Tag, Your It…Again…

Well it happened again. My friend Jesse Wilkins who writes Informata, tagged me this last week with my second memetag. I was tagged last year and had to write 5 things you didn’t know about me.

This one is a bit more challenging since I have to come up with eight more things other bloggers and my readers do not know about me. So, here goes, eight things that others don’t know about me, and then I will tag eight people to carry on the meme. I know – sort of like a chain letter.

1. I have tried a great number of professions/jobs throughout my life including; lawnmower mechanic, boat engine mechanic, bowling alley mechanic, security guard, Navy pilot, aviation safety officer and aircraft crash investigator, stock broker, Chief Information Officer (CIO), company president, consultant, Chief Technology Officer, and now Director for Information & Records Management at BP.
2. I love music. I enjoy most genres except country western and played the trumpet and french horn in high school. I listen to music to help grease the creative skids when trying to write articles, papers or need to do some thinking.
3. My first car was a 1958 American Rambler which I paid $90 for. I subsequently restored the car from one end to the other, including rebuilding the engine. I know, pretty slick looking car right?
4. I read constantly and sometimes have two or three books going at once. Sometimes I do not finish a book and lately I have decided that’s OK. I guess I am a learning junkie and I am always looking for new inputs and ways of approaching problems.
5. I love cooking (like Jesse and Alan) and really like grilling. I guess my love for cooking rubbed off on my youngest son who is now a Sous Chef for the JW Marriott Grand Lakes, Orlando.
6. Over the years I have lived in 19 different cities (one of those in Okinawa, Japan) with the current city being Houston, TX.
7. I was very active in Boy Scouts growing up and attained Eagle Scout with a Bonze Palm.
8. I love photography. It started in elementary school when my father bought me a darkroom kit (digital had not been invented yet ). I specialized in infrared black and white photography during college and now I am getting into digital with my Nikon D40X and I use Adobe Lightroom for processing and Photoshop CS3 for special processing. I have a lot to learn.

Now, to return the favor and tag eight more: Eddie, Frank, Jason, Arpan, Lawrence, Ed, Joanna, Rob

Technorati Tags: BetterECM, Memetag

Slight Redesign: New Presentations Page Added

I added a new page to BetterECM today which has all the presentations I have uploaded to slideshare last year.

I hope my readers find this new feature useful. Let me know what you think.

 

 

Technorati Tags: BetterECM

How Did They Do That?: DoD Records Management Add-on For MOSS 2007 White Paper

This comes under the heading of “How Did They Do That?”. This white paper (Records Management Solution Demonstrates Power of SharePoint As A Development Platform) that is available on the Microsoft Downloads site, provides some details of the “MOSS as a Development Platform features that were exploited when we built the DoD Records Management Add-on for MOSS.

Another white paper by one of my former colleagues, Vishwas Lele, is a great treatise on using MOSS as an application development platform. You can download it here.

Technorati Tags: MOSS, records management, Microsoft, ECM, white paper

Where In The World Has BetterECM Been?: An Update

Back in August I wrote about the photo safari my wife and I took in South Africa. Well it took some time to work through almost 1,000 pictures I shot and process them. I really enjoy photography and this trip and experience reminded me how much I have missed exploring the world through a lens. Anyway I wanted to share some of the pictures. The sunsets were spectacular!

If you want to view a small subset of the pictures I took I uploaded some of them to Zooomr and you can click here.

Had a little fun with this one.

Technorati Tags: BetterECM, Blogs, Safari, Photography

New Years 2008: Looking Back & Looking Forward

Happy New Year to my loyal readers. I’ll bet many of you were wondering if I would ever write a post again. Well here we go…

Looking Back at 2007

Last year was a year of amazing change for me personally and for the ECM industry. A year ago today I would have never guessed that I would be making a significant career change in 2007 by accepting a new position with a Global 50 energy company with global scope and broad operational responsibility. All directly related to making ECM better for my company. Also this change would impact my family by moving us to Houston and involving travel globally on a regular (1-2 weeks per month) basis. Whew!

At the beginning of 2007 the big news was the launch of Microsoft Office SharePoint Server (MOSS) 2007 and the potential impact on the ECM marketplace. Also Web 2.0 was gaining ground and becoming part of the everyday lexicon. I even spoke about this at the Gilbane Conference in San Francisco last April; Is It Possible To Successfully Manage Content In The New Wild West: ECM In A Web 2.0 World. By the end of 2007 Web 2.0 has become somewhat passe’ and everyone is now talking about Enterprise 2.0 and some companies are actually doing something about it. Taking the Web 2.0 social technologies and capabilities and making them part of enterprise content management solutions.

Last month while in London for a couple of weeks I had the opportunity to meet with founders John Newton and Ian Howells at the Alfresco world headquarters. Alfresco is making ECM in a Web 2.0 world a reality by integrating the Alfresco content management platform with leading open source Web 2.0 social computing technologies and services such as Facebook for collaboration, iGoogle, Adobe Flex, MediaWiki for wikis, TypePad and WordPress for blogging. The idea is very interesting and I think they are on to something by providing corporate users with tools that are intuitive, easy to use and in some cases, ones that they already have experience with.

One thing I think is missing is a governance model for this type of extremely flexible and user controlled content management environment. What may be needed is what I am calling a Governance 2.0 model. I think if Alfresco proposes a governance model that addresses some of the security and compliance concerns that corporate users may have with this “Web 2.0″ style ECM solution then they will really have something. I really want to thank both of them for sharing their ideas and thoughts with me last month.

Looking Forward

Looking forward toward 2008, I am excited at the possibilities the responsibilities of my new position offers. I am also responsible for the personal data privacy program for the company and will be expanding my horizons and knowledge in that direction. The biggest change I see looking forward is that I now have a chance to actually prove that I can make ECM better for a large multinational corporation. It has to be workable and I cannot do this for the organization or “to” the organization. My job will be to take the tools (both technical and procedural) and help the organization grow the capability to better manage information through people, process, and technology capabilities that my team helps to grow organically over time.

This is a huge challenge but I am eager to make a difference and continue to share what we learn. What works and what does not work. I am also committed to helping lead the effort to create a new professional discipline for information management professionals. I wrote about this before but my thinking and approach has evolved over the last four months. In my next post I will share my new manifesto that makes the case for this new professional discipline.

I am not one for New Years resolutions but I am committing to the goal of trying to write at least one post per week here at BetterECM. Now that I have drank from the fire hose over the last four months and have pieced together a plan going forward I think that this goal is achievable.

I look forward to your comments and suggestions and will continue to share what I learn and continue to learn from other’s outstanding blogs also. Thanks and Happy New Year!

Technorati Tags: ECM, Alfresco, open source, Microsoft, MOSS