CM Pros Massachusetts Community 3rd meeting
by dpearson
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Attending: Susan Czerepak, Russ Danner, Bob Doyle, Jon Garfunkel, Jarrod Gingras, Seth Gottlieb, John Howe, David Pearson, Renaud Richardet, Brian Shea, Bryant Shea, Scott Simmons, Anthony Wilson (via phone from NY)

David Pearson opened with a Summit Overview and local marketing efforts. He noted that Scott Abel has done an excellent job getting sponsors. Paid attendees now number 34, with 13 more speaker and sponsor represetatives. The total of 47 is near the 49 number of the first Summit. With four weeks to go, this will surely be the largest Summit ever.

He asked all present to distribute the standard message about the Summit. Bryant Shea said he would ask Molecular marketing people to help.

David has produced a video that will air on Boston's public access TV channels. Copy this link into QuickTime to view the video podcast version - http://www.cmprosold.org/events/summit/fall2006/cmprofinal1.m4v

Renaud Richardet reported that efforts to get an OSCOM booth at the Gilbane Conference are proceeding. He needs handouts to be prepared with a list of OS CMS. Seth Gottlieb and Bob Doyle will help with a list of resources and CMS's. Renaud also needs more people to sign up to staff the booth at various times.

Seth Gottlieb and Bryant Shea described their second Malcontents Podcast, an interview today with Tony Byrne and Erik Hartman. Click on the image.

Selecting a CMS was the main topic discussed. Bob Doyle showed a new "CMS Pocket Guide" from CrownPeak (a Summit sponsor) with an excellent set of steps through the selection process. He also showed his draft of a CMS Lifecycle Poster, which has a strong relationship to his CM Lifecycle Poster.

The Board has officially published a different CM Lifecycle Poster developed by Erik Hartman and a CM Pros Poster Committee (which did not include Bob). See the Resources > Poster page on the website for more details and several other posters, which were reviewed at the meeting.

There was also a discussion of Personas and Scenarios. The Scenarios page on the website lists scenarios used in remote usability testing. Two books on Personas were added recently to the CM Pros Resource Library, one by Molecular staff member Steve Mulder.

Seth Gottlieb's Law was described - "The success of a CMS is inversely proportional to the information sent in emails."

Jon Garfunkel discussed "rollups" of properties in hierarchies or taxonomies.

Susan Czerepak, John Howe, and Bryant Shea discussed the different tools expected by tech writers, engineers, marketing, etc. Anthony Wilson said they were using special versions of Word that constrain the contributors to help produce content that can be structured to XML.

Bob Doyle noted continuing efforts to globalize the CM Pros website in time for the Summit. The navigation labels are now translated to eight languages.

Next meeting and topic. There will be no November meeting as we all will be busy with the Summit and Gilbane. Speakers will be considered for future meetings.

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"Selecting A CMS" Meeting Agenda
by dpearson
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Add a comment here or send me an email to let us know you plan to join us. It helps with our refreshment planning. Please note that I have asked CM Pros member Russ Danner to join us and expect him to be on hand and share details around a new Boston Content Management User Group he is interested in forming. We will add this after the Summit and before the topics of future meetings discussion described below.

I have also asked Erik Hartman, our President, to join us for our Massachusetts Community 2nd discussion around Lifecycle Posters. We await news of his availability and any news will be posted here. I have posted the text of Erik's response as a comment as well as added my own comment to his reply.

Thus we have a pretty full agenda and I look forward to seeing you all.

Welcome message

• Introductions
• Agenda Overview

Chapter updates

• Progress on assigned items from the last meeting
• Summit information

1. Registration
2. Other

• Topics for future meetings
• Administrative discussions if any

Topic of the month: “Selecting a CMS”

• Introduction of the topic and the format of this round table
• Round Table Discussion

Additional discussion: CM Lifecycle Posters Wrap up

• Summary of key discussion points
• Next steps if assigned

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Hold That Thought
by dpearson
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On Wednesday September 27th the Massachusetts Community of CM Pros held its monthly meeting at Molecular in Watertown, MA. In attendance were Jon Garfunkel, Bryant Shea, Brian Shea, Scott Simmons, Anthony Wilson, Bob Doyle, Jeff Tarbox and David Pearson.

It was great to finally meet Brian Shea of Information Mapping (not to be confused with Bryant Shea of Molecular) and to learn about his organization's support of DITA and the next scheduled Boston DITA User Group meeting that will take place on October 10th. See the DITA.xml.org site.

Scott Simmons offered this Agenda:

• Chapter updates
  • Progress on assigned items from the last meeting
  • Summit information
    1. Registration
    2. Call for Papers
    3. Open Source Booth (Gilbane)
    4. Other
  • Vision for CM / CM Pros
  • Topics for future meetings
  • Administrative discussions if any
• Topic of the month: “Selecting a CMS”
  • Introduction of the topic and the format of this round table
  • Round Table Discussion

David Pearson reviewed Summit registration - 25 attendees so far, twelve from Massachusetts members - five of those from Molecular. The Massachusetts chapter has done a lot so far. And the local marketing campaign is about to begin. Pearson described a short video promo in production now. He has prepared a long list of organizations to contact. Jon Garfunkel and Jeff Tarbox asked for a short blurb that they could circulate in their organizations.

Pearson described the Call For Papers process - over 20 proposals were received through an online form. A number of judges reviewed the proposals and graded them by five criteria. Final decisions on speakers were made by Scott Abel and Mary Laplante, to whom Pearson reports.

Pearson showed the tentative schedule for the Fall Summit and described some of the presenters.

No progress was reported on an OSCOM Booth at the Gilbane Conference. Seth Gottlieb, Nate Aune, and Renaud Richardet are working on this and should give us a report before the next meeting.

The Vision for CM Pros was discussed. Some Massachusetts members might run for the new Board of Directors. It was suggested that they attend some of the open Board meetings soon to get a feeling for the organization governance. Board candidates will be asked for their own Vision for CM Pros, whether it should concentrate on practitioners and resources for members, or on more conferences and association business.

The main topic of our second meeting was "Selecting a CMS Vendor". We passed around a new CMS Tool Lifecycle Poster drafted by Bob Doyle. It has the same look as the Content Management Lifecycle Poster now on the CM Pros site.

We will solicit feedback and continue the discussion of the CMS Lifecycle Poster at the next meeting in October.

The Poster should also have an accompanying narrative to describe the many steps in the selection process. Doyle pointed to an article in EContent Magazine some time ago called "Select a CMS in 15 Steps. It needs updating.

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CM Pros at Molecular
by dpearson
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CM Pros Massachusetts Community held its second regular meeting yesterday. The meeting was hosted by Molecular in Watertown.

It was extremely well attended, with David Pearson, Chair, Scott Simmons, Moderator, Anthony Wilson, Meeting Planner (connected by cell phone from the Acela train), Nate Aune, Open Source Roundtable Leader (attending by Skype from Minnesota), and Craig Andrews, Slava Asipienko, Bob Doyle, Seth Gottlieb, Jon Garfunkel, Jarrod Gingras, Mary Lee Kennedy, Mihir Mange, Theresa Regli, Bryant Shea, John Eckman and Craig Sinclair.

Scott introduced David Pearson, who reviewed the charter and showed the Community Minutes blog, where he invited us to post comments. He pointed out that the Massachusetts Community is the largest community and the Fall Summit in Boston is the largest CM Pros event. So we should play a large part in making the Summit a success.

David was very pleased to see people of the caliber of Mary Lee Kennedy and Theresa Regli coming to our meeting. He hoped that the next three meetings before the Summit would allow us to try out some Roundtable formats for use at the Summit. He said he had recently sent out the Call for Papers and had about a dozen responses, but was looking for Molecular to submit some. "The more the merrier," he said to make the best summit possible. And he called for help reviewing the proposals and assembling the Summit program.

Bob said that if Scott Abel, CM Pros Vice-president, were here he would ask everyone planning to attend the Summit to register right away. (Summit registration) Scott has a goal of 30 registrations by the end of August. He needs to market the high attendance numbers to potential sponsors of the Summit. Scott Simmons reminded that attendees get $150 off their Gilbane conference, which is a larger part of the members' early-bird registration fee of $195 (including $100 renewal of member fees.

If everyone from this Massachusetts Community registered this week we could get close to Scott's goal and likely achieve the biggest Summit so far. See the current attendees list and get your name on it soon.

After everyone introduced themselves, Scott reviewed Anthony's agenda (see previous post). The main meeting Roundtable subject was Open Source Software. He called for possible topics for future meetings.

Theresa asked "Why are there so many OS CMS vendors? Why not more failures? Why not more consolidations?"
Seth "There are lots of failures. They just don't go away.

Globalization is the Summit theme. Perhaps one meeting on multilingual websites?

Seth suggested we develop "Levels of Localization" to help measure value. For example, Level A = navigation and a couple of basic pages translated. Level C = CMS tool interface translated.

Scott then called for the OSS Roundtable to start and asked Nate to define OSS.

Nate Aune then gave a brief overview of Open Source and identified some top OS CMS developers - Drupal, Plone, Zoomla, Wyona Lenya.

Seth said look at the OSI definition and licenses. They own the term. There are 10 basic rules, the first two being code distribution and no discrimination against particular users, e.g. someone who paid vs. someone who did not. It must be "made available" to all.

Craig Andrews said GPL was a bit stronger. There was considerable discussion. Dual licensing was possible is you wrote all code yourself.

Theresa asked "Why do clients always think Open Source means "FREE!"

Proprietary software is sometimes available as "Shared Source" for paying clients, said Seth, and Bob mentioned escrowing source code to protect against a company failing.

Seth described the most successful OSS business model being commercial support, customizations, add-ons, etc.

Scott asked for examples of companies that say they are Open Source but aren't Magnolia and Jahia were mentioned as stirring up controversy on the OSCOM mailing list.

Scott then introduced the second ten-minute section of the Rountable - What are the Strengths of OSS?

Theresa said "It's FREE!" Everybody laughed.

Seth said, every CMS is a framework. So you need to spend 2-4 times the cost of commercial licenses to customize them to your needs. So the real cost saving with OSS may only be about 20-25 percent of the TCO. Real benefits are not the money. He mentioned the innovation cycle of OSS is very fast compared to proprietary.

John pointed out that proprietary vendors always want you to buy the latest version. There's less pressure from OSS communities.

Bob talked about two key benefits often touted - the support community and the continuity of the basic software. These have been criticized and you should evaluate the community to see if it answers newbie questions or ignores them. At OSCOM 3 Tony Byrne pointed to the frequent "forking" of communities, in which he said it is often the user who gets forked. And different releases of OSS may be abandoning earlier version users as much as happens in closed source CMS.

Nate seconded the importance of good community support. And said look for communities with not just transparent code but also transparent governance. He said a big benefit is that if you have a bug, if the community won't fix it, you can hire a developer.

Craig said if you contribute code back to that community, you earn karma and they are more likely to help you.

Scott introduced the third ten-minute section of the Rountable - What are the Weaknesses of OSS?

David asked if the realtionship between developers and UI designers had improved. He noted how one group seemed to think it was more important than the other. At OSCOM there were developers who said they did not care about end users.

Seth said he saw a real change in the major communities today, moving from a meritocracy of programmers to more credit for help documentation and good design. (From scratching your own itch to working on customer itches.) Release predictability can be a problem (for example Lenya 1.4 took forever, with little client income).

Nate said documentation is a major weakness in OSS.

Bob said that DITA XML is something every OSS team should look into very soon. It makes good task-based documentation much easier to manage.

Marketing is another weakness. John and Bryant both agreed they need much better marketing to convince clients.

Craig Sinclair said the perceived risk is much higher for OSS. "You never get fired for buying IBM" is a cliche, but still important, Bryant reminded us.

Jon called for open governance that includes an open bug list. John said publishing bugs and even benchmarking tests is explicitly illegal according to the fine print in many closed-source licenses.

Scott then asked did we know any real disasters with OSS? No one came up with anything obvious. Chandler was mentioned.

David mentioned Seth Earley's idea for a "Buzz Word Bingo" session meeting with vendors or developers.

Who uses open source? John said they ask client who say they don't use open source, "Do you have any Apache servers, here?," they then show how much open source is really in use. Craig said even Microsoft may include a lot of open source.

Who are the key players in OS CMS? Theresa tried to recall those in the CMS Report, and thought of Plone, Typo3, Magnolia, and Joomla.

Bob said the Massachusetts Community could help man an OSCOM booth at the Gilbane Conference, but Frank Gilbane says he needs a request from OSCOM, the association. Sandro Groganz, who is currently reorganizing OSCOM since Michael Wechner stepped down, says that any of us who are OSCOM can ask in the association's name. We look to Nate Aune, Renaud Richardet, and others in active OS CMS to make this proposal and staff the booth during the Gilbane Conference.

Seth said you don't need a Gartner Magic Quadrant to decide the right OS CMS for your project.

Scott asked what we could do better in the next roundtable. Theresa said we need more controversial questions! She'll think of some.

Overall, it was agreed this was a terrific meeting and the group gave big thanks to David and to Scott, Anthony, and Molecular for hosting (and feeding) everybody.

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Next Meeting
by dpearson
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The next meeting of the CM Pros Massachusetts Community. The meeting will take place on August 16th from 7PM to 9PM at the offices of Molecular in Watertown. Directions to the site are at the following link. http://www.molecular.com/contact/index.aspx#directions

Should you have additional thoughts on topics to discuss please feel free to use the blog to make comments and raise questions.

Draft meeting format (Anthony Wilson)

• Welcome message
  • Introductions
  • Agenda Overview
• Chapter updates
  • Group charter
  • Progress on assigned items from the last meeting
  • Topics for future meetings
  • Administrative discussions if any
• Topic of the month
  • Expert introduction of the topic
  • Round Table Discussion
  • Questions from the audience
• Wrap up
  • Summary of key discussion points
  • Next steps if assigned

Suggested topics

Nate Aune

I would like to suggest a discussion of open source content management systems, with a particular focus on planning an OSS CMS booth at the upcoming Gilbane conference where members from the various OSS CMS communities can showcase their CMS. I'm thinking it would be good to have representatives from Wyona, Drupal, Joomla and Plone.

Anthony Wilson

OSS CMS is a great topic. I would also like to suggest we discuss the impact of social networking and user generated content on the content management space. People are starting bring this up more often.

Jon Garfunkel

I can report on my impressions of the MediaGiraffe conference at UMass-Amherst. There were some interesting things for the CM community to consider.

David Pearson

I would like us to decide on some Roundtables for September and October that would be demonstrations of what we might do at the Summit.

Suggestions by others (apologies for forgetting names)

* Managing Multiple Language Versions of Sites. (How to present language choices, identify in Alt Text and how to ensure content is consistent with English site etc.)

* Managing multiple content requests (Content project management..ideas for how to manage, prioritize and complete requests)

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First Formal Meeting
by dpearson
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The first formal meeting of the CM Pros Massachusetts Community took place on June 28th. The Community held an informal meeting in May led by David Pearson who initiated the community and pulled together the steering committee. David filed the required paperwork with CM Pros Executive Director Laura Walker and it was approved and her "Call for Participation" to all members was sent on June 9th. In attendance at the meeting were:

• Jesse Burkhardt
• Bob Doyle
• Seth Earley
• Heather Hedden
• Craig Andrew
• David Pearson
• Renaud Richardet
• Anthony Wilson

Heather, Renaud, Jesse and David

After a review of the importance of the Massachusetts Community many thought the next step was to poll and survey Community members. We will start with using surveys to determine the date and times for meetings. Day and time questions. There was also discussion around having a way to track top things. For instance what are the top topics. Lists of the most popular topics on the list serve. Would you be interested in discussion leaders. Are people interested in topic/theme based meetings. Anthony Wilson, a new CM Pro member, thought it would be a good idea to have an aggregator of the things both the Massachusetts and broader CM Community are talking about.

David Pearson spoke with some detail regarding recent communications from Bob Boiko, the first President of CM Pros, to establish a video link between this years summit in Boston and the DesignIT Conference in Tokyo. Bob is also the author of the "Content Management Bible". Everyone agreed that with this years theme for the summit of "Globalization" that an interactive component using the latest video and collaborative tools would make a lot of sense. David who is also the Summit Event Coordinator will be working with Shinohara Toshikazu, CEO of SocioMedia in Tokyo, and with CM Pros Board Member Mary Laplante and Vice President Scott Abel on integrating this component into this fall's Summit program.

One thought that received considerable support was to have Theme meetings that lead to roundtables for the Fall Summit. It is clear from looking at the Spring Summit Evaluations that a more collaborative and interactive format is desired by the membership. Roundtables would accomplish this request. Renaud read the survey questions. David agreed to develop an initial Steering Committee survey and Community membership survey.

Heather mentioned the importance of establishing links with sister organizations in Boston. The group noted the importance of this in general as well as specifically looking at companies in the Boston atea involved in globalization who might want to support the summit as attendees or sponsors.

It was requested that all Massachusetts member names be added to our community page. It was further decided that there would simply be a link to the Member Directory and any qualified user could then click to the Directory and view all the member names in the Community.

There was also discussion around the possible development of an off shoot of "CMS Idol" An opportunity for Vendors to be critiqued "Buzz Word Bingo". A Vendor Clinic. One idea of a format was to have 3 vendors and give them each 5 minutes to make their pitch. Based on the judgement of those performances one would be chosen to go on for 20 minutes.

Endeca a company that does guided navigation was mentioned as a possible Summit Sponsor - It was decided that David would meet with Anthony to follow-up on this possibility. That meeting is scheduled for July 13.

Feel free to add your own comments our notes to this blog. If you should happen to have any questions on how to do that feel free to shoot me an email or give me a call. 617-532-1906

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