberLogic. As part of the SiberLogic team, I am responsible for working with our clients to understand their needs and help craft a content solution with SiberSafe, our XML -based content management system. I am involved in requirements gathering, training, and product development, and I also prepare and deliver conference presentations on content management and various aspects of SiberSafe.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I joined CM Pros in 2005 after meeting with other CM Pros members at the STC Conference in Seattle. I found the conversation to be stimulating and fresh and decided that I wanted to participate.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I have played all three roles during the course of my career.
What is your educational and career background? I have been a technical communication professional for more than 15 years. I graduated from Sault College in 1990 with an engineering technology diploma in Aviation and Flight Technology.
What kind of organization do you work for? I work for SiberLogic Inc in Toronto Canada. Our flagship product, SiberSafe, is a market leader in XML-based content management. For the past several years, SiberLogic has been gaining significant ground as a reputable solutions provider for technical communication groups. Many top-flight tech pub groups have joined our customer list in search of solutions to common problems with managing large volumes of technical content. Our scalable, open architecture gives our customers the flexibility they need to stay on top of evolving standards and increasingly complex deliverables.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Controlled vocabulary: There is far too much confusion surrounding what we are doing in content management. Many vendors are misusing or inventing new terms to describe what they do. We need a lexicon of terms that the industry has bought into to help us communicate effectively with each other.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM Pros has the potential to be a leader in the realm of content management for technical communication, and create a strong tie between content creation, management, and delivery. As a CM professional, this association provides me with a sounding board to help me grow and potentially influence the direction the organization takes.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? Foster cooperation between CM Pros and the STC where possible. Participate in online forums and conferences.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? As a member of the Society for Technical Communication (STC), I have been very involved in spurring discussion around single-sourcing. I've made several presentations both locally and nationally on the subject. In 2002, I formed the Toronto STC Single-Sourcing SIG. In 2005, I became president of the Toronto STC Chapter.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I am a husband and father of two young boys, William and James.
Interview with Erik M. Hartman, Hartman Communicatie
How did you become a content management professional? I have a communications/information architecture background, so I always - from my university graduation in 1992 - was involved in creating, managing, and publishing content. In 1998 I got interested in Web content management. In 1999/2000 I published an online overview of content management systems, and then things started "rolling."
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? I'm one of the founders. We as a group thought we should have an organisation in which we could talk about content management, exchange experiences and insights and help to professionalise and "market" the content management profession.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? I'm a consultant and content manager/architect.
What is your educational and career background? I have a university degree in communications, specialising in information management. From Day One I had my own company, though I worked for IBM in the beginning. After a year I was self-supporting and worked full time as a consultant and technical writer. Since 2000 I've been doing consultancy only.
What kind of organization do you work for? We're a four-person consulting agency, located in the Netherlands.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? Getting people to think about content on an information architecture level. This is hard work . . .
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? It can help by putting content management and information architecture "on the map." But most of all it's very inspiring for me to meet content management people from all over the world. And as a consultant, inspiration and sharing knowledge is very important.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? Well, I'm doing my best being both a Board member and a Management Committee member. I also do some "concrete stuff" for CM Pros like working on the CMSML (CMS markup language) and the CM Pros poster.
Interview with Heather Hedden, Hedden Information Management
How did you become a content management professional? Starting with a background in journalism and freelance writing, I joined Information Access Company (now Thomson Gale) as an abstractor/indexer of periodical articles. After three years of indexing I moved into the group that manages the controlled vocabulary, where I stayed for over seven years. Projects included the range of authority control, thesaurus development, controlled vocabulary integration and “mapping,” taxonomy development, and web user interface design.
I have pursued some web design, and now I am very interested in promoting the use of human-created back-of-the-book style indexes on web sites. I have written and taught an online course in how to create A-Z indexes for web sites and intranets. Now I am offering a shortened version as a continuing education workshop through Simmons College Graduate School of Library and Information Science.
When and why did you join the CM Pros organization? Bob Doyle, one of the CM Pros founders, encouraged me to join in June 2005. I had met him at Boston CHI (chapter of the ACM Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction) meetings the previous year, and he told me then that my skills in indexing, controlled vocabularies and thesauri would be very valuable to content managers.
Are you a content creator, manager or publisher (or some combination)? My background is in content creation. While more involved in content management now, I would consider myself as a consultant to content managers, rather than a manager myself.
What is your educational and career background? I have a B.A. in government from Cornell University and an M.A. in Near Eastern Studies from Princeton University. I got started in journalism as a writer for the Middle East Times in Cairo. But the specific subject matter of content management is no longer so important to me, as I have been dealing with content in many subject areas. I consider myself primarily and indexer and taxonomist.
What kind of organization do you work for? My company, Hedden Information Management, offers contract services in indexing, thesaurus and taxonomy development, and training in HTML indexing.
What is your biggest content management-related challenge? When dealing with published materials (as opposed to internal documentation), you cannot know for sure what information the end-user wants or how the user is most likely to look for it. You have to guess or try to simultaneously serve multiple user needs.
How can CM Pros help you in your professional life? CM Pros can help me become more knowledgeable of the issues in content management and serve as a means of networking.
How can you help CM Pros grow and prosper as a professional organization? I have been assisting CM Pros by maintaining its web site A-Z index. I can also help CM Pros make connections with other indexers, with whom I am well-networked.
Are you involved in other professional activities outside of the content management industry? Yes. I am president for 2006 of the New England Chapter of the American Society of Indexers, and I also lead the Web Indexing SIG of the American Society of Indexers. I did most of the work in putting together the Web Indexing SIG web site.
Tell us something interesting about yourself that most CM Pros members do not know. I work out of a home office, and my home is three houses up the street from where I grew up (and where my parents still live). My husband also works out of the home, as a freelance technical translator from German, French, Russian, and Polish into English.
